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.

Dr. Margaret Poloma is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of Akron in Ohio. She wrote about miracles as supernatural/ paranormal phenomenon in Main Street Mystics: The Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism (Alta Mira Press, 2003). She describes herself as a Pentecostal Christian who has experienced paranormal phenomena within the framework of her religion.

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.

An article in Qantara.de, “An Inspiration to Young Women around the World,” discusses the increasing numbers of Muslim women who are playing sports and excelling, such as fencing, soccer and boxing.

Muqtedar Khan is an associate professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware. He has written about Islamic political thought and about the rise of political Christianity, through the Republican Party, in the United States. His books include American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom and Debating Moderate Islam: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West. […]