Spooky Dissertations Part 5: The Paranormal and Belief

This is the final installment of the Spooky Dissertations miniseries.

Part 1 introduces the series and covered cryptozoology
Part 2 explores the increasingly popular topic of UFO culture
Part 3 finishes off the UFO topic and included the larger context of Theosophy
Part 4 examines ghost culture and parapsychology
Part 5 covers paranormal culture

Finally in part 5, we conclude with a general overview and miscellaneous of paranormal culture, largely but not exclusively falling under the rubric of "the occult" (though as noted, I've been fairly limited in what goes here, so as not to replicate the vast literature on anthropology of magic and religion). We then have a number of belief-oriented more quantitative studies of belief in psychic powers, and general paranormal beliefs and thought processes.

I will add to this when any new dissertations and theses on any of these topics comes to my attention, and if you know of one, feel free to leave a comment.


Paranormal Culture

Libraries and the Occult – 2004 MA, Cecile Dubuis, University College London

Industrial light and magic: Popular science, technology, and the occult in the late Victorian period – 2003 PhD, Sylvia Amy Pamboukian, Indiana University

Spectral realities: Intersections of science and the occult in modern American literature – 2003 PhD, Stephanie Lee Hawkins, State University of New York at Buffalo

Faith by demonstration: The connection between the history of paranormal phenomena and a New Age spirituality – 2003 PhD, Sonja C. St. Amant, State University of New York at Albany

Rhetorics of darkness: Modern occultism and the popular imaginary - 2002 PhD, Joshua Gresham Gunn, University of Minnesota

Wonder shows: Science, religion, and magic on the American stage, 1845-2001 - 2002 PhD, Fred Robert Nadis, University of Texas – Austin

Multiple views of multiple realities: The rhetorical and social construction of the occult - 2000 PhD, John Dale Richards, Ohio University

H. Rider Haggard and the Victorian occult – 2000 PhD, Janet Elizabeth McIntire, Northeastern University

Avatars of the soul: Cultures of science, medicine, and the occult in modern Germany - 1999 PhD, Corinna Adele Treitel, Harvard University

The significance of the near-death experience in Western cultural traditions – 1999 MA, Alan J. Pew, California State University, Dominguez Hills (DASH)

Psychics, readers, visionaries and other paranormal personalities: A social movement analysis of “gifted” people in the metaphysical movement – 1999 PhD, Gary A. Steward, Jr., Oklahoma State University

Witchcraft and occult crime within a contemporary Canadian context – 1999 MA, Tracesandra Jade McDonald, University of Ottawa

The profession of brujeria on spiritual entrepreneurship in Puerto Rico – 1998 PhD, Raquel Romberg, University of Pennsylvania

Dark star rising: The emergence of modern occultism, 1800-1950 – 1997 PhD, Bradford J. M. Verter, Princeton University

Places of power: sacred sites, Gaia's pilgrims, and the politics of landscape. An interpretive study of the geographics of New Age and contemporary earth spirituality, with reference to Glastonbury, England, and Sedona, Arizona – 1997 PhD, Adrian Iwachiw, York University (Canada) (DASH)

Identifying the spiritual experience – 1996 PhD, Sara Horsfall, Texas A&M University

Belief, Explanation and Rhetoric in the Crop Circle Phenomenon of Southern England – 1991 MA, Bruce Lionel Mason, Memorial University of Newfoundland (PUFOI)

Mysticism: A comparative historical study – 1988 PhD, Jess Byron Hollenbeck, University of California, Los Angeles

Spiritism and science in Brazil: An anthropological interpretation of religion and ideology – 1987 PhD, David John Hess, Cornell University

Otherworld journeys: A comparative study of medieval Christian and contemporary accounts of near-death experience. (afterlife, visions, imagination) – 1984 PhD, Carol Goldsmith Zaleski, Harvard University

Irrationality in current American culture – 1983 PhD, Kathleen Ann Dempsey, Saint Louis University

The new transcendentalism in post-industrial society: life styles and the search for meaning in the New Age – 1980 PhD, Gloria Ann Young, The University of Texas at Austin


Belief and Psychology – General Paranormal

Development of an instrument to measure understanding of the nature of science as a process of inquiry in comparison to pseudoscience – 2008 MS, Brighton Oothoudt, California State University, Long Beach

From Bigfoot in the backyard to ghosts in the attic: Predictors of paranormal belief – 2010 MA, Jeff Tranguch, West Virginia University

Psychological processes in perceived paranormal phenomena- 2008 MA, Stephanie Ann Van Arsdall, California State University, Fresno (UFOs vs. Bigfoot)

Psychopathological symptoms and their relation to paranormal belief and illusory judgment – 2006 PhD, Michael P. Cofrin, University of New Hampshire

Attributional style and irrational beliefs as related to para-psychological belief – 2004 Psy.D, Jennifer I. Millman, Hofstra University

The relationship between paranormal beliefs and the personality trait Openness to Experience: A comparison of psychology majors with students in other disciplines- 2003 PhD, Eric Dogan Ozkan, Central Michigan University

Information seeking and interest in the paranormal: Towards a process model of information action – 2001 PhD, Jarkko Teuvo Johan Kari, Tampereen Teknillinen Korkeakoulu (Finland)

Paranormal beliefs: Developmental antecedents, perceived control, and defensive coping – 2001 PhD, Stefanie L. Perkins, Long Island University, the Brooklyn Center

Belief and reasoning: The effects of beliefs on syllogistic reasoning – 1999 PhD, Mary Merla-Ramos, Long Island University, The Brooklyn Center

The influence of religious affiliation and religious orientation on beliefs in science, religion and the paranormal – 1998 PhD, Brigham Young University

The relationship of ego identity status and ego development stage to a belief in paranormal phenomena in Puerto Rican females – 1993 PhD, Rosie Rodriguez, New York University

The structure and correlates of metaphysical beliefs among a sample of behaviorally committed participants – 1993 PhD, Richard Peter Kaczynski, Wayne State University

The pseudoscientific beliefs of high school students – 1992 Ed.D., Duane Starrett Nickell, Indiana University

A description of the paranormal beliefs of preservice teachers at Indiana University – 1991 PhD, Robert Martin Craig, Indiana University

The influence of undergraduate research methods and statistics courses on the transfer of reasoning skills to everyday events, and belief in the paranormal – 1990 MA, Davina Mill, Concordia University

The Relationships Among the Experience of the Dying, the Experience of Paranormal Events, and Creativity in Adults – 1987 PhD, Mary Dee McEvoy, New York University

An Investigation of the Empirical Relationships Among Beliefs in Science, Religion, and the Paranormal – 1985 PhD, Carl Ben Taylor, Brigham Young University

Beliefs in paranormal phenomena: Their relationship to involvement in esoteric practices and locus of control – 1979 PhD, James Joseph McGarry, Kent State University


Belief and Psychology – Psychic Powers

Paranormal belief, personality traits, and subjective well-being - 2010 PhD, Inga Simonian, Alliant International University

Illusory judgments under conditions of uncertainty: Reasoning errors related to paranormal and religious beliefs - 2008 PhD, Erin C. Goforth, University of New Hampshire

Critical Thinking Ability, Dogmatism, Ambiguity Tolerance and Belief in Paranormal – 1987 PhD, Michael James Nanko, United States International University

Childhood Development and Personality Functioning of the Psychic (Parapsychology, Hypnosis, Multiple) – 1985 PhD, Mark Howard Goldenthal, Georgia State University

Interrelationships among belief in psychic abilities, psychic experiences, and sensation-seeking – 1982 PhD, James Stephen Anthony, United States International University

Personality Variables Associated with Response in Dissonant Situations – 1981 PhD, Caren Rae Gertner, The University of Texas at Austin

Spooky Dissertations Part 4: Ghost Culture and Parapsychology

Ongoing series on Spooky Dissertations

Part 1 introduces the series and covered cryptozoology
Part 2 explores the increasingly popular topic of UFO culture
Part 3 finishes off the UFO topic and included the larger context of Theosophy
Part 4 examines ghost culture and parapsychology
Part 5 covers paranormal culture

We've previously had bibliographies of dissertations and theses on cryptozoology, UFO culture, and a grab bag of other UFO topics with an emphasis on the past. Today we take a look at studies of ghost culture, spiritualism and parapsychology, and actual paranormal research. Tomorrow, we conclude with works on general belief in the paranormal.

