Mesearch: Five researchers who applied their scientific minds to the challenges in their own lives

As a teenager, Peter Brugger vacuumed up information about the paranormal from books he found on his grandfather’s shelves. “I was very interested in things like astral projection and ESP, and I was also fascinated by the controversy between those who believed and those who thought it was nonsense.” Brugger counted himself among the former. “I didn’t consider myself a sender or receiver of the paranormal, but I had a lot of so-called meaningful coincidences,” he says. “Things happened that just couldn’t be chance.” When he was 23, and walking along the streets of Zurich, a city he lived near but rarely visited, Brugger became convinced he would run into a former coworker. A shadowy figure approached. “I was sure it would be him,” says Brugger. It wasn’t. But seconds later, he met the man he’d been thinking about. “I couldn’t believe it! I even went back to check if I could have seen his image in the window glass,” he says. Brugger pursued a Ph.D. in biology and steered his research toward the phenomenon of perception. Read Article

By Rebecca Webber