“The Skeptic’s Dictionary”
Written by Robert Todd Carroll. Carroll explains topics in the supernatural, paranormal, and pseudo-scientific realms.
Written by Robert Todd Carroll. Carroll explains topics in the supernatural, paranormal, and pseudo-scientific realms.
Marshall W. Fishwick (1923-2006) was professor emeritus of interdisciplinary studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. He wrote on popular culture and religion, including the book Great Awakenings: Popular Religion and Popular Culture (Haworth Press, 1995).
John B. Buescher is chief of the Tibetan Broadcast Service of the Voice of America in Washington, D.C., and author of The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth Century Religious Experience (Skinner House Books, 2004).
William Ellis is professor emeritus of English and American studies at Pennsylvania State University, Hazleton. He is the author of Aliens, Ghosts and Cults: Legends We Live.
Paul Eno is an author and speaker on the subject of the supernatural and paranormal. He says belief in the supernatural and paranormal rises when the economy is struggling, and Hollywood is quick to pick up on the trend. Additionally, he believes human beings are wired to believe in the unexplainable. He is based in Woonsocket, […]
The 2006 Baylor Survey of Religion found what it termed a “surprising level” of paranormal belief and experience, although “those beliefs and experiences tended to be confined to people outside traditional religion,” the report states. The survey was funded by the John Templeton Foundation and conducted by the Gallup Organization from October to December 2005. It found […]
Evangelical Christians were the least likely of all religious groups to believe in the paranormal, and belief in the paranormal tended to decline the more one attended church. Those most likely to believe in the paranormal came from the “other” religious category – meaning not Christian and not Jewish. Read a Sept. 12, 2006, USA Today story summarizing the […]
A Harris Poll from 2009 found that four of 10 Americans believe in ghosts. About a third believe in UFOs, 23 percent in witches and 26 percent in astrology. One in five believe they were reincarnated from another person. 71 percent of Catholics and 79 percent of Protesants believe in the Virgin Birth, compared to 61 percent of […]
Read a Feb. 11, 2009 CBS News poll that found that nearly half of Americans’ belief in ghosts and the supernatural.