Ghost Culture

Never Give Up the Ghost: An Analysis of Three Edinburgh Ghost Tour Companies - 2005 MA, Joy Fraser, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Gothic Realities: The Emergence of Cultural Forms through Representations of the Unreal - 2005 PhD, Lawrence Andrew Cooper, Jr, Princeton University

Visions of an unseen world': the production and consumption of English ghost stories, c.1660-1800 – PhD 2005, Sasha Handley, University of Warwick (DASH)

Possessions: The history and uses of haunting in the Hudson Valley – 2001 PhD, Judith Ann Richardson, Harvard University

Specters of war: An analysis of ghost stories and other stories of the occult set in the American Civil War – 1994 MA, Maureen Rush Bradley, University of Hawai’i

Aspects of supernatural belief, memorate and legend in a contemporary urban environment – 1985 PhD, Gillian Bennett, University of Sheffield


Spiritualism

The commercialization of the afterlife: Spiritualism's supernatural economy, 1848—1900 – 2010 MA, Richard W. Fink, II

Ventriloquising the dead: representations of Victorian spiritualism and psychical research in selected nineteenth and late twentieth century fiction – 2006 PhD, Tatiana Kontou, University of Sussex (DASH)

Rei(g)ning mediums: Spiritualism and social controls in 19th-century American literature – 2006 PhD, Mitzi Schrag, University of Washington

Sacred conspiracies: Spiritualist and occult politics in Britain, 1843 – 1916 – 2005 PhD, William J. Dotson, The University of Chicago

Automatic writing: A history from Mesmer to Breton – 2004 PhD, Diane Dearmont, University of Washington

Materialisation Phenomena in British and French Spiritualism and Psychical Research – 2004 PhD, Corinne Montenon, University of Birmingham (DASH)

"I saw it with my own eyes": An ethnography of visions and other anomalous phenomena among participants in Candomble, Umbanda and Spiritism from Rio de Janeiro and Abadiania, Goias – 2002 PhD, Yves Marton, University of California, Los Angeles

Without crucible or scalpel: A sympathetic history of American Spiritualism - 2002 PhD, Robert Sayre Cox, University of Michigan

Feminine channeling: Technology, the occult, and women's mediation of communications, 1870—1915 – 2001 PhD, Jill Nicole Galvan, University of California, Los Angeles

'Fifty-cent sybils': Occult workers and the symbolic marketplace in the urban United States, 1850-1930, - 1998 PhD, Tammy Lee Stone-Gordon, Michigan State University

Soft murder by the camera eye: Photographic fears and the Victorian writer – 1992 PhD, Nancy Martha West, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Spiritualism and psychology in the works of Robert and Elizabeth Browning and Henry and William James – 1991 PhD, Charles Lloyd Meredith, University of Cambridge

Subversive spirit: women and nineteenth century spiritualism – 1987 PhD, A. Owen, University of Sussex

A harmony of worlds: spiritualism and the quest for community in nineteenth-century America – PhD 1981, Michael Anthony O’Sullivan, University of Southern California


Parapsychology and Science

To the Summerland: William James, psychical research and modernity – 2003 PhD, Krister Dylan Knapp, Boston College

"The coping stone on psycho-analysis": Freud, psychoanalysis, and the Society for Psychical Research – 2002 PhD, James P. Keeley, Columbia University

Fantasies of transmission: Psychical research and the mediation of intimacy, 1880 – 1916 – 1998 PhD, Pamela N. Thurschwell, Cornell University

Interpretations of quantum physics, the mystical and the paranormal: Einstein, Schroedinger, Bohr, Pauli and Jordan – 1989 PhD, Peter Anton Degen, Drew University

The penumbra of science: A sociological investigation of the debate between parapsychology and science – 1988 PhD, Catherine Boyd Withers, York University (Canada)

Deviant Science: The Case of Parapsychology – 1981 PhD, James Maris McClenon, University of Maryland College Park


Paranormal Research

Field notes from the light: An ethnographic study of the meaning and significance of "near-death experiences" – 2007 PhD, Laura Suzanne Gordon, University of Maryland, College Park (DASH)

Moments of transcendence: A psychospiritual interpretation of psychic, conversion, and mystical experiences – 1998 M.Ed., Marie H. Bousquet, Acadia University

Beyond the near-death experience: An investigation of the effects of near-death experiences – 1996 PsyD, Patricia H. Carr, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (DASH)

L'épreuve de la preuve. La photographie et le phénomène des ovnis - 1994 MA(?), Jean-Phillipe Dain, Université Paris VIII, UFR Arts - Dep. Image Photographique (EUROUFO)

Event horizons of the psyche: Synchronicity, psychedelics, and the metaphysics of consciousness – 1993 PhD, David Bruce Albert, Jr., University of California, Riverside

The social dialogue of the near-death experience – 1992 PhD, Liane Gail Pedersen-Gallegos, University of Colorado at Boulder

The Relevance of Philosophy to Psychical Research: A Critical Examination of Claims and Methods – 1988 PhD, John Anthony Lord, University of Surrey

Archaeology and parapsychology – 1976 MA, Constance C. Cameron, California State University, Fullerton

An Investigation of the relationship between paranormal phenomena and altered states of consciousness – 1975 PhD, Justin Donald Fair, United States International University

Spooky Dissertations Part 3: Ancient Aliens, Theosophy, and the Science of Belief

Ongoing series on Spooky Dissertations

Part 1 introduces the series and covered cryptozoology
Part 2 explores the increasingly popular topic of UFO culture
Part 3 finishes off the UFO topic and included the larger context of Theosophy
Part 4 examines ghost culture and parapsychology
Part 5 covers paranormal culture

Over the last two days we've had listings of dissertations and theses on cryptozoology, and on UFO culture. Today is a shorter list, combining several topics. Two of these explore the relationship between more mystical folkore and UFOs or ET's. Some of these topics are covered in the larger UFO culture bibliography yesterday, but these narrower works get their own listing here. The similarity between fairylore and UFO lore has been recognized for decades, whereas the recognition of roots of much of UFO-lore in theosophy and related beliefs has largely been ignored. Even obvious cases, such as the Shaver mysteries, end up getting more absorbed into the weird field of UFOs rather than suggesting UFOs are just an atomic age version of theosophy. But with the explosion in ancient astronaut beliefs, this becomes really apparent.

Also up today are sociological and psychological studies on the nature of UFO belief. In addition to this we have a persistent subfield looking at anomalous events or structures in the brain and anomalous experiences. While the results of this field of work have been used to suggest many different culturally-determined experiences may be the result of explainable temporal lobe or other activity, this has been particularly contentious when offered as a partial explanation for alien abduction accounts, and so I have put it here.

Over the next two days, we will conclude with cultural studies of ghost experiences and ghost stories, the history and conduct of parapsychology, spiritualism, and a slew of works on psychic powers and paranormal beliefs in general.


