Overview

Carlos S. Alvarado was a historian and empirical researcher whose career spanned two decades of sustained scholarship on parapsychology and anomalous experiences. He combined rigorous archival work on the history of psychical research with quantitative and qualitative empirical studies of spontaneous psi phenomena, particularly out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and mediumship. His work was distinguished by a commitment to recovering neglected primary sources, contextualizing early psychical research within broader intellectual history, and conducting systematic surveys of contemporary populations to understand the phenomenology and psychological structure of anomalous experiences.

Alvarado’s scholarly output was prolific and multidisciplinary. He published extensively in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, the Journal of Parapsychology, and peer-reviewed journals in psychology and neuroscience. He served as co-editor of the Journal of Scientific Exploration and maintained a long research affiliation with the Parapsychology Foundation, where he curated and contributed to the People in Parapsychology oral-history interview series, a canonical archive of autobiographical accounts from contemporary parapsychology researchers. His work bridged the gap between historical scholarship and contemporary empirical investigation, demonstrating that understanding the conceptual and methodological foundations of parapsychology enriches current research practice.

Life and career

Alvarado was born in 1955 and developed an early interest in the history and phenomenology of anomalous experiences. He earned his PhD and established himself as a researcher at the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, where he worked alongside Ian Stevenson and Nancy L. Zingrone. His career trajectory reflected a deliberate integration of historical and empirical methods: he conducted original surveys of spontaneous experiences while simultaneously recovering and analyzing archival materials from nineteenth and early-twentieth-century psychical research.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Alvarado conducted pioneering empirical work on out-of-body experiences. He and Zingrone developed the Out-of-Body Experiences Feature Index, a comprehensive instrument for cataloging and analyzing the phenomenological characteristics of OBEs.⁸ This work was grounded in survey methodology and psychological assessment, allowing researchers to identify patterns in how OBEs are experienced and reported across populations. His studies examined the relationship between OBE features and psychological variables such as dissociation, absorption, and personality factors.⁹¹⁰ He also investigated correlations between OBEs and other anomalous experiences, including aura vision and psychic phenomena.¹¹

Parallel to his empirical work, Alvarado became increasingly engaged in historiography. He published detailed analyses of early psychical research literature, recovering concepts and methodologies that had been obscured or forgotten. His historical work examined spiritualist and mesmerist ideas about mediumship, psychic force, and the nature of anomalous phenomena. He demonstrated that nineteenth-century thinkers had developed sophisticated theoretical frameworks (including concepts of human agency, dissociation, and psychological influence) that anticipated modern parapsychological theory.⁴

In the 2000s and 2010s, Alvarado’s work became increasingly focused on the history of parapsychology and spiritualism. He published essay reviews and historical perspectives on mediumship, table-turning phenomena, early physiological indices of ESP, and the role of psychical research in international psychology congresses.¹²¹³¹⁴ He also contributed to the Journal of Scientific Exploration as a book reviewer and essayist, engaging with contemporary scholarship on anomalous phenomena and the history of science. His final publications, completed shortly before his death in 2021, continued this pattern of careful historical analysis, examining mediumistic materializations in France and early spiritualist discussions of mediumistic distortions.⁷¹⁵

Research

Out-of-Body Experiences and Psychological Correlates

Alvarado’s empirical work on OBEs established a foundation for understanding the phenomenology and psychology of these experiences. His early review of OBE detection studies and ESP during OBEs synthesized experimental literature and identified methodological challenges in studying these phenomena.¹⁶¹⁷ In the 1990s, he and Zingrone conducted surveys of Spanish and English-speaking populations, documenting the incidence and characteristics of OBEs in non-clinical samples.¹⁰ These studies revealed that OBEs were more common than previously assumed and showed distinct phenomenological patterns.

Alvarado’s work on the psychological structure of OBEs demonstrated that these experiences were associated with measurable psychological variables. He found that OBE features correlated with dissociation, absorption, and alterations in consciousness.⁹ He also investigated the relationship between OBE depth and perceived closeness to death, finding that features of OBEs varied systematically with how near to death the experiencer believed themselves to be.¹ In collaboration with Zingrone and others, he examined the relationship between OBEs and physical body posture and activity, revealing that experiencers’ reports of body position during OBEs showed measurable associations with actual physical positioning.³

Alvarado also investigated the relationship between OBEs and other anomalous experiences. He found that aura vision (the reported ability to perceive colored emanations around the human body) was associated with psychic experiences, dissociation, absorption, and synaesthesia-like phenomena.² His work on near-death experiences (NDEs) examined pleasurable Western adult NDEs and their phenomenological features, contributing to the broader literature on altered states of consciousness and survival-related experiences.¹⁸ He also studied the relationship between psychic experiences, dream recall, and lucid dreams in Spanish populations, demonstrating that these phenomena clustered together in ways suggesting common underlying psychological mechanisms.¹⁹

Mediumship and Historical Psychical Research

Alvarado’s historical work on mediumship recovered and contextualized early psychical research on mental and physical mediums. He published detailed analyses of nineteenth-century spiritualist and mesmerist ideas about mediumship, demonstrating that early thinkers had developed nuanced theories of how mediums might produce veridical information through psychological processes rather than discarnate agency.⁴ His work on early interpretations of mediumship showed that concepts of human agency, dissociation, and psychological influence appeared in the literature decades before the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882.

