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The new, strange science behind felt presences

Many of us have had this uncanny feeling before entering a silent room, walking through a night, or waking from sleep—and suddenly, it’s there. A sense that someone is with us, without any sight or sound. A feeling of a presence. It’s a sensation that occupied the forefathers of psychology for a long time, including William James. James wrote of “a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the special and particular ‘senses.’”