Fairy Folklore and UFO Lore

The otherworld vessel as metatraditional motif in northern European literature and folk narrative – 2009 PhD, Kimberly Ball, University of California, Irvine

Comparing stories of extraterrestrials with stories of fairies – 2003 MLA, David Harl Hinson, The University of North Carolina at Asheville

Shamanism and alien abductions: A comparative study – 2000 MA, Simon Brian Harvey-Wilson, Edith Cowan University (PUFOI)

L’irrationnel et ses habitants - A deux periodes distinctes de l’histoire: les OVNI au XXeme siecle et les fees, les lutins, le diable et la mort du XV au XVIIIeme siecle - 1992 MA(?), Christophe Campiglia, Université de Nantes (France) (EUROUFO)


Theosophy and Ancient Aliens

Constructions of Mythology: Mount Shasta, Atlantis, and the Ancient Lemurians - 2006 MA, Tiffany Darlene Strickland, California State University, Fullerton

A world according to Pana-Wave Laboratory: An extreme response to globalization in Japan – 2005 PhD, Salvador Jimenez Murguia, University of California, Santa Barbara

Theosophy, culture, and empire - 2000 PhD, Matthew Mulligan Goldstein, University of Texas – Austin

The SS-Ahnenerbe and the 1938/1939 German-Tibet expedition – 2000 MA, Mark Jonathan Rogers, Georgia State University

The urban gothic in British fantastic fiction, 1880—1930 – 1987 PhD, Kathleen Louise Spencer, University of California, Los Angeles

The archaeology and geoglyphs of Nazca, Peru, or, The extraterrestrial foundations of Andean civilization – 1985 PhD, Persis Banvard Clarkson, University of Calgary


Belief and Psychology – UFOs

Psychological correlates of the UFO abduction experience: The role of beliefs and indirect suggestions on abduction accounts obtained during hypnosis – 1998 PhD, Duncan Jon Andrew Day, Concordia University

Belief in UFOs and alien abduction phenomena as a function of paranormal beliefs, fantasy proneness, dissociative experience, and psychological adjustment – 1994 MA, Kevin M. Harkins, Bridgewater State University, Massachusetts (PUFOI)

Témoignage d'OVNI et psychologie de la perception - 1994 PhD, Manuel Jeménez, Université Paul Valery, Montpellier (France) (EUROUFO)

Factors influencing attitudes toward controversial research: Quantitatively disentangling the social from the scientific (consensus in science) – 1994 PhD, Mark John Rodeghier, The University of Illinois at Chicago

Personality Characteristics on the MMPI, 16PF, and ACL of Persons Who Claim UFO Experiences – 1986 PhD, June Parnell, University of Wyoming

The Relationship of Anomie and Externality to Strength of Belief in Unidentified Flying Objects - 1975 MA, Stephen P. Resta, Loyola College, Baltimore (PUFOI)


Neuroscience and the Paranormal

Numinous-like auras and spirituality in persons with focal seizures – 2008 PhD, Rima Dolgoff-Kaspar, City University of New York

Isolated sleep paralysis and its associations with anxiety sensitivity, history of trauma, paranormal beliefs, and life stress in a black sample – 2005 PhD, Holly Joy Ramsawh, Boston University

Volatile spirits: An ecopsychological perspective on experiences of paranormal assault in contemporary America - 2001 PhD, Tina Rae Fields, California Institute of Integral Studies

The prevalence of sleep paralysis and temporal lobe lability in persons who report alien abduction - 1995 PhD, Marcus Cox, University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom (EUROUFO)

Temporal lobe soft signs as indicators of fantasy proneness – 1993 MA, Scott Probst, Simon Fraser University

Differentiation of uncommon beliefs as a function of the proficiency of interhemispheric processing – 1992 MA, Ross J. Skirda, Laurentian University of Sudbury

An investigation of the relationship between subjective paranormal experience and temporal lobe symptomatology – 1979 M.Med., Vernon Michael Neppe, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Spooky Dissertations Part 2: UFO Culture

Ongoing series on Spooky Dissertations

Part 1 introduces the series and covered cryptozoology
Part 2 explores the increasingly popular topic of UFO culture
Part 3 finishes off the UFO topic and included the larger context of Theosophy
Part 4 examines ghost culture and parapsychology
Part 5 covers paranormal culture

Last time, after an introduction we had a bibliography of dissertations and theses concerned with the culture and psychology of cryptozoology and monsters, as well as a handful of works on supernatural narratives.

Today we have one of two posts on UFOs and aliens. This first is solely for studies of UFO culture, examining the communities and beliefs surrounding flying saucers and ETs. As before, if I was directed to a work by one of the other dissertation listings mentioned in the first post, I have noted this at the end of the entry.

Studies of UFO culture follow a certain trajectory, chronologically. With the exception of one early journalism master's thesis in the earliest years of the flying saucer era, academia has no interest in the topic for over 20 years. After the Condon report declares UFOs of no significant interest and the Air Force officially ends Blue Book and other interest in the topic, the floodgates open, and it is alright to study UFO organizations and beliefs from a sociological perspective or as folklore. More generally this is the time when it starts to become more acceptable to study more pop and other non-mainstream culture, and to examine Western culture with a more critical eye. Within ufology, this era has a decidedly Fortean bent, ending with the rise of crashed saucer legends at the end of the 1970s.

With the shift towards more conspiratorial in ufology, in the US at least, there is less academic interest. But with the 1990s, studies of UFO culture multiply dramatically. It seems likely that the success of Communion and the books of Bud Hopkins have something to do with that, as abduction becomes an extremely ripe cultural studies topic by the end of the decade, though it recedes in popularity by the middle of the 2000s. By this time, the academic approach is to either see the UFO as symbolic of millennial angst and the problematic transition at the end of the Cold War, or to examine the UFO as not a source of folklore or a scientific puzzle, but the font of new religions.

Tomorrow, a somewhat shorter list focusing on aliens and the past, as well as the biology of anomalous experiences.

UFO Culture

Dallas, Roswell, Area 51: A social history of American "conspiracy tourism" – 2010 PhD, Shelley E. McGinnis, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Flying Saucer Culture: An Historical Survey of American UFO Belief – 2006 PhD, Dean Bertram, University of Sydney (DASH)

How the alien invaded the American mind: a history of experts, entrepreneurs, story-tellers, and a love of the alien in modern American culture – 2006 PhD, Zoe Couacaud, University of Sydney (DASH)

Tensions, synthesis and spirituality in the Norwegian UFO movement, especially exemplified by the world outlook of the organization NETI - 2005 PhD, Jan Bertil Heilund, University of Bergen, Norway (EUROUFO)

The Flight of the Ordinary: Narrative, Poetics, Power and UFOs in the American Uncanny - 2005 PhD, Susan Lepselter, University of Texas – Austin

The "Rael" World. Narratives of the Raelian Movement - 2005 MA, Tayah L. Hanson, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon (EUROUFO)

Mon Dieu... un ovni...: du phénomène ovni à ses dérives religieuses, en France de 1950 à nos jours - 2005 MA, Jérémy Morel, Université Jean Moulin (Lyon, France) (EUROUFO)

UFO-Hysterie in den USA - Ein interdisziplinäres Phänomen zwischen Wissenschaft, Politik, Religion und Kommerz - 2005 MA, Sandra Kemerle, Institut für Amerikanistik, Universität Leipzig (EUROUFO)

Weather-Workers, Saucer Seekers, and Orthoscientists: Epistemic Authority in Central Mexico - 2004 PhD, Ryan Cook, University of Chicago

