About this item
A significant number of Americans spend their weekends at UFO conventions hearing whispers of government cover-ups, at New Age gatherings learning the keys to enlightenment, or ambling around historical downtowns learning about resident ghosts in tourist-targeted “ghost walks”. They have been fed a steady diet of fictional shows with paranormal themes such as The X-Files, Supernatural, and Medium, shows that may seek to simply entertain, but also serve to disseminate paranormal beliefs. The public hunger for the paranormal seems insatiable.Paranormal America provides the definitive portrait of Americans who believe in or have experienced such phenomena as ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs, psychic phenomena, astrology, and the power of mediums. However, unlike many books on the paranormal, this volume does not focus on proving or disproving the paranormal, but rather on understanding the people who believe and how those beliefs shape their lives.
About the Author
Christopher D. Bader is professor of sociology at Chapman University and specializes in the sociology of religion, criminology and deviant behavior. He has published over 30 articles in journals in the fields of sociology, deviance, criminology, the sociology of religion and education. He was a principal investigator of the first two waves of the Baylor Religion Survey and currently serves as associate director at the Association of Religion Data Archives (www.TheArda.com).He is author of America's Four Gods with co-author Paul Froese and Paranormal America with F. Carson Mencken and Joseph O. Baker.
