Overview

Nancy L. Zingrone has established herself as a dual-track scholar: an empirical researcher investigating the psychological correlates of anomalous experiences, and a historian and archivist documenting parapsychology’s intellectual development. Her work bridges laboratory findings and field research, connecting experimental protocols with the lived experiences of individuals reporting spontaneous psi phenomena. Throughout her career, she has emphasized the importance of rigorous methodology, historical accuracy, and institutional memory in a field often marginalized by mainstream science.

Her research has consistently examined the relationship between altered states of consciousness, dissociative processes, and reported psychic experiences. Alongside her empirical contributions, Zingrone has become a custodian of parapsychology’s history, working with Alvarado to preserve archival materials, document the contributions of pioneering researchers, and critically examine the field’s own historiography. This dual commitment (to both experimental rigor and historical scholarship) has made her work essential reading for researchers seeking to understand both what psi research has found and how the field came to ask the questions it does.

Life and career

Zingrone joined the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia as Assistant Professor of Research in Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, where she collaborated extensively with Carlos S. Alvarado. The Division, housed within the Department of Psychiatry, provided an institutional home for rigorous study of spontaneous anomalous experiences and experimental psi research. Her affiliation with the Parapsychology Foundation as a research affiliate connected her to one of the field’s oldest and most influential institutional supporters.

Beyond her laboratory work, Zingrone became deeply involved in parapsychology’s educational infrastructure. She served as faculty at Atlantic University, contributing to distance-learning programs in parapsychology and helping to develop graduate-level curricula in the field.¹² This teaching role reflected her conviction that parapsychology required not only research but also trained scholars capable of engaging with both the empirical literature and the field’s contested history.

In collaboration with Alvarado, Zingrone founded the Alvarado-Zingrone Institute for Research and Education (AZIRE), an archival and educational organization dedicated to preserving parapsychology’s documentary heritage. This initiative transformed her historical interests into institutional practice, creating a repository for primary sources, correspondence, and biographical materials that might otherwise have been lost. The AZIRE Archive became a resource for researchers seeking to understand the field’s development and the contributions of individual scientists.

Research

Psychological correlates of anomalous experiences

A central theme in Zingrone’s empirical work has been understanding the psychological characteristics associated with reported anomalous experiences. Rather than treating such reports as simple yes-or-no phenomena, she investigated the personality traits, cognitive styles, and altered states of consciousness that correlate with their occurrence and intensity.

In a series of studies conducted with Alvarado and other collaborators, Zingrone examined out-of-body experiences (OBEs) as a window into dissociative and absorptive processes. Her research found that OBEs correlate significantly with dissociation and absorption, the capacity to become deeply engaged in imaginative or perceptual experiences.¹ More specifically, the Five-Factor Model of personality revealed that certain personality dimensions predict the likelihood and characteristics of OBEs, suggesting that individual differences in trait absorption and openness to experience shape the phenomenology of these events.²

Her work on out-of-body experiences extended to examining the relationship between reported OBEs and physical body posture and activity during the experience.¹³ This investigation bridged subjective report and objective behavioral observation, asking whether the body’s position or movement during an OBE correlates with the content or intensity of the experience. Such work exemplifies her commitment to grounding anomalous-experience research in measurable, replicable variables.

Zingrone also investigated aura vision, the reported ability to perceive colored fields or emanations around the human body. Her research demonstrated that aura vision correlates with visual imagery ability and imaginative-fantasy experiences, suggesting that it may reflect a particular cognitive-perceptual style rather than a distinct sensory modality.⁴ In a more comprehensive analysis, she and her collaborators found that aura vision is associated with synaesthesia-like experiences and dissociative tendencies, further supporting a model in which anomalous perceptions arise from distinctive patterns of sensory integration and imaginative engagement.⁵

Her investigation of psychic and dissociative experiences in population surveys revealed significant interrelationships between these domains.³ Rather than treating psychic experiences as isolated phenomena, this work suggested that they cluster with other alterations of consciousness and dissociative experiences, implying shared underlying mechanisms or predispositions.