SETI science: Managing alien narratives – 2004 PhD, Arthur C. Fricke, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Controversias tecnocientíficas y medios de comunicación: el caso de la clonación humana y los raëlianos en El País - 2004 PhD, Miguel Alcíbar Cuello, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain (EUROUFO)

Valores, símbolos y representaciones en una experiencia de contacto extraterrestre: el Grupo Aztlán - 2003 PhD, Ignacio Cabria, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (EUROUFO)

An Alien in Roswell – 2002 MA, Kay Lang, University of Wyoming

Social Constructionist, Psychological, and Official Theories of UFOs - 2002 MA, Alan Greenhalgh, California State University, Dominguez Hills

UFO and Alien Encounter Narratives: A Cross-Cultural Analysis - 2002 MA, Ravi Ramkisoonsingh, Carleton University

Alien encounters: A close analysis of personal accounts of extraterrestrial experiences – 2002 MA, Krista Suhr Henriksen, Simon Fraser University

Taken: Constructions of 'Race', 'Biology' and Colonialism in Alien Abduction Narrative in the United States – 2001 PhD, Carol Suzanne Matthews, University of Kansas (PUFOI)

Biblical analysis of the UFO/Alien Abduction phenomenon with possible implications for end times deception - 2001 D. Min. - Robert C. Hendrix, Northwest Graduate School of the ministry, Redmond, Washington (EUROUFO)

The Terror is Real. The history and politics of alien abduction – 2001 PhD, Bridget M. Brown, New York University

Pop Culture and the UFO Narrative: Who's Buying it, Who's Selling it, and Who's not Telling it - 2001 MA, Kelly S. Rubbo, Utah State University

Approche sociologique complexe du charisme - Le Mouvement Raëlien et son prophète - 2001 PhD, Annie Chatelin, Université de Perpignan

A Confederacy of Faith and Fact: UFO Research and the Search for Other Worlds - 2000 PhD, Anne Boyle Cross, Yale University

Supposed Science, Alleged Fiction: Distortion Patterns in the Transmission, of Cultural Paradigms, in the Twentieth Century - 2000 PhD, Andres Zlotsky, State University of New York – Buffalo

UFOCRITIQUE: UFOs, Social Intelligence, and the Condon Committee – 2000 MS, Diana Palmer Hoyt, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

New Religious UFO Movements: Extraterrestrial Salvation in Contemporary America – 2000 MA, Stefan Isaakson, California State University, Fresno (GREENWOOD)

The myth of communion: A rhetorical analysis of the narratives of alien abductees – 1999 PhD, Stephanie M. Kelley, University of Kansas (PUFOI)

A dialética do real e do imaginário. Uma proposta de interpretação do Fenômeno OVNI – 1999 MA, Cláudio Tsuyoshi Suenaga, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Assis, Brasil (PUFOI)

The Lure of the Edge: Science, Religion, and the Alien Abduction Movement - 1998 PhD, Brenda Denzler, Duke University

Shaman and Abductee: American Ufology as Cryptoscience and Countersociology - 1998 MA, Ryan Cook, University of Chicago (EUROUFO)

Heaven's Gate: A Sociological Perspective - 1998 MA, Patricia L. Goerman, University of Virginia (EUROUFO)

Pulp science: Race, gender, and prediction in contemporary American culture – 1997 PhD, Beth Anne Loffreda, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick

"Alien abductees'" Reports of worldview reconstruction (assumptive world theory, coping) – 1997 PsyD, Mindy Sue Kopolow, Antioch University New England Graduate School (PUFOI)

Pasts and futures: Space, history, and Armenian identity, 1988 – 1994 – 1995 PhD, Stephanie Semple Platz, The University of Chicago

Brothers from the sky: Myth and reality in a flying saucer group (Unarius, cults, colllective behavior) – 1995 PhD, Diana Jean Tumminia, University of California, Los Angeles

Otherworld Journeys: UFO Abduction Narratives as Transformative Stories - 1995 MA, Carol Suzanne Matthews, University of Kansas (EUROUFO)

UFO Stories: The Poetics of Uncanny Encounters in a Counterpublic Discourse – 1994 MA, Susan Lepselter, University of Texas (PUFOI)

Gods from the Machines: On the Anthropology of Alien Abductions - 1994 MA, Michael Tracy Blair, Washington State University (EUROUFO)

A social psychological investigation of UFO sighters – 1992 MA, Patricia Ann Cross, Carleton University

Personality characteristics and self-identified experiences of individuals reporting possible abduction by unidentified flying objects (UFOs) – 1992 PhD, Jo Stone-Carmen, United States International University

Flying saucers and the new angelology: Mythic projection of the Cold War and the convergence of opposites – 1990 PhD, Robert Pearson Flaherty, University of California, Los Angeles

Une secte soucoupique : les raëliens - 1989 MA, F. Follmer, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier III (EUROUFO)

OVNI : un tabou scientifique? - 1988 MA, Véronique Galzy, Montpellier III (EUROUFO)

The UFO debate: A study of a contemporary legend – 1988 PhD, Linda Jean Milligan, The Ohio State University

The UFO Movement: A Sociological Study of UFO Groups – 1985 MA, Shirley McIver, The University of York (United Kingdom) (DASH)

The Boundaries of Orthodoxy: A Folkloric Look at the “UFO Phenomenon” – 1984 PhD, Peter Michael Rojcewicz, University of Pennsylvania

Mysteries in the eye of the beholder: UFOs and their correlates as a folkloric theme past and present – 1982 PhD, Thomas Eddie Bullard, Indiana University

Politicking and Paradigm Shifting: James E. McDonald and the UFO Case Study – 1975 PhD, Paul Edward McCarthy, University of Hawaii (GREENWOOD)

Organizational Goals and Support-Seeking Behavior: A Comparative Study of Social Movement Organizations in the UFO (Flying Saucer Fields) – 1973 PhD, Michael K. Schutz, Northwestern University

The controversy over unidentified flying objects in America: 1896-1973 – 1973 PhD, David Michael Jacobs, The University of Wisconsin – Madison

The UFO Phenomenon: A Study in Public Relations – 1972 MA, David J. Shea, University of Denver, Colorado (GREENWOOD)

A survey of press coverage of unidentified flying objects, 1947 – 1966 – 1970 PhD, Herbert Joseph Strentz, Northwestern University (GREENWOOD)

Flying Saucers: Fact or Fiction? – 1950 MA, DeWayne B. Johnson, University of California, Los Angeles (GREENWOOD)

Cryptozoology and Religion - Interesting article and a comment

Interesting overview article on cryptozoology and religion, by Joe Laycock at Science and Religion Today, suggesting a parallel between fringe science efforts and religious fundamentalism. He argues that both attempt to re-sacralize a world stripped of mystery by science, specifically natural selection and evolution. Though perhaps sacralize isn't the proper term, more an issue of both approaching the sublime.

Laycock notes that Creationists have turned to cryptozoology to back up some of their beliefs. He does not discuss that some cryptozoological expeditions have a Creationist agenda to them, as attempts to find living Mesozoic reptiles such as dinosaurs or pteradons, in order to support Young Earth Creationism. But that's alright, it's not meant to be a tome.

But there is a bigger issue. Laycock doesn't really pinpoint why the two have started to cross paths. Yes, there is the sacralization thing, the sense of wonder. But that applies to many things, and it is why people who are interested in science issues can in many cases find common ground in activities rejected by mainstream science (like cryptozoology), as they focus on mystery and wonder. There is the Young Earth aspect or similar "prove the scriptures" elements (Bigfoot as Children of Cain in some ideologies, etc.).