He examined the role of mediumship in nineteenth-century psychology and spiritualism, analyzing how mediumistic phenomena influenced the development of concepts such as the subconscious mind and dissociation. His essay on early spiritualist discussions of mediumistic distortions documented how nineteenth-century spiritualists recognized that mediums’ communications were filtered through and distorted by the medium’s own mental processes.¹⁵ This work demonstrated that spiritualists themselves were aware of psychological complications in interpreting mediumistic messages.

Alvarado’s analysis of W. J. Crawford’s physical mediumship studies contextualized Crawford’s work within the broader tradition of mediumship research, noting that Crawford had not adequately engaged with previous work on the subject or with existing theoretical frameworks.²⁰ He also published a comprehensive essay on investigating mental mediums, drawing on historical literature to suggest research topics and methodological approaches for contemporary mediumship studies.²¹ His work on mediumistic materializations in France during the 1920s reviewed recent scholarship on controlled séance studies at the Institut Métapsychique International, documenting the precautions taken against fraud and the phenomena reported.⁷

Historiography of Psychical Research and Parapsychology

Alvarado’s most sustained contribution was his historiographical work on the development of psychical research and parapsychology. He published detailed analyses of early reference works, including Nandor Fodor’s Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science, which he evaluated as a comprehensive and useful compilation of information about psychical research up to 1933, despite some omissions and bibliographical problems.⁶ He examined the role of psychical research in nineteenth-century mainstream intellectual journals, particularly the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger, demonstrating that discussions of psychic phenomena appeared in prestigious philosophical and psychological journals alongside discussions of hypnosis and mental suggestion.²²

He analyzed the relationship between psychical research and the development of psychology as a discipline, showing how psychologists engaged with and eventually rejected psychical research topics at international psychology congresses between 1889 and 1905.¹⁴ This work illuminated the “boundary work” through which psychology established itself as a discipline by distancing itself from psychical research. He also recovered early instrumental studies of ESP, including John E. Purdon’s nineteenth-century work using sphygmographs to measure pulse synchrony as a physiological index of telepathy.¹³

Alvarado’s work on table-turning phenomena in the 1850s presented excerpts from Agénor de Gasparin’s classic study, contextualizing the phenomenon within nineteenth-century debates about unconscious muscular action and the exteriorization of nervous forces.¹² He examined early concepts of psychic force and their role in explaining anomalous phenomena, tracing the intellectual genealogy of ideas about vital, magnetic, and psychic forces from antiquity through the nineteenth century.²³

Spontaneous ESP Experiences and Ian Stevenson’s Work

Alvarado and Zingrone published a detailed analysis of Ian Stevenson’s contributions to the modern study of spontaneous ESP experiences, documenting how Stevenson’s decision to focus on spontaneous cases represented a significant departure from the laboratory-focused approach that had dominated parapsychology since J. B. Rhine’s work at Duke University.⁵ This work contextualized Stevenson’s research within the broader history of parapsychology and demonstrated the importance of spontaneous case research as a complement to experimental studies.

Subtle Bodies and Out-of-Body Experiences in Historical Context

In his final years, Alvarado completed a comprehensive review of Ernesto Bozzano’s study of bilocation and out-of-body experiences, examining the historical development of concepts of subtle bodies and their relationship to OBE phenomena.²⁴ This work traced the intellectual history of ideas about non-material bodies and their capacity to separate from the physical body, connecting nineteenth-century spiritualist and occult traditions to modern parapsychological research on OBEs.

Influence and reception

Alvarado’s work has been influential in establishing the historical foundations of parapsychology as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry. His recovery of early psychical research literature and his careful contextualization of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century work have made these materials accessible to contemporary researchers and historians of science. His empirical surveys on out-of-body experiences and other anomalous phenomena have provided baseline data on the incidence and phenomenology of these experiences in non-clinical populations, contributing to the psychological understanding of spontaneous psi phenomena.

His historiographical work has been cited extensively in contemporary parapsychology and in the history of psychology and science more broadly. By demonstrating that early psychical researchers and spiritualists had developed sophisticated theoretical frameworks for understanding anomalous phenomena, Alvarado challenged the narrative that parapsychology emerged ex nihilo in the twentieth century. Instead, he showed that the field built upon centuries of intellectual engagement with anomalous experiences and that many contemporary concepts had deep historical roots.

Alvarado’s role as co-editor of the Journal of Scientific Exploration and his contributions to the People in Parapsychology interview series have made him a central figure in the institutional memory of contemporary parapsychology. The oral histories he conducted and curated provide invaluable primary-source documentation of how parapsychologists understood their work, their institutional contexts, and their contributions to the field. His book reviews and essays in the Journal of Scientific Exploration have engaged with contemporary scholarship across multiple disciplines, demonstrating the relevance of parapsychological research to broader questions in psychology, history, and philosophy of science.

Alvarado’s death in 2021 marked the loss of one of parapsychology’s most erudite and historically grounded scholars. His work remains a model for how empirical research on anomalous experiences can be enriched by careful historical scholarship, and how the history of parapsychology can illuminate contemporary research questions. His publications continue to serve as primary references for researchers investigating the history of psychical research, the phenomenology of out-of-body experiences, and the psychological correlates of spontaneous psi phenomena.