Near-death experiences

Zingrone contributed substantially to near-death experience (NDE) research, particularly in characterizing the phenomenology and psychological correlates of NDEs in Western adult populations. Her work documented that pleasurable features predominate in Western NDEs, a finding that challenged earlier assumptions about the universality of distressing or ambiguous experiences.⁶

A key methodological contribution was her investigation of the “embellishment over time” hypothesis, the idea that NDEs become more elaborate or emotionally intense as people recall them repeatedly over years or decades. Her research found that the depth of near-death experiences was not significantly related to the time elapsed since the event, suggesting that memory distortion or elaboration does not substantially alter the core features of the experience.⁷ This finding has implications for the reliability of NDE reports and the validity of retrospective studies in the field.

Spontaneous ESP and case research

Zingrone and Alvarado collaborated on a comprehensive historical and methodological examination of spontaneous ESP case research, particularly the work of Ian Stevenson. Their essay traced Stevenson’s decision to focus on spontaneous cases despite discouragement from Louisa E. Rhine, who believed that only controlled laboratory experiments could provide valid evidence for psi.⁸ Zingrone and Alvarado argued that Stevenson’s commitment to spontaneous case research provided essential balance to the field’s laboratory emphasis, establishing modern protocols for investigating naturally occurring anomalous experiences and demonstrating that rigorous methodology could be applied to field research as well as controlled experiments.

The authors documented how Stevenson’s approach influenced parapsychology’s intellectual trajectory, showing that the field’s reliance on laboratory evidence alone would have missed important phenomena and patterns that emerge only in the context of people’s lived experiences. This work exemplifies Zingrone’s conviction that understanding parapsychology requires understanding its history, the choices researchers made, the alternatives they rejected, and the consequences of those decisions for the field’s development.

Dream recall and lucid dreams

Zingrone investigated the interrelationships among psychic experiences, dream recall, and lucid dreams in a survey of Spanish participants.¹⁴ This work examined whether individuals who report psychic experiences also tend to report vivid dream recall and lucid dreaming, and whether these phenomena share common psychological substrates. Such research contributes to understanding the broader constellation of altered-consciousness experiences and their potential relationships to anomalous cognition.

Historiography and archival work

Beyond her empirical research, Zingrone has become one of parapsychology’s most important historians. Her work in this domain has taken multiple forms: critical examination of the field’s own historical narratives, archival preservation and organization, biographical documentation, and analysis of how parapsychology has been discussed and debated within psychology and psychiatry more broadly.

History of mediumship and psychology

In a landmark collaborative study, Zingrone and Alvarado examined how mediumship phenomena influenced the development of psychological and psychiatric concepts during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.⁹ They documented how researchers such as William B. Carpenter, Frederic W. H. Myers, and Joseph Grasset used mediumship to defend theories of the subconscious mind. Pierre Janet and Théodore Flournoy employed mediumship to illustrate dissociative processes, while Jean-Martin Charcot, Pierre Janet, and Gilbert Ballet related psychopathology to mediumistic practice. The authors argued that while mediumship was only one factor among many shaping psychological and psychiatric thought, its influence has been systematically underrecognized in standard historiography. This work demonstrates how parapsychology-adjacent phenomena shaped mainstream psychology’s conceptual development, a historical claim that requires careful documentation and archival support.

Parapsychology Foundation history

Zingrone documented the fifty-year history of the Parapsychology Foundation, from its founding in 1951 through 2001, examining its role in supporting research, organizing conferences, and publishing scholarly work.¹⁵ She also compiled a history of the Foundation’s International Conferences, which have served as crucial venues for parapsychology researchers to present work and engage with international colleagues.¹⁶ These institutional histories preserve the record of how parapsychology has organized itself and sustained its scholarly community despite external skepticism and limited funding.

Gender in parapsychology

Zingrone has been a persistent documenter of women’s roles and representation in parapsychology. Her early work examined authorship and gender in American parapsychology journals, revealing patterns of underrepresentation and differential citation practices.¹⁰ More recently, she conducted a comprehensive editorial reflection on women in parapsychology from the perspectives of major research centers in St. Louis, Montreal, and Dublin, examining how women have contributed to the field despite institutional barriers.¹¹ In collaboration with Mayer and Leverett, she conducted a 2022 online survey documenting women’s current participation in parapsychology and their experiences within the field.¹⁷ This sustained attention to gender has made visible a dimension of parapsychology’s history that standard accounts often overlook.