But there's another aspect, and that's their nature vis-a-vis the mainstream: both are forbidden. In his book A Culture of Conspiracy, Michael Barkun uses the concept of stigmatized knowledge to explain how seemingly incompatible conspiracy memes transfer back and forth between religious, racist, political, and paranormal (specifically UFO) narratives and communities. One reason is that they are all labeled by the mainstream press, academia, science, and the political structure as being forbidden, rejected, or otherwise not just wrong, but excessively wrong. Once labeled as such, these concepts don't go away so much as start to transfer and hybridize within a pool of stigmatized knowledge.

Creationism is rejected by the scientific community, and forbidden by law (in the US where Creationism is most potent) in public schools. Cryptozoology isn't outlawed in public schools, but it simply wouldn't be taught, and it is rejected by the mainstream scientific community. Elements of both have particular beefs and interests in the fossil record and with evolution. Perhaps it isn't surprising that the two worlds have collided a bit, just as cryptozoology, once fully identified with secular materialist hunts for living species, has also developed an arm concerned with thought forms, UFOs, and psychic creatures.

What is ufology?

Michael Swords poses that question (What is ufology) over on his blog. It's a thought-provoking essay, in which Swords suggests that the boundaries of "UFOs" have basically disappeared to include every sort of weird thing imaginable, from channelers to crop circles to cattle mutilations, and so on, and that this hampers the study of UFOs, since one can't even know what they are studying. He contrasts it with the original consensus, of studying structured craft in the sky, and suggests something open to new data, but closer to the old consensus than say a Keelian "anything goes."

I think that in addition to, as Swords notes, the cases where high strangeness and UFOs go together without any interpretation by a third party, there is a simpler element here. The vast majority of UFO studies, regardless of level of rigor or seriousness, are studying human-told accounts in order to understand not the accounts, but something the people telling the accounts may have witnessed. There are exceptions (physical trace studies, radar studies) that go along with the accounts, as well as some that may be contained without accounts (some photos or videos).

But in general we're talking about accounts. And this is to a large degree why other "weird" fields intersect with UFOs. Most other field sciences study either physical samples, or in some of the social and behavioral sciences, they may study testimony, but they study the individuals giving the testimony and their communities, and are not trying to get significant insight into something else they may have seen (usually). This leaves, a couple of fields as potential scientific or science-like inquiry models: history and folklore.

History does indeed want to get at past events utilizing human testimony (in contrast with archaeology, which studies material culture discarded by humans, a very different affair). However, in order to do so, a significant part of the work of history is analyzing those accounts in order to better understand them, and very possibly to reject them. Such methods become problematic in investigating something like UFOs where rejecting such accounts may either hurt the feelings of the living, of the family or friends of the recently deceased, or by proxy, insult those who have made similar accounts. This situation is only exacerbated by the fact that much of the money to support the activities of ufologists (or other weird-ologists) comes from the presentation fees, book and DVD purchases, and other revenue largely provided by people who have some stake in particular desired research results or directions. This phenomenon is not completely foreign to academic studies of the past (history is a powerful tool for influencing present events, and many a project has been designed with a specific political intent in mind, by the funders at least if not the researchers), but I'd guess that in most cases, the effect isn't as strong as in the weird fields (get labeled a skeptic or a debunker, and whole audiences no longer care what you have to say except in opposition).

Folklore of course studies the accounts themselves, their structure, their cultural and historical context, their importance, and in many cases is not concerned if they describe some reality (though in some cases that is also an issue). This has made folklore, as well as sociology, anthropology, and psychology, slightly safe harbors for studying UFO accounts, but by doing so, they are in the skeptic category.

Other suggested models have been something akin either to intelligence work or journalism, both of which take accounts from the living (who are expected to potentially be duplicitous), possibly quite fragmentary accounts, in order to understand and describe events and trends either large and abstract, or limited and specific. Unlike the sciences, however, these fields are generally fairly confident they can model what they are after: human networks of interaction and behavior. While there will be surprises of one sort or another, an intelligence analyst knows the general sort of thing they are looking for (a military operation, a spy network, a terror cell, an economic pattern), as does a journalist (a scandal, a cover-up, a network of criminals, a social trend, a crime). As Swords notes, this is not true of ufology, though it largely was at one time.

Ufology studies, in the main, human testimony (at times in conjunction with other kinds of evidence) in order to study what that testimony describes, and it generally does not do this from the perspective that all of the accounts can be explained by mundane observational error, cognitive or neural events, or cultural or psychological factors, as to do so would bring ejection from the field. What the "thing" described in these accounts should be, is Swords' question.

Vampire Archaeology

A recent news report from the Czech Republic immediately grabs the attention: archaeologists have uncovered the 4000-year old grave of a vampire in Bohemia. Or rather, the grave of someone who was treated as a vampire. According to the report, sometime in the Early Bronze Age, a man died, and was buried with heavy stones placed in the grave over his head and chest. This is interpreted as treatment to ensure the man didn't return from the grave to plague the living as a vampire.

I'm no expert, but there is a problem with this. The development of the legend of the vampire in the Balkans dates back about a thousand years, with some elements being older. The term upir first appears in a Russian text in 1047 CE. Bruce McClelland discusses the history and development of the Balkan vampire (specifically focusing on Bulgaria) in his dissertation (openly available online) Sacrifice, Scapegoat, Vampire: The Social and Religious Origins of the Bulgarian Folkloric Vampire and in his book Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead. In those works, he ties the development of the vampire to a mix of pre-Christian ideas about death and the afterlife and religious strife between groups during the early centuries of Christianity in the region.

And the folkloric vampire of the 17th century or so has many differences from that of Bram Stoker's Dracula or subsequent tales. I'm pretty sure Anne Rice never had one of her pretty-boy protagonists roll around the landscape as a literal bag of blood, easily killed by a puncture wound from a hawthorne, for the first few years of their undead existence. The classic Balkan vampires were most commonly "dead sorcerers, witches, werewolves, excommunicates, and those who died unnatural deaths (such as suicides and drunkards)" Some were destined at birth to become vampires, including those with a caul on their head, with teeth showing at birth, or with contiguous eyebrows. Also, if a human or unclean animal steps over the body before burial after it is buried, the dead might rise as a vampire (Oinas 1982). This last is very common (Mclelland 2006: 53). Also, in general, bad people, unavenged people, etc. will return from the dead. The Romanian version (non-slavic) suggests that unmarried dead people, or those unforgiven by their parents, have a greater chance of rising as a strigoi (Perkowski 1982). In Serbia and in Greece, at least, this happens 40 days after death, when a "devilish spirit" enters the body to create a vukodlak (Serbia) or a vrykolakas (du Boulay 1982; Fine 1987). In some greek legends (of the vrykolakas) children born on Christmas will be vampires).

But even if there was something vaguely reminiscent of the vampire in Central European cultures 3000 years before the first appearance of the term, tying those pre-literate beliefs to skeletal and archaeological evidence becomes very difficult.

There is, however, more secure archaeology involving vampires. Archaeology and bioarchaeology on several cases in New England has noted the relationship between tuberculosis outbreaks and vampire panics in the nineteenth century. This report describes some of the details (Sledzik and Bellantoni 1994) and this press release discusses the filming of some work for a documentary.

And a major update. Anastasia Tsaliki, a PhD candidate at Durham University in the UK, is conducting dissertation research on "disposals of the dead" involving "necrophobia." That indeed fits the bill. She has already written a paper on "Vampires Beyond Legend: A Bioarchaeological Approach" which she has made available on her blog. She is indeed pointing at the use of rocks as a sign of necrophobia, and tying that into vampire folklore. As I mention above, I am skeptical of this. Broadening the interpretation to a general fear of the dead rising is of course more acceptable, and I could see myself doing something similar if I were working on remains with such treatment, but it remains speculation. I look forward to Ms. Tsaliki's dissertation.

