Glenn Sparks, a communications professor at Purdue University in Indiana, says television shows may influence what people believe about the supernatural. He studied how television in the 1990s influenced people’s belief in UFOs and alien abductions.

A June 2005 Gallup Poll found that three in four Americans express belief in at least one paranormal belief. The most popular were extrasensory perception and haunted houses.

Read an excerpt of a chapter written by Bret E. Carroll about the history of Spiritualism in America in Cassadaga: The South’s Oldest Spiritualist Community (University Press of Florida, 2000) as posted on Beliefnet.com.

TopParanormalSites.com lists some of the most popular paranormal themed websites.

Weird U.S. is a book, and series of individual state books, that document local legends, ghost stories and paranormal occurrences.

Ghostvillage.com is an online community of people interested in the supernatural.

Charlton McIlwain is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is the author of Death in Black and White: Death, Ritual and Family Ecology (Hampton Press, 2003), which examines African-American funeral practices.

Elizabeth Westrate wrote, produced and directed A Family Undertaking, a documentary about the home funeral movement.  

Garrett Epps is a law professor at the University of Baltimore who specializes in constitutional law. He covers the Supreme Court for The Atlantic as a contributing writer and is the author of several books on the topic, including American Justice 2014: Nine Clashing Visions on the Supreme Court.