An anecdotal approach to the paranormal involves the

collection of stories told about the paranormal.

Charles Fort (1874–1932) is perhaps the best-known collector
of paranormal anecdotes. Fort is said to have compiled as
many as 40,000 notes on unexplained paranormal
experiences, though there was no doubt many more. These
notes came from what he called "the orthodox conventionality
of Science", which were odd events originally reported in
magazines and newspapers such as The Times and scientific
journals such as Scientific American, Nature and Science.
From this research Fort wrote seven books, though only four
survive: The Book of the Damned (1919), New
Lands (1923), Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932); one book
was written between New Lands and Lo!, but it was
abandoned and absorbed into Lo!
Reported events that he collected include teleportation (a term
Fort is generally credited with coining); poltergeist events;
falls of frogs, fishes, and inorganic materials of an amazing
range; crop circles; unaccountable noises and
explosions; spontaneous fires; levitation; ball lightning (a
term explicitly used by Fort); unidentified flying objects;
mysterious appearances and disappearances; giant wheels of
light in the oceans; and animals found outside their normal
ranges (see phantom cat). He offered many reports
of OOPArts, the abbreviation for "out of place" artefacts:
strange items found in unlikely locations. He is perhaps the
first person to explain strange human appearances and
disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction and was
an early proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
Fort is considered by many as the father of modern
paranormalism, which is the study of the paranormal.
The magazine Fortean Times continues Charles Fort's
approach, regularly reporting anecdotal accounts of the
paranormal.
Such anecdotal collections, lacking
the reproducibility of empirical evidence, are not amenable
to scientific investigation. The anecdotal approach is not a
scientific approach to the paranormal because it leaves
verification dependent on the credibility of the party
presenting the evidence. Nevertheless, it is a common
approach to investigating paranormal phenomena.
Parapsychology[edit]
Main article: Parapsychology

Participant of a Ganzfeld experiment which proponents say

may show evidence of telepathy.
Experimental investigation of the paranormal has been
conducted by parapsychologists. J. B. Rhine popularized the
now famous methodology of using card-guessing and dice-
rolling experiments in a laboratory in the hopes of finding
evidence of extrasensory perception.[18] However, it was
revealed that Rhine's experiments contained methodological
flaws and procedural errors.[19][20][21]
In 1957, the Parapsychological Association was formed as the
preeminent society for parapsychologists. In 1969, they
became affiliated with the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.[22] Criticisms of the field were
focused in the founding of the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (1976), now called
the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and its
periodical, Skeptical Inquirer.[23] Eventually, more mainstream
scientists became critical of parapsychology as an endeavor,
and statements by the National Academies of Science and the
National Science Foundation cast a pall on the claims of
evidence for parapsychology. Today, many cite
parapsychology as an example of a pseudoscience.[24]
[25]
 Parapsychology has been criticized for continuing
investigation despite being unable to provide convincing
evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after
more than a century of research.[26][27]
By the 2000s, the status of paranormal research in the United
States had greatly declined from its height in the 1970s, with
the majority of work being privately funded and only a small
amount of research being carried out in university
laboratories. In 2007, Britain had a number of privately
funded laboratories in university psychology departments.
[28]
 Publication remained limited to a small number of niche
journals,[28] and to date there have been no experimental
results that have gained wide acceptance in the scientific
community as valid evidence of the paranormal