EDIT: New update. Lots of new information on the Italian "Vampire" announced last year.

UPDATE 5-31-12: Critics suggest the Italian "vampire" may be the product of a misinterpreted brickfall, and not a purposely placed act.

du Boulay, Juliette
1982 The Greek Vampire; A Study of Cyclic Symbolism in Marriage and Death. Man 17: 219 - 238.

Fine, John V. A., Jr.
1987 In Defense of Vampires. East European Quarterly 21: 15 - 23.

Mclelland, Bruce A.
2006 Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Oinas, Felix
1982 East European Vampires. Journal of Popular Culture 16: 108 - 114.

Perkowski, Jan Louis
1982 The Romanian Folkloric Vampire. East European Quarterly 16: 311 - 322.

Sledzik, Paul S. and Nicholas Bellantoni
1994 Bioarchaeological and Biocultural Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology 94.

The Blingdom of God

Not exactly on topic, but a fun and awesome blog on material culture and spirituality. Check it out.

Conference on the Semiotics of Cryptids and the Flatwoods Monster

Loren Coleman recently attended a conference on text, code, cryptids, and the Flatwoods Monster case in ufology.

The cryptozoology papers sound interesting, though primarily of a sort that I'm not a fan of, trend-dipping. In such cases, as academics were doing a bit of in the late 1990s and early 200s, a topic is noticed to be of increasing interest in the pop culture. Semioticians, deconstructionists, and other folks interested in symbolism and meaning, then take the basic face-values of these terms, maybe do a small to moderate amount of research in the general topic, and then use the term to examine some larger societal trends of interest to to the author. This usually results in fair to good scholarship, but misleading as to the topic. For example, Jodi Dean's Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace, made several interesting and useful points about the American culture of space and the astronaut and arguing that conspiracism is a rational stance in the face of decentralization and proliferation of information production post-internet. But the author sheds little light on UFO culture, other than abduction to some degree (academics love abduction just as they love contactees). The papers in the SLSA conference sound interesting, so I don't want to judge them simply from Coleman's description.

The Flatwoods papers are primarily about Gray Barker, mythmaker. The paper outlined sounds interesting, though as Coleman points out, there is some sloppy scholarship involved. But while Coleman (and especially his readers, see comments) want to downplay the PoMo nature of the analysis, Gray Barker is an important figure in understanding the history of ufology. He is in many ways highly responsible for the intertangling, particularly through the proxy of John Keel, of high strangeness with what Keyhoe and others had fashioned as a nuts and bolts problem of aliens in metal spaceships. The Mothman would not be the figure it is today without Barker, nor would MiBs.

World Magnetic Anomaly Map

The first global map of the world's magnetic anomalies has been produced (BBC story, project website). The notion that magnetic energy and anomalies could be responsible for paranormal events and sightings has existed for decades. A major strand of of parapsychology believes that ghostly activity has an electromagnetic component, or is even a "playback" of electromagnetically "recorded" past events stored in stones or bricks. Paul Deveraux and his Dragon Project argue that ancient European megalithics were built to interact with electromagnetic energy or ley lines. One aspect of this includes earthlights, which is similar to Michael Persinger's research into EM stimulation of the brain. Persinger has gotten more attention for his attempts to recreate alien abductions in the laboratory. But his initial work was on electromagnetic anomalies, earthquakes, earth lights, and UFOs.

So I suspect someone down the line in spooky studies will do something with this EM geography research.

Gigantopithecus in Upstate New York

I visited Hartwick College today, in Oneonta, New York. Or more specifically, the sculpture of Gigantopithecus, the largest primate ever. The sculpture was created by Kevin Andersen, as detailed on his website.








As you can see, the sculpture is huge (for comparison, I'm 6'2"). In fact, I think it is a little too big. Most estimates I've heard suggest that the ape was up to nine feet tall if it reared up on its hind legs. As you can see, the sculpture is that tall while resting on the knuckles of the arms. But it probably isn't far off.

Gigantopithecus is more famous than many fossil primates due to Dr. Grover Krantz and others who argued that modern stories of hairy men of the woods were actually living Gigantopithecines. Some, such as Sasquatch or Bigfoot or the other American hairy hominids are a bit far afield, but the Yehren and to some degree the Yeti have the advantage of being talked about and reported in roughly the area where Gigantopithecus teeth and jaw fragments (the only evidence for the genus) are found.

Other reconstructions, in part influenced by Krantz, depict Gigantopithecus as a bipedal creature looking a lot like stories of wild men and hairy monsters. On the other hand, the range and diet of these creatures suggests something more like an orangutan or even gorilla, and especially the panda, decidely less-Bigfoot-esque creatures in terms of behavior or locomotion. David Daegling discusses the issue of Krantz's reconstruction of Gigantopithecus and his identification of the genus as Bigfoot in Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend, available through Amazon by clicking on the thumbnail link on the right side of this page.

I should note that despite the expectation of Bigfoot stories and accounts being at home in the Pacific Northwest, they do occur in Upstate New York, as discussed by the authors of Monsters of the Northwoods.

The End of the Wilderness: Implications for Cryptozoology and other parts of the Paradigm

In a memorable scene of the film The Truman Show, a young Truman (an unwitting captive in an artificial world designed as a secret television studio) declares in his grad school classroom that he wants to be an explorer when he grows up. His teacher, or rather an actor employed as his teacher, immediately tells Truman that everywhere has been explored, there is nothing left to discover. This is one of many ploys employed to limit Truman's interest in the outside world. It is also, of course, to help establish Truman's character as someone willing to explore the unknown and escape the confines of his reality.

But, it is also largely true. It's not true of course. There are plenty of mysteries, plenty of new discoveries made daily. I've been in archaeology for about fifteen years now, and while some basic elements haven't changed much, so much has been refined by new discoveries, and some things have just come out of the blue. Other field sciences continue to find new fossil species, new evidence for past climate, or perhaps a crater from the still-mysterious Tunguska blast. New scientific discoveries in turn lead to new paradigm shifts, such as increasing evidence that while geneticists continue to get greater control over their subject material, greater questions emerge that may undermine the entire notion of gene theory (see also this press release on other genetic re-thinking).

But in the traditional sense, the wilderness is nearly gone. By next year, half the world's population will live in cities. The reciprocal point is that with so many people, and urbanism sprawling ever farther along rail and road lines, wilderness has vanished. A recent review in Science magazine emphasizes we have to stop thinking about pristine wilderness, and understand that in one form or another, humans have domesticated and constructed the planet. Twelve years ago, only 17% of the globe could be considered pristine wilderness, without settlement, farms, access roads, and the like. That percentage has to be smaller today. This isn't even considering the element of being pristine, not being unexplored, let alone surveilled by satellites and airplanes to the point that anyone can get a free, detailed, updating 3d map of the world from one of several sources (I use Google Earth, but I've heard good things about some of the other similar programs).

I've never visited true wilderness from that definition. Sure, I've trampled through forest and brush in Mexico and Guatemala that looked impressive, that at points required a machete to continue. But I've done the same thing half-a-mile from a Walmart in Louisiana, or in National Park land in Mississippi. In all of those cases, I was either in parkland, or in areas farmers knew well enough because they either farmed them at points (and then let them grow back) or travelled through these areas to their farmland.

