This might come as a shock to the millions of ghost enthusiasts out there: The scientific consensus is that ghosts are NOT spirits, remnants of the dead, recordings of energy, or […]
Category: Paranormal Culture
The stupidiocy of Ancient Aliens for kids (Book Review)
There are few good skeptical books for kids. But there are a shit-ton of terrible books promoting mystery and pseudoscientific nonsense aimed at kids or those getting started exploring a paranormal […]
Media as ‘medium’: Review of Paranormal Media and the good and bad of ghost hunting
It’s not news that the paranormal is mainstream, which is ironic since we commonly understand the paranormal to be events that are NOT normal yet the discussion about it is […]
Miscellaneous book review quickies Fall 2015
The Paranormal by Kenneth PartridgeMy rating: 1 of 5 stars Mostly poor choice of selections for this collection. It’s a book marketed to university libraries as a “resource” but not […]
Parapsychology continues to fail to impress reviewers
A correspondent clued me in to what he called a “devastating commentary on parapsychology.” I agree. The review on the Magonia Review of Books meshes with what I had written in June 2014 when […]
“True Jersey” NJ.com published a stinker of a story on the Jersey Devil
A paranormal investigator who writes a column called Paranormal Corner for NJ.com broke a story this weekend that was both a coup for web hits and an utter disaster for […]
If you think Bigfoot is an interdimensional being, you’ve lost your footing
A person making an extraordinary claim may feel very special. A couple that I met recently who do paranormal research described some acquaintances’ behavior during an investigation of a supposedly haunted place […]
Sciencey: People get it
In the course of writing, there are times when you have to either create a new word because there isn’t just the right one coined yet or you adopt a […]
Cryptozoology and Myth, Part 1: The Illusion of Facticity in Unknown Animal Reports
What can we make of folklore tales that cryptozoologists use to support claims that an unknown animal has been historically reported and remains to be identified? Cryptid researchers say that […]
I know, not just believe, this book is nonsense: Book Review
Sometimes publishers and authors send me stuff. I’m not sure why they think I’ll suddenly be open to unscientific, fringe ideas about how the world works and overthrow what we […]
Neutrality and the wood ape report
It’s very difficult to be truly neutral. In most situations, you can only get somewhere by taking a side and exploring it. Last week’s hubbub regarding the Wood Ape report […]
A Paranormal National disaster: Book review
I had such high hopes for Paranormal Nation: Why America Needs Ghosts, UFOs and Bigfoot, by Marc E. Fitch (2013). I found it in an academic library, it was hefty, […]
Deliver me from another ridiculous “demons everywhere” story – Book Review
A review of Deliver Us from Evil, R. Sarchie with L.C. Cool I shall cut to the main point. I didn’t set out to read this one. I saw it […]
America’s most hyped haunts – Book Review
America’s Most Haunted: The Secrets of Famous Paranormal Places By Theresa Argie and Eric Olsen (2014) There are books that people will love that others will hate for entirely distinct […]
Sykes paper is a clarion call for higher standards for cryptozoology
The highly anticipated paper from B. Skyes regarding DNA testing of anomalous primates has been published and is, thankfully, freely accessible. In 2012, the team from University of Oxford and […]
Unexplained terminology Explained: ‘Paranormal’ versus ‘Supernatural’
Paranormal investigators say they look for evidence of paranormal activity. That phrase always confounded me. I don’t quite get it. What does it mean when someone says they have evidence […]
A ruse by any other name still stinks
As one who runs a website about weird news, it’s been a crazy start to the year. A number of hoaxes proliferating around the media the first week of this […]
American gypsy psychics: Book review
I was enticed to read this book, American Gypsy, by Oksana Marafioti, after the Rose Marks trial. Marks was from an infamous Romani family who had repeatedly been charged and […]
Defending the faith of cryptozoology
My latest post, regarding the rational vs non-rational response to the new cryptozoology book by Loxton and Prothero, Abominable Science, went live on Huffington Post yesterday. Cryptozoology Gets Respect While […]
Paranormal politicking
My interests are in paranormal topics, coalition building, policy, and problem solving. Having visited the paranormal side on several occasions, I’m one of those skeptics that is not hated or […]