Historiography and controversy

Zingrone has written directly about the problems and possibilities of parapsychology historiography. She examined how controversy and criticism have shaped the field’s development, arguing that understanding parapsychology requires engaging seriously with skeptical critiques rather than dismissing them.¹⁸ In a more recent work, she analyzed the rhetoric and substance of parapsychological debate, showing how language, argumentation, and framing shape what counts as evidence and how the field is perceived by outsiders.¹⁹ Her most comprehensive treatment of these themes appears in her book-length study of the interplay between criticism and response in parapsychology’s history, which traces how the field has responded to challenges and how those responses have, in turn, shaped the field’s intellectual trajectory.²⁰

Biographical and archival documentation

Zingrone has contributed numerous biographical and archival projects. She compiled a bibliography of Charles Honorton‘s published works, preserving the record of one of parapsychology’s most prolific and influential experimenters.²¹ She wrote an obituary of Eileen Coly, the long-serving president of the Parapsychology Foundation, documenting her contributions to the field and her role in sustaining parapsychological research through grants, conferences, and publications.²² She also contributed to the publication of a classic historical text on mediomania by Frederic Rowland Marvin, making available to contemporary scholars a nineteenth-century psychiatric discussion relevant to understanding how mediumship was conceptualized in its era.²³

Methodological guidelines and critical assessment

Zingrone has authored guidelines for extrasensory perception research, codifying best practices and methodological standards for the field.²⁴ She has also reviewed and assessed major works in parapsychology, including a detailed review of Chris Carter’s book on parapsychology and skepticism, in which she evaluated both Carter’s arguments and the broader epistemological issues surrounding the field’s relationship to mainstream science.²⁵ These contributions reflect her commitment to maintaining rigorous standards while also engaging critically with skeptical arguments rather than dismissing them out of hand.

Influence and reception

Zingrone’s influence in parapsychology operates on multiple levels. Within experimental research, her work on the psychological correlates of anomalous experiences has provided a model for investigating psi phenomena in relation to measurable personality and cognitive variables. Her finding that OBEs correlate with dissociation and absorption has been cited by researchers seeking to understand the phenomenology of spontaneous anomalous experiences and their relationship to altered states of consciousness.

Her historiographical work has reshaped how parapsychology understands its own past. By documenting the field’s institutional history, examining the roles of women researchers, and tracing how parapsychology-adjacent phenomena influenced mainstream psychology, she has created a more complete and nuanced historical record. The AZIRE Archive, which she co-founded with Alvarado, has become an essential resource for historians and researchers seeking primary sources and biographical information about parapsychology’s pioneers.

Zingrone’s work on the history of mediumship and its influence on psychology and psychiatry has been particularly influential in demonstrating that parapsychology’s intellectual roots run deep into the history of psychology itself. Rather than treating parapsychology as an anomalous or marginal enterprise, her work shows how phenomena studied by parapsychologists shaped the conceptual development of mainstream psychology and psychiatry. This reframing has implications for how parapsychology is positioned within the broader history of science.

Her editorial contributions to the Journal of Parapsychology and the Journal of Scientific Exploration have given her a voice in shaping what research gets published and how parapsychology’s findings are presented to the scientific community. Her book reviews and critical assessments have modeled a form of scholarly engagement that takes both parapsychological research and skeptical criticism seriously, refusing easy dismissals in either direction.

Zingrone’s work has also influenced parapsychology’s educational mission. Her involvement with Atlantic University’s distance-learning programs has helped establish parapsychology as a legitimate field of graduate study, training a new generation of researchers and scholars. Her archival and historical work has provided these students with access to the field’s intellectual heritage and a model for how to engage critically with parapsychology’s own history.

Perhaps most importantly, Zingrone has demonstrated that parapsychology can sustain serious historical and archival scholarship alongside empirical research. By treating the field’s history as worthy of rigorous investigation, she has elevated parapsychology’s self-understanding and created resources that will serve future generations of researchers seeking to understand how the field developed and what questions it has asked.