I have colleagues who do work in something closer to wilderness. An ex-girlfriend of mine used to hike a day's journey or more into the Maya Mountains, up steep rockfaces with the danger of killer bees and deadly fer-de-lance. They'd stay for three weeks, getting some logistical support from helicopters in the British military, before walking back out again. Even here, though, this wilderness had once been farmland (though farther in the past, during the Classic period of the Maya whose settlemets and tombs the archaeologists were studying), and the work was being done within a jaguar preserve that had been surveyed by the project in order to find the ruins. Another of my colleagues, who did survey in some of the wildest parts of Central America, worked in the "wilderness" too. Of course, this wilderness was one where he was accompanied by the locals, and there was concern of being ambushed by bandits and kidnappers out in the bush, and not without cause as this is exactly what happened on one trip. That colleague was convinced that we should do no further archaeology in parkland at known sites, but instead should focus on the frontiers, because that is where unknown sites will be found, if not by archaeologists, then by looters.

But therein again lies the point. Looters are a human issue, and they go hand-in-hand with local settlements where the looters live (the buyers and middlemen may be international or from the city, but despite what the movies might have you think, tomb raiders are typically poor locals looking for a way to make money). That these are issues of human interaction and conflict, and the relationship between humans and their environment, including cultural resources in the case of archaeology.

But so much of the Spooky Paradigm is based on the notion of exploration. The word and the concept appear time and again in discussion and advertising of the subject. In some cases, this is referring to mental or spiritual or metaphysical exploration. But in other cases, it doesn't mean that at all, and is very much in the realm of physical exploration.

Cryptozoology is the most obvious example, as the entire concept is based around undiscovered animals living where they are mostly undetected by science. The Center for Fortean Zoology expedition to Gambia in 2006 is a great example of this (you can see a film on the expedition, or look through the expedition's blog and background), an expedition to the Dark Continent to look for dinosaur-like creatures based on native accounts. It could be right out of an adventure story a century ago. An entertainment-oriented simalcrum of cryptozoology has been airing on the SciFi Channel, called Destination Truth. I think it is telling that all of the episodes, even though dealing with creatures (such as a Bigfoot-like hominid, chupacabra, a haunting, a lake monster, a werewolf, and something akin to a gremlin) in most cases reported and more famous elsewhere, are centered around "remote" areas in former colonial lands, in the Southern Hemisphere, and also very much presented in relationship to "exotic" local beliefs and cultures.

Even in the Northern Hemisphere, the wilderness argument is evoked to explain how Sasquatch, for example, could continue to elude capture (alive or dead). This has led to some acronomious debate in the Bigfoot community, for example, between those who open to Bigfoot reports in any part of the continent, regardless of the terrain or proximity to urban areas, and those who think Sasquatch exists in the rugged forests of the Northwest, but scoff at reports from the outskirts of suburbia east of the Mississippi. One obvious point, and one not thought up by myself, is that by definition sightings and evidence of cryptids are reported by people, and not always people in the absolute middle of nowhere.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying big animals are not found in relatively remote places, or that there is no wilderness left at all (there still is some, even if it is only 10-15% of the planet, that's still a lot of ground). In November of last year, I blogged about a paper presented on this topic concerning the "Lost World" of Vietnam. For years, there have been reports of spectacular new animal discoveries in the post-Cold War forests of Vietnam. Some are questionable, but many are clearly legitimate and extraordinary. But Dr. McElwee's point was that these aren't lost worlds, they are quite inhabited, and "discovery" is a relative matter creating a false notion of pristine wilderness where people (just not European settlers) have lived for quite some time. She focused on the hominid searchers in this "Lost World" as being a symptom of a larger lingering colonial mentality, with dangers for it being replicated at the local state level and looking at such "Lost World's" as places to be exploited since they are "empty."

What I am getting at is not that there isn't wilderness, but that rather these stories of strange and unexplained phenomena are not those of the mysteries of the frontier and wilderness, but rather they are evidence of mystery being in our domesticated world. Bigfoot may be a wild man of the wilderness, but so many sightings are made along roads, on farms and private land, and other places that may not be in a metropolitan area, but that are also not in the deepest and darkest mountain caves and thickest forest. Aquatic monster sightings don't come from submarines in the darkest depths of the seas, or in the center of oceans far from land. They come from lakes, often large well-visited lakes in heavily populated areas. UFOs are supposed to be, in the majority opinion, from outer space. And indeed, there is a branch of ufology that is interested in video from the space shuttle or other views of orbit or the Moon. But the true natural habitat of the UFO is slowly moving over suburban housing developments, along the ridges and valleys of ranches, or even over major cities. Pilot sightings might be considered an exception to this. And while spooky old hospitals and insane asylums or old cemeteries are common haunts for ghost hunting teams, so many spectral stories come from inhabited (and not even necessarily that old) private homes or businesses.

Just as the Science review suggests a new paradigm for conservation, one focused on managing a domesticated world, the Spooky Paradigm is not one of monsters on the edges of the known world, but of strange things happening in mundane places, of mystery intruding on everyday life. Not in far away places with exotic names for creatures never seen by civilized man, because at this point, everywhere is civilized in the basic sense of the word. This isn't just a matter of form or style, but directly effects the frames used for understanding these mysteries. Lisa Shiel , as she discusses in a recent interview on Binnall of America, has been writing about her claims of communication and interaction with Bigfoot creatures that braid horse hair, leave stick signs, and have other ways of interacting with humans. I find these concepts to be, to say the least, bizarre and difficult to believe. But I have to admit, I could see how one could argue that an intelligent Bigfoot, one able to interact with humans, would presumably have a better shot at living in closer proximity to human settlements and evading detection than say a non-human-intelligencelevel giant ape like Gigantopithecus. This is a similar dilemma to the question of time in ufology. If UFOs have been seen on Earth for thousands of years, some of the assumptions about visiting space aliens, especially the notion that they were attracted by the a-bomb and other recent technological development, start to give way to ideas about a permanent presence by UFOs on the Earth, either as indigenous cryptoterrestrials or as ultraterrestrials or some other kind of thing from another dimension.

The world hasn't been all explored, like Truman's teacher said. We explored it, an found that it held even more mysteries than initially thought possible.

60 Years of UFOs: The Success of an Idea

June 24, 1947

Yes, we all know. Kenneth Arnold with the Flying Saucers in the Private Plane.

Nothing wrong with it. Its an important part of cultural history.

But I get tired of hearing and telling the story. As Richard Dolan makes clear in his UFOs and the National Security State, vol 1., while Foo Fighter were something of a curiosity, ghost rockets in 1946 were anything but quaint or forgotten lore, they were the center of serious international concern and diplomacy. And the cases that are identified with UFOs started rising in quantity almost a month before Arnold's sighting.

There are plenty of good reasons to look back at that time. I think it is very important. But another "raise the glass" to Arnold's saucers, I just can't do it.

What I can do instead is note the vibrant success of the whole idea, sixty years on. A quote from a Wired magazine Arnold-60 retrospective got me thinking

"But never have flying saucers been a bigger part of the zeitgeist than they are now."

I initially scoffed at the notion, then I thought about it some more. The issue still gets overt government attention, whether to open files to the interested public or to continue investigating (as the UK does) . Reports of UFO sightings are made on a daily basis, though one must generally look to interested parties who collate reports to know this. And as strange as it sounds, some in the press give it at least a modicum of respect. For example, one wholy unscientific way to gauge this is using Google Trends, the search engine's tool that shows the amount of searching done on a topic. For example, lets pit UFOs against some other Spooky topics (click on the image to enlarge it).


