Paranormal and Popular Culture

Darryl Caterine is a professor of religious studies at Le Moyne College, USA. He is the author of Haunted Ground: Journeys through a Paranormal America (2011), and a number of articles and chapters on the paranormal, including essays in The Brill Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling, Nova Religio: The Journal of Emergent and Alternative Religions, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.John W. Morehead is an academic researcher and writer specializing in new religious movements as well as religion and popular culture. His writing includes a chapter on Matrixism for The Brill Handbook of Hyper-real Religions; entries on Paganism for The Handbook of Religion; and the co-editing and editing of volumes on religion and pop culture including The Undead and Theology, Joss Whedon and Religion, The Supernatural Cinema of Guillermo del Toro, and Fantastic Fan Cultures and the Sacred. He blogs at www.TheoFantastique.com.

‘Few who have studied popular culture would question that it is haunted by a fascination with the paranormal. Furthermore, that this haunting has an impact on the everyday lives of many of our contemporaries is beyond question. This is why this book matters. Understanding the occultural context in which we live our lives is enormously important for those seeking an accurate grasp of late-modernity. The thoughtful and engaging studies in this timely volume, not only make it difficult to put down, but also increase our knowledge of the nature of occulture and open up new areas of inquiry. It deserves to be widely read.’ – Christopher Partridge, Lancaster University, UK‘I am often asked by people, usually those with slightly raised eyebrows, why I am so interested in things paranormal. I answer: "Why, of course, because these things mess every other thing up." I am hardly just joking. This collection of essays on the postmodern paranormal demonstrates in playful detail, historical nuance, and just plain weirdness how these things do this messing up and why it is so historically important, so spiritually contemporary, and so intellectually liberating. For some, at least. For others, it is all a closed book, or a non-existent book. That uncertainty, that freeing nonsense, that hesitation, it turns out, is at the very heart of the postmodern paranormal and this book, which really does exist.’ – Jeffrey J. Kripal, Rice University, TX, USA‘In our postmodern age, traditional religions appear to be losing status globally, while its ideals and beliefs are increasingly appropriated by occulture, the folk and popular culture devoted to the paranormal. Caterine and Morehead have enlisted a team of both skeptics and sympathetic observers to explore the complexity of this modern scene. It takes readers on fascinating journey through the wide realm of high weirdness, ranging from Brazilian UFO lore to the quests of amateur

• Introduction, Darryl Caterine Part I: The Return of the Sacred 1 What Can the Paranormal in Popular Culture Tell Us About Our Relationship with the Sacred in Contemporary Society? Madeleine Castro 2 Paranormal Medicine, Charles F. Emmons 3 The Right to a Narrative: Metamodernism, Paranormal Horror, and Agency in The Cabin in the Woods, Linda C. Ceriello and Greg Dember 4 The Dark Knight Rises: Shamanic Transformations in Gotham City, Jack Hunter 5 These Lovers Are Out of This World: Sex, Consent, and the Rhetoric of Conversion in Abductee Narratives, Elizabeth Lowry 6 The Mystery of Everything Out There: Bigfoot and Religion in the Twenty-First Century, Joshua Paddison 7 The Haunters and the Hunters: Popular Ghost Hunting and the Pursuit of Paranormal Experience, Leo Ruickbie Part II: The Spell of Occulture 8 Religions of the Red Planet: Fin de Siècle Martian Romances, Christa Shusko 9 Paranormal Women: the "Sexual Revolution" and Female Sexuality in Hammer Studios’ Karnstein Trilogy, Jay Daniel Thompson 10 "We’re Ready to Believe You!" Spiritualism and the Interpretation of Paranormal Experience in Ghostbusters (1984), Matthew N. Anderson and Collin L. Brown 11 Jesus and The Undead: Resurrected Bodies in Scripture and the Zombie Apocalypse, Kelly J. Murphy 12 Haunting the Ghost of Mark Twain, Ann M. Ryan 13 Accounts of High Strangeness: A Brazilian Perspective on the Paranormal and Popular Culture, Leonardo Martins 14 How the Necronomicon Became Real: The Ecology of a Legend, Joseph P. Laycock 15 Miranda Barbour and the Construction of a "Satanic Cult" Murder, Daniel Linford 16 "What Would You Do When…?": Ostensive Play in the Zombie Apocalypse Narrative, Brent C. Augustus 17 Paranormal Beliefs, New Religious Movements and the New Age Spiritual Milieu, James R. Lewis and Sverre Andreas Fekjan 18 Cryptofiction! Science-Fiction and the Rise of Cryptozoology, Justin Mullis 19 When Did Fairies Get Wings? Simon Young 20 A Contactee Canon: Gray Barker’s Saucerian Books, Gabriel McKee; Conclusion, John W. Morehead