What does a therapist do when someone sits across from them and confidently says, "I saw a ghost," or "I heard the voice of someone who has passed away," or "I felt like I left my body"?

Do they immediately tell the person that what happened was just a hallucination ? Or do they agree that what the person saw was truly a supernatural entity ?

A new book released this month suggests a third approach: instead of judging whether the experience was real, start by considering how the experience affected the person.

The book, titled "Paranormal and Anomalous Experiences in Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide," is authored by counseling professors Steve F. Bain and Kristopher K. Garza, and published by Routledge.

When ghosts enter the therapy room

Therapists sometimes encounter clients who describe experiences that don’t fit neatly into any one category: seeing deceased people ,sensing an invisible presence, hearing mysterious voices, telepathy, lucid dreams, near-death experiences, or out-of-body experiences.

Some of these experiences may be linked to sleep, grief, psychological trauma, or known medical and neurological conditions. Others remain mysterious to those who experience them, with no clear explanation.

The real issue arises when people feel that simply talking about these experiences will make them targets of ridicule, or automatically label them as mentally unstable. The authors aim to change how these stories are approached.

Don’t believe blindly - don’t mock either

The core idea is simple: therapists aren’t required to decide whether a 'ghost really exists' or if telepathy actually happened.

The first priority is to understand how the experience has affected the person.

Did it make them afraid to sleep? Does it keep recurring? Did they lose a loved one and then start sensing their presence ? Did the experience bring them peace, or has it left them anxious and isolated?

The authors recommend that therapists temporarily set aside their own beliefs whether they accept or reject the paranormal, so they can truly listen without imposing their own explanations.

This doesn’t mean accepting paranormal claims as fact.

Telling a patient, 'Yes, a spirit or jinn is visiting you,' can be just as irresponsible as mocking them or immediately dismissing everything as an illusion.

Culture shapes the meaning of the experience.

The book highlights an often-overlooked point: the same experience can have completely different meanings depending on the culture.

In some cultures, sensing the presence of a deceased person might be seen as a normal part of grieving, while in others it’s interpreted as spiritual contact. Elsewhere, hearing a voice or feeling a presence might be explained through beliefs about spirits, jinn, or magic. Read more at Cultural and Belief Disorders and Their Impact on the Paranormal .

Separating the experience from a person’s religious and cultural background can lead to misunderstandings.

The book includes entire chapters on the relationship between religious beliefs and paranormal experiences, on grief and psychological trauma, as well as real-life stories shared by therapists and their clients.

A way to approach 'the unknown'

The authors also introduce what they call the G.H.O.S.T. Method , a framework that helps therapists listen to and understand unusual experiences without immediately accepting or rejecting them.

The goal isn’t to prove the existence of ghosts in the therapy room, but to give people a safe space to talk about what happened, and then explore whether the experience is connected to grief, fear, trauma, anxiety, or if it’s simply an unusual event that doesn’t disrupt their life.

This distinction matters , not every strange experience is a sign of mental illness, and describing something as 'paranormal' doesn’t automatically mean the person’s interpretation is correct.

A real experience or a real explanation?

For the person who lived it, the experience can feel completely real in terms of what they saw, felt, and remember. But the reason behind it is a separate question.

The cause might be related to brain function, sleep, grief, or perception. There may be factors the person hasn’t noticed, and some cases remain unclear or are due to physical or chemical influences in the environment. Proving that an experience is caused by a supernatural entity or force, however, requires a very different kind of evidence.

The book doesn’t claim to offer definitive proof, nor does it attempt to settle the long-standing debates about ghosts, telepathy, or out-of-body experiences. Instead, it acknowledges something simpler: people really do share these experiences with therapists, and whatever their ultimate explanation, the psychological impact is real.

The Paranormal Enters the Conversation in Psychology

Perhaps the book’s significance lies in the fact that it’s published by a reputable academic press and aimed at therapists, counselors, and mental health professionals. Rather than excluding extraordinary experiences from the conversation, it suggests treating them as part of the human experience touching on consciousness, perception, fear, death, and loss. This doesn’t mean psychology now accepts ghosts or telepathy as proven facts, but it does mean that a question once dismissed or ridiculed is now being taken more seriously:

If someone tells you they’ve encountered something they can’t explain, should your first question be, "Did that really happen?" or "How did that experience affect you?"