Many people are familiar with this strange feeling. You go down to the basement to fold laundry or check the fuse box. Suddenly you feel like you’re no longer alone. Completely pissed, you rush up the stairs, slam the door and shudder.
Scientists have a name for this creepy sensation underground: felt presence. This tends to happen in moments of sensory deprivation, such as when being in a poorly lit basement. Researchers are learning more about this psychological effect and why some people might be more prone to it.
What is felt presence?
Humans have looked over their shoulder for a long time after sensing that someone or something was behind them. Social scientists began to consider this phenomenon as a phenomenon in the early 20th century. Felt presence (AKA felt presence; feeling of presence) is generally described as the feeling a person experiences when they perceive that another entity is nearby.
For some people, the felt presence may be neuropsychological and linked to a sleep disorder, brain injury, or an illness such as Parkinson’s disease that can cause hallucinations. But for most people, felt presence can also be a normal part of life in which a person simply gets into trouble from time to time.
Some scientists attribute the detected presence to predictive processing. Normally, the brain tries to make predictions based on environmental cues. Sensory deprivation, like a dark room, leads to uncertainty and then a feeling of discomfort.
But not everyone walks into an unfinished basement, sees a shadow in the corner, and thinks, “That’s totally a killer clown.” Researchers experimented with sensory deprivation and uncertainty and found that some people are more prone to feeling a presence than others.
Learn more: The origins of ghost stories and spooky urban legends
Subject to presence
In a study carried out in 2025 in Religion, brain and behavior, 126 participants agreed to sit alone in a dark room, with their eyes covered and their ears plugged, for 30 minutes. To add an element of uncertainty, some participants were told that someone might enter the room, even though no one actually would.
All participants completed questionnaires including measures of two psychological traits: imaginative suggestibility and fantasy propensity.
“I thought [these traits] could help to understand why not everyone has the same vividness and intensity of felt presences,” says Jana Nenadalová, lead author of the study and faculty member at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.
Just a trick of the imagination?
Psychological literature generally classifies people prone to fantasy as creative and imaginative.
“People with this disposition tend to dream a lot and their fantasies can be so strong that they experience them as reality,” says Nenadalová.
After completing the questionnaire, participants sat in the room for 30 minutes and pressed a button on a handheld device if they sensed a presence. Subsequently, interviews revealed that some participants not only felt someone in the room, but even felt some form of physical contact.
In 10 cases, participants reported hearing faint sounds through their earplugs and thought someone had entered the room and was pacing. In eight cases, participants reported that someone had entered the room and touched them. One person thought the person shook their chair. Another said she felt a “fleeting touch.” Only one participant said she could see through her mask. She saw a door, a shadow, then a person passing by.
Surprisingly, participants who demonstrated a propensity for fantasy did not feel presence or contact in the vast majority. Researchers have suggested that their brains may be accustomed to feeling uncertainty and then turning to fantasies.
“I can only speculate on the reason, but perhaps because these people engage in their fantasies when they are alone in the dark, which makes them feel safe and not attentive to the outside environment,” says Nenadalová.
This would mean that people who are not dreamers would be more likely to focus on the uncertainty around them and then experience a felt presence as their brain tries to make sense of it all.
Learn more: Why the paranormal and the supernatural continue to fascinate us
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