From sea monsters to aliens and lost civilizations, humans have always been drawn to know the unknown. And what is one of the life’s most mysterious and fascinating subjects? The human mind, celebrated in literature, myth and legend as that place of dark and light, love and hate, ying and yang and always the unknown and the unknowable. With two psychology classes being offered at Nicholls, students have the chance to get a bit closer to unlocking what is up there, or maybe up there, and the world’s elusive secrets.

“Altered states of consciousness” and “parapsychology and the paranormal,” both listed as Psychology 407, are offered this summer semester as three-hour credit courses and taught by Adelbert W. Price of the psychology department.

“Participants are encouraged to contribute thoughts, ideas and experiences,” Price said.

The “parapsychology and the paranormal” class, first offered in summer of 1993, has included topics such as ghosts, extra-sensory perception, witchcraft, levitation and many more topics in the past.

“I suggested it in a sort of an offhand way during a discussion with the faculty, and, to my surprise, the consensus was ‘go ahead and do it,’ so I did,” Price said.

He said he recruited a graduate student with an interest in the subject and together they created the basic format of the class still used today.

The course is characterized as exploratory, with no particular agenda or purpose to convince students of the existence of any of the topics discussed.

“My concern is unbiased consideration of the evidence that exists,” he said.

No séances such as Ouija Boards or paranormal demonstrations are used, Price said, and he added that the classes are limited to verbal accounts and physical evidence such as video recordings. Sometimes guests are brought in to speak to the class. A Tarot reader once spoke about her readings and answered students’ questions.

Overall, the course’s intention is to present unbiased evidence so students may form their own conclusions, Price said.

The “altered states of consciousness” course included topics such as near-death experiences, hypnosis, past lives and amnesia.

It was first offered at Nicholls in the summer of 2000, at first as an extension of the “parapsychology and the paranormal” course, however, is now offered on its own.

The class centers more on topics once categorized as paranormal but have since been explained by science.

Some specifics include auras-categorized by scientists as a perceptual anomaly-and déj… vu, now known to be a temporary malfunction of memory systems.

Although the seminar format of the class is the same, it is considered more instructive, Price said.

“I provide a great deal of background information from a variety of disciplines including cosmology, quantum mechanics, neuroanatomy, evolutionary biology and philosophy as a basis for an understanding of consciousness,” he said.

Speakers for this class have included Jo Arnault, a psychologist certified in clinical hypnosis who offers a demonstration of inducing a light stage of hypnosis to volunteers in the class.

Jessica Lafont, a psychology senior from Houma, has taken both the 407 Psychology classes.

“They allow you to get further in depth than what you would get from just surface knowledge,” Lafont said. “There’s so much you can learn about under the umbrella of parapsychology.”

Lafont said that on the first day of the class, the students all gave suggestions of the things they wished to learn about. In her particular class, some topics brought up included spiritualism, zombies and witchcraft.

Lafont called both classes “an investigation that will very much change the way you look at things.”

Since both classes have no tests included, Price was asked how exactly the grades were assigned, to which he simply responded, “clairvoyance.