The Paranormal And Popular Culture

Interest in preternatural and supernatural themes has revitalized the Gothic tale, renewed explorations of psychic powers and given rise to a host of social and religious movements based upon claims of the fantastical. And yet, in spite of this widespread enthusiasm, the academic world has been slow to study this development. This volume rectifies this gap in current scholarship by serving as an interdisciplinary overview of the relationship of the paranormal to the artefacts of mass media (e.g. novels, comic books, and films) as well as the cultural practices they inspire. After an introduction analyzing the paranormal’s relationship to religion and entertainment, the book presents essays exploring its spiritual significance in a postmodern society; its (post)modern representation in literature and film; and its embodiment in a number of contemporary cultural practices. Contributors from a number of discplines and cultural contexts address issues such as the shamanistic aspects of Batman and lesbianism in vampire mythology. Covering many aspects of the paranormal and its effect on popular culture, this book is an important statement in the field. As such, it will be of utmost interest to scholars of religious studies as well as media, communication, and cultural studies.

The paranormal has gone mainstream. Beliefs are on the rise, with almost half of the British population, and two thirds of Americans, claiming to believe in extra sensory perceptions and hauntings. Psychic magazines like Spirit and Destiny, television shows such as Fringe, Ghost Whisperer and Most Haunted, ghost-cams and e-poltergeists, bestselling books on mind, body and spirit, and magicians like Derren Brown have moved from the outer limits to the centre of popular culture, turning paranormal beliefs and scepticism into revenue streams. Paranormal Media offers a unique, timely exploration of the extraordinary, unexplained and supernatural in popular culture, looking in unusual places in order to understand this phenomenon. Early spirit forms such as magic lantern shows or the spirit photograph are re-imagined as a search for extraordinary experiences in reality TV, ghost tourism, and live shows. Through a popular cultural ethnography, and critical analysis in social and cultural theory, this ground-breaking book by Annette Hill presents an original and rigorous examination of people's experiences of spirits and magic. In popular culture, people are players in an orchestral movement about what happens to us when we die. In a very real sense the audience is the show. This book is the story of audiences and their participation in a show about matters of life and death. Paranormal Media will be a highly interesting read for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as academics, on a wide range of television, media, cultural studies, and sociology courses.

With entries that range from specific works to authors, folklore, and popular culture (including music, film, television, urban legend, and gaming), this book provides a single-volume resource on all things ghostly in the United States and in other countries. The concept of ghosts has been an ongoing and universal element in human culture as far back as recorded history can document. In more modern popular culture and entertainment, ghosts are a popular mainstay—from A Christmas Carol and Casper the Friendly Ghost to The Amityville Horror, Ghostbusters, Poltergeist, The Sixth Sense, and Ghost Whisperer. This book comprehensively examines ghost and spirit phenomena in all its incarnations to provide readers with a holistic perspective on the subject. It presents insightful information about the contribution of a specific work or author to establish or further the evolution of ghost lore, rather than concentrating solely on the film, literature, music, or folklore itself. The book focuses on ghosts in western culture but also provides information about spirit phenomena and lore in international settings, as many of the trends in popular culture dealing with ghosts and spirits are informed by authors and filmmakers from Germany, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom. The writers and editors are experts and scholars in the field and enthusiastic fans of ghost lore, ghost films, ghost hunting, and urban legends, resulting in entries that are informative and engaging—and make this the most complete and current resource on ghost and spirit lore available.

Exploring the paranormal through musical phenomena, this encyclopedia covers a range of anomalies, from musical mediumship to locations throughout the world where music has been heard with no obvious source. Other manifestations, such as the abilities of musical savants and the anesthetic use of music during surgical procedures, are included with a focus on paraphysical aspects. Entries describe examples from earliest history up to the present--interpretation is left to the reader. Broader themes and concepts are discussed in appendices, with additional references provided for further study.

Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.

Love, Language, Place, and Identity in Popular Culture: Romancing the Other explores the varied representations of Otherness in romance novels and other fiction with strong romantic plots. Contributors’ approaches range from sociolinguistics to cultural studies, and the texts analyzed are set on four continents, with particular emphasis on Caribbean and Atlantic islands. What all the essays have in common is the exploration of representations of the Other, be it in an inter-racial or inter-cultural relationship. Chapters are divided into two parts; the first examines place, travel, history, and language in 20th-century texts; while the second explores tensions and transformations in the depiction of Otherness, mainly in texts published in the early 21st century. This book reveals that even at the end of the 20th century, these texts display neocolonialist attitudes towards the Other. While more recent texts show noticeable changes in attitudes, these changes can often fall short, as stereotypes and prejudices are often still present, just below the surface, in popular novels. The understudied field of popular romance, in which the Other is frequently present as a love interest, proves to be a fruitful area in which to explore the potential and the realities of the treatment of Otherness in popular culture. Scholars of literature, communication, romance, and rhetoric will find this book particularly useful.

Despite the much vaunted ’end of religion’ and the growth of secularism, people are engaging like never before in their own ’spiritualities of life’. Across the West, paranormal belief is on the rise. The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures brings together the work of international scholars across the social sciences and humanities to question how and why people are seeking meaning in the realm of the paranormal, a heretofore subjugated knowledge. With contributions from the UK and other European countries, the USA, Australia and Canada, this ground-breaking book attends to the paranormal as a position from which to critique dominant forms of knowledge production and spirituality. A rich exploration of everyday life practices, textual engagements and discourses relating to the paranormal, as well as the mediation, technology and art of paranormal activity, this book explores themes such as subcultures and mainstreaming, as well as epistemological, methodological, and phenomenological questions, and the role of the paranormal in social change. The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures constitutes an essential resource for those interested in the academic study of cultural engagements with paranormality; it will appeal to scholars of cultural and media studies, popular culture, sociology, cultural geography, literature, film and music.

Star of Kindred Spirits and paranormal investigator Amy Bruni shares stories from her years of experiences with ghosts, organized around thirteen truths that guide her approach to the supernatural. Amy Bruni, co-star of Kindred Spirits and one of the world's leading paranormal investigators, has learned a lot about ghosts over her years of research and first-hand experience. Now, in Life with the Afterlife, she shares the insight she has gleaned and how it has shaped her unique approach to interacting with the spirits of the dead and those who encounter them. From her earliest supernatural encounters as a child, through her years appearing on Ghost Hunters and the creation of her company Strange Escapes, which offers paranormal excursions to some of America's most notoriously haunted destinations, and into her current work on The Travel Channel's Kindred Spirits, this book is full of astonishing and deeply moving stories of Amy's efforts to better understand the dead but not yet departed. With Amy's bright humor and fierce compassion for both those who are haunted and those who are haunting, Life with the Afterlife is an eye-opening look at what connects us as people, in life and beyond. A USA Today Bestseller