Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Resligion and Culture
2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 98; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/jahist/jar391
ISSN1945-2314
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Religion, Digital Communication
ResumoBigfoot hunters, haunted houses, psychic readings, and unidentified flying object abductees are common in “paranormal America,” a world that includes a diverse spectrum of ordinary people. Christopher D. Bader, F. Carson Mencken, and Joseph O. Baker take their readers on a fascinating journey into “the world of people who devote themselves to the ‘quest’” for contact with angels, aliens, and other unusual beings (p. 16). To flesh out the findings of the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey, a national random sample of American religious beliefs (two of the authors were principle investigators), and to understand who is attracted to paranormal beliefs, Bader, Mencken, and Baker accompany bigfoot hunters into the woods and listen to stories about alien abductions and ghostly apparitions. This accessible study of the sights and sounds of paranormal America is geared toward the general reader, who will probably be surprised by the authors’ findings. By drawing on both the Baylor survey and qualitative research, these three sociologists conclude that “the paranormal is normal” and challenge the stereotype that those drawn to the paranormal come from the margins of society (p. 193). In fact, large percentages of Americans believe in at least one of a number of paranormal phenomena. Those who are drawn to the paranormal are also extremely diverse in terms of class, level of education, ethnicity, race, and gender. What distinguishes them from each other, however, are the number of paranormal beliefs they hold and the extent to which they participate in particular paranormal subcultures.
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