Discovery Lab Answers

Michaeleen Constance Maher, PhD is a parapsychologist whose work is profiled on ESP-Nexus at Michaeleen Constance Maher, PhD. Her career spans laboratory-based ESP research, field investigation of reported hauntings and poltergeist phenomena, and physiological studies — a trajectory that moved systematically from controlled experimental settings into real-world anomalous environments.

Experiments

Maher conducted collaborative research with Gertrude Schmeidler at the City College of New York during the mid-1970s, producing work on both spontaneous apparitional phenomena and laboratory-based ESP mechanisms. She later expanded into field-based investigations of reported hauntings, frequently collaborating with William G. Roll — a leading researcher in poltergeist and apparitional phenomena — and with Glenn P. Hansen, an engineer and parapsychologist specializing in instrumental detection methods.

Her documented lines of investigation include:

• Haunting and poltergeist field investigations — applying multiple detection techniques (instrumental, environmental, and perceptual) to document anomalous phenomena in legally disputed and historically significant locations.
• Physiological studies of healing — conducting measurements of healers and patients during laying-on-of-hands protocols, examining tactile sensitivity changes ^[1].
• Synthesis and review of ghosts and poltergeists — she authored Chapter 25, “Ghosts and Poltergeists: An Eternal Enigma,” in Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century (edited by Cardeña, Palmer, and Marcusson-Clavertz), which Solfvin (2016) describes as substantially updating and broadening the earlier treatment of poltergeist phenomena, going well beyond its predecessor with thought-provoking discussion of the relevant research ^[1].

The sources retrieved for this question do not include a complete enumeration of all her individual field investigation reports, so the above represents what those sources document rather than an exhaustive list.

Methodology

Maher’s methodological signature is the integration of quantitative instrumental methods with field settings — bringing the measurement discipline of laboratory parapsychology into investigation of spontaneous phenomena. Her field investigations employed multiple simultaneous detection approaches: instrumental environmental monitoring alongside perceptual and physiological measurement, allowing cross-validation across methods rather than reliance on a single channel.

Her collaborative work with Schmeidler applied rigorous statistical analysis to both apparitional reports and laboratory ESP tasks. Her healing studies used physiological measurement (tactile sensitivity) as an objective outcome variable rather than subjective report alone.

The sources retrieved for this question do not provide protocol-level detail — randomization procedures, pre-specified analyses, or blinding arrangements — for her individual field studies, so those specifics cannot be stated here.

Data

No structured quantitative evidence block was retrieved for this question, meaning the audited effect sizes, hit rates, z-scores, and p-values that the ESP-Nexus evidence system would normally surface are not available in the sources retrieved here. The retrieved excerpts do not carry individual study statistics for Maher’s field investigations or physiological studies — the retrieved passages are descriptive and evaluative rather than results-reporting. Readers seeking specific figures should consult her primary publications directly or the full ESP-Nexus profile page.

What the sources do characterize, qualitatively, is that her field investigations applied multiple detection techniques to documented locations and generated systematic records of anomalous phenomena — and that her handbook chapter was assessed by Solfvin (2016) as doing “an excellent job” of updating and broadening the prior literature on poltergeists and apparitional phenomena ^[1].

Skeptical critiques

The sources retrieved for this question do not include published criticism of Maher’s work by named critics, methodological reanalyses of her studies, or published null replications of her findings. No skeptical critique section can be grounded from the available material.