Discovery Lab Answers

Nancy L. Zingrone, PhD is a research scholar and historian of parapsychology at the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia. Her career spans experimental investigation of anomalous experiences and the historiography of parapsychology — a dual track of laboratory work and archival scholarship that distinguishes her contribution to the field.

Experiments

Zingrone has conducted and co-authored empirical studies across several domains. With Carlos S. Alvarado, she conducted surveys of Spanish and English-speaking populations in the 1990s documenting out-of-body experiences (OBEs) in non-clinical samples, revealing that OBEs were more common than previously assumed and showed distinct phenomenological patterns ^[5]. She also worked with Alvarado, Dalton, and others to examine whether standard psychological instruments could identify correlates of spontaneous OBE reports in creative populations. Her experimental work has addressed both the phenomenology and psychology of anomalous experiences in field settings rather than the laboratory alone.

Methodology

The sources retrieved for this question do not detail the methodological innovations Zingrone introduced to her own protocols. However, her approach is characterized by integration of historical and empirical methods — conducting original surveys of spontaneous experiences while simultaneously recovering and analyzing archival materials from nineteenth and early-twentieth-century psychical research. This bridging of laboratory findings with field research and lived experiences of participants distinguishes her methodological stance.

Data

Zingrone’s empirical work on OBEs with Alvarado demonstrated that out-of-body experiences occurred in non-clinical populations at rates higher than previously documented and displayed distinct phenomenological characteristics ^[5]. The retrieved excerpts do not provide specific quantitative outcomes (sample sizes, effect sizes, or statistical tests) from these surveys; the full papers would carry those figures.

Scholarly and historical work

Beyond empirical research, Zingrone has published extensively on the history of parapsychology and the intersection of anomalous experience with psychological and psychiatric theory. She co-authored a historical analysis of mediumship’s influence on the construction of psychological and psychiatric ideas across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining how concepts including the subconscious, dissociation, and psychopathology developed in relation to parapsychological phenomena ^[6]. She has also written on the work of French physician Ambroise August Liébeault (1823–1904), who studied mental suggestion and clairvoyance within the Nancy school of hypnosis ^[3], and contributed to scholarly assessments of parapsychology’s historical arguments and contemporary skeptical critiques ^[2].

A long-time collaborator with Alvarado, Zingrone has also documented gender representation in parapsychology — she has contributed to foundational work showing that women remain significantly underrepresented in parapsychology authorship and institutional roles, a pattern documented across decades of journal publication.

For her complete research record, see Nancy L. Zingrone, PhD.