The grants competition for the 2016 Parapsychological Association Research Endowment (PARE) has come to a close, and two grant proposals have been awarded. The Parapsychological Association (PA) will be providing funds to support an investigation into near death experiences (NDEs) and out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Each research initiative will explore areas that may further the science of parapsychology and understanding the nature of consciousness.

Erika A. Pratte is a master's level mental health clinician and researcher, specializing in counseling approaches, exceptional experiences, serious mental illness, and clinical hypnosis. She is an associate member of the PA, the exceptional experiences responder for the PA, and the editor/owner of the Journal of Exceptional Experiences and Psychology. Erika will be investigating how people integrate NDEs into their life, particularly how people adjust, and clinical implications that may be helpful in counseling NDErs. Her research will incorporate the use of surveys and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Erika will use the PARE Grant to travel to her interviewees, which will enable her to have a culturally diverse pool of participants.

Dr. Alexander De Foe is an industry fellow and lecturer at the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University, in Melbourne Australia. He completed all of his graduate studies at Monash University, having earned his master’s degree in counselling in 2010 and a PhD in psychology in 2016. His doctoral research consisted of a number of studies into out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and experimentally-induced body transfer illusions. He is full member of the Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research and has been awarded several parapsychological research grants to support his work examining perception in OBEs. The PARE grant will allow Dr De Foe to focus his research more specifically on veridical perception in OBEs. De Foe posits that if psi plays a role in OBEs, our best chance of capturing it is via recurrent self-induced ‘expert OBEs’. The funding will support a formal investigation of expert OBErs and their accounts, leading into the development of a screening protocol which will help examine realistic visual perceptions in these experiences.

Funding for PARE awards was made possible through a generous donation by Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, who was a leading researcher and educator in the field of parapsychology. The awards are administered annually by the Board of the Parapsychological Association. One or more awards are made each year to cover the direct costs of conducting scientific research.

Donations to support the mission of the PA, including the funding of research initiatives, can be made by contacting Executive Director Annalisa Ventola at annalisa@parapsych.org or visiting our Support Page.

About the Parapsychological Association
The PA is the international professional organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of consciousness-related experiences and phenomena known as “psi” (or “psychic”) experiences. The primary objective of such studies is to achieve a scientific understanding of these experiences. The PA was first established in 1957 and has been an affiliated organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 1969. The PA provides an international forum for scholarly exchange through annual conferences, generally held in North America or in Europe, and through the publication of its Mindfield bulletin. There are approximately 350 PA members around the world.