Category: Popular Culture
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The Wife Who Was Visited By Her Dead Husband
By Kenny Paul Smith In Beyond Knowing: Mysteries & Messages of Death & Life from a Forensic Pathologist (2006), Janis Amatuzio relates a remarkable and, yes, mysterious case she worked on in her decades-long career as a crime scene investigator. “As I started through the tunnel that connects the hospital and the professional building,” her…
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Are You Looking For a Sign?
by Tiffany Pham Whether to mess with my head or teach me a lesson, I believe there are universal forces spinning strings within my life. I often hear phrases like “everything happens for a reason” or “this is a sign,” but I never took them seriously until I started noticing coincidental events happening to me.…
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They Had To Be Blind, In Order To See?
By Michael Jarvis With this piece I intend to draw a thread between the ancient and yet still prevalent trope of blind oracles and seers with the real-world phenomena of advanced insights which come about in times of physical limitation. I believe there is compelling evidence to suggest that, in states of compromised sensory input,…
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I Had To Learn To Dream, Confidently!
by Kaitlyn Ferretti Astral projection, lucid dreaming, out-of-body-experiences (OBEs), the idea of setting my spirit free of my body, such things have always fascinated me. At first, I could hardly allow my mind to believe that my soul was capable of leaving my body behind to explore other realities and dimensions. This perspective, I learned,…
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Is the Paranormal in Our Genes?
By Avery Teal People inherit traits from their parents, who inherited traits from their parents, and so on. This phenomenon is genetics, the study of heredity in organisms. Genetics accounts for a family with four generations of blue eyes and blonde hair and grandsons with the same crinkle-eyed smile as their grandfathers. But more than…
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Are Vegan Athletes Tapping the Super-Natural?
By Kenny Paul Smith Being vegan, or better yet, eating a plant-based diet, is seriously hot right now, and has been for several years. As elegantly illustrated in the 2018 documentary, The Game Changers, it’s not only the ethical and environmentally responsible thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do for preserving, or even…
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American Magics And The Mirror Of Erised
By Kenny Paul Smith In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, a very young Harry stumbles upon The Mirror of Erised. This highly enchanted looking glass shows those who peer into it precisely what they most desire, for as long as they are willing to look, though it is unable to give them what it shows…
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Is Wonder Woman Your Therapist?
By Kenny Paul Smith In his superb study of superhero comics, graphic novels, and films, Jeff Kripal notes that, “contemporary American culture is awash in myth, magic, and the supernatural.” He has a point. Take a quick glance at the most profitable Hollywood films and TV shows over the past twenty years: alternate realities abound…
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“Para”normal and the Failure of Language
By Nicola Cates What comes to mind when someone says the paranormal? Is it ghosts of dead natives haunting the new residents of a house built on their graves? Or perhaps a demon lord controlling a cult to commit sacrifices? Maybe even the vengeful resurrected corpse of a summer camper who died killing the counselors…
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Halloween’s Magical Role in Our Disenchanted Culture
Kayce Robinson “These things are real in the simple sense that they happen. What they mean is an entirely different issue. But whatever they mean, I think it is safe to say that the sci-fi and superhero fantasies reflect, refract, and exaggerate these real-world paranormal capacities.“-Jeff Kripal, Mutants and Mystics Halloween is an annual tradition…
Paranormal Culture: A Popular Journal in the Superhumanities! 