I know we could use other terms for all of these four biggies, but these are the terms most likely to be used in the media. Ghosts beat out the other three dramatically in general searches by the public. But we have to assume this includes all sorts of uses of the word, since it is a common noun used in many ways. But for the sake of our unscientific argument, lets assume that applies to news stories as well. That's the interesting thing. The spread between "ufo" and "ghost" in the news media is much narrower than it is for the general public, and at times "ufo" eclipses "ghost." One could suggest, again on data that need more examination to really mean something, that the news media actually has a soft-spot for UFOs, as in Keith Olbermann's recent take on the reports of mile-wide UFOs over the English Channel.




I'm not sure why that is, because there isn't enough data yet. Most polls and studies show a college degree increases the likelihood of believing in paranormal or other similar topics, though a relatively recent survey of Oklahoma college students has extraterrestrials (not exactly UFOs, but close enough for most people) not doing so well in comparison with ghosts and psychics. Brenda Denzler's ethnographic work in Lure of the Edge (see book ads in sidebar) notes that education is much higher amongst those in the UFO community than in the general American populace. While academia largely ignores the subject, with the exception of Contactees and increasingly abduction, the media and communications professionals that attend these schools, and their peers in other fields, do not.

Beyond the media, much has been made of the decline of traditional UFO groups and organizations. But it has become clear that this is not due as much to lack of interest as to technological change, specifically the internet. As Brown notes in his book on Ghost Hunters of the South (also in the sidebar), none of the groups he interviewed existed before 1991, and he believes this is directly tied to the rise of the internets. And ghost hunting can be an inherently social activity, with organized hunts taking place on scheduled days planned in advance, occurring in groups, and having an element of fun. By contrast, most ufological activities cannot boast such appeals, and for this reason the field has a significant "loner" aspect (not antisocial, but the activities are often those of an individual, not a group) to it outside of the conferences.

Of course, the image of the UFO and its occupants is now a standard part of our cultural vocabulary now, to the point that the symbol can be used to reference outer space or related topics without any intended tie-in to UFO reports and the like. The UFO isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

The Different Phenomena of the Social History of UFOs and Other Weird Things

On Monday, I started the section of my class on UFOs, slightly behind schedule. One of the points that I wanted to get across was a frustrating thing that I see all too often when columnists and sometimes academics pontificate on "the phenomenon": the broad brush appeal to big causes.

What I mean by this is the tendency people have to want to sweep the whole thing away with a pat pseudo-psychological or sociological or common sense explanation. For example, in his social history of UFOs, Watch the Skies, Curtis Peebles (1994) suggests that UFOs are more likely to be seen, and waves and flaps appear, in times of uncertainty. The vast majority of the book is a straightforward accounting of the changes in UFO beliefs and in UFO advocate groups, but in the last chapter, Peebles borrows the notion from Otto Billig ( ) that flaps and waves of UFOs appear in times of vague, poorly defined crises. He then proceeds to note crisis after crisis and fears, from the McCarthy era to economic downturns to presidential campaigns. This is a just-so story of the worst sort. Depending on how you define it, every day of our lives is a vague, poorly defined crisis, in fact several are probably going on simultaneously. Had Peebles not pushed this back to Ezekiel's Wheel and the Babylonian Captivity, I might not have to be so harsh. Yes, visionary experiences can arise from times of crisis, they're part of what anthropologists (in particular Anthony Wallace) call revitalization movements. But as in Wallace's excellent study, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, he points out the specific details, how Handsome Lake's visions came from the specifics of the Seneca having sold their land, being on new land, and becoming desperate and destitute. And furthermore, how influences specifically from neighboring Christian farmers were incorporated into Handsome Lake's visions. This level of detail is needed before even beginning to suggest a correlation.

A question I get asked all the time by academics is if I've read Carl Jung's (1978) writings (they typically haven't) on flying saucers. I have, and they're terrible. Mystical claptrap on how the saucer, being round, is a symbol of oneness in a dangerous age. Jung works largely with dreams and artwork that is only tangentially linked to UFOs. And yet because of Jung's name, this is top-shelf stuff. Saranov (1981) pciks up the torch and jumbles up a bunch of vague similarities between 19th century Airship stories and various folktales, says it is all symbolic of something, and calls it a day.

The list continues. Lawson (1984) is regularly cited for his idea that the Gray image is actually a memory of birth, of sterile doctors appearing strange in the eyes of a newborn. Of course, if you haven't actually read the article, you might not realize how heavily symbolic and divorced from attempts to verify the hypothesis the study actually is. Donald Warren's (1970) article in one of the world's most prestigious journals, Science, argues that people who are out of their expected social status or under social stress (aka educated white men in under-performing jobs and "Negro" women) will be more likely to see UFOs as a form of rebellion against the status quo. The article isn't much cited these days, as you might imagine, though George Cowgill (1971) took Warren to task the following year in Science by suggesting that what Warren found was statistically weak and did not explain sightings but explained interpretation (more on this below). Saler (Saler, Ziegler, and Moore 1997) leaves the details of Roswell to his co-authors and mostly talks about general notions of myth in his book on different versions of the Roswell Incident.

Many of these studies fail on one or two levels. First, they typically show minimal research into the topic before popping off. Second, presumably because of the first, they have no idea what they are studying. As an archaeologist, we are trained and constantly reminded that we must understand what it is we are studying as data: observations we make of remnants of material culture that have been modified by an unknown number of factors over the course of centuries or millennia. In addition to dealing with rigor in making our observations, we have to understand and communicate how we are making the bridging arguments that take us from broken bits of pottery to statements about past events and cultural trends. The studies would benefit from such explicit reasoning.

What is being studied? Where do the data come from? As I told my students, we can study people who are interested in UFOs and ideas about what they are. We can study people that create artwork (for mass media entertainment or not) inspired by or featuring UFOs. We can study people (ufologists and others) who have changed their lives in some fashion because of UFOs, in order to study them or otherwise engage the topic. We can study people who join religious groups that have beliefs concerning UFOs (contactees, a topic that has been studied extensively by anthropologists and sociologists because it is similar to small scale groups they have traditionally studied). And we can study people who report seeing UFOs.

What we cannot do is try to make those all the same people. Because if you do, your carelessness will simply muddy the water, and you'll just end up telling yourself a just-so story. These are different phenomena requiring different tools and theories to study. This happens all the time in conversation, or in informal study. Someone will put forth some vague broad brush notion to explain a social phenomenon. In this case, it might be "People see UFOs because they are concerned about some problem in society" or "People see UFOs because of status inconsistency" or "People see UFOs because of a symbolic need." But it then makes it into more formal opinion columns and essays in publications and blogs, and as I cite above, into scientific and academic articles.

GAH!

This wouldn't be accepted in my archaeological work, why is it accepted here? Such ideas don't take into account the levels of analysis. That a sighting involves an interpretation of something seen as being a "UFO." That someone has to report it. Who they report it to, a ufologist, a reporter, the government, someone else. Whether that researcher or institution then publicizes the account, and how they do so. Westrum (1977) wisely does break this issue down. Then if you want to talk about waves or flaps and their relationship to some broad social trend, all of the above has to be understood for a large number of accounts. And all too often, authors will go that extra step, and conflate pop culture (AKA, was The X-Files on TV?) as part of their "UFO" evidence.

Not all studies do this. As mentioned earlier, Cowgill's small response to Warren isn't a study, but it does take this problem into consideration. Festinger, Reicken, and Schachter (1956), for all their other faults, made it clear that they were studing a Contactee group in order to test a specific hypothesis about cognitive dissonance in apocalyptic religious movements. Zimmer (1985) surveyed college students on their interest and belief in UFOs as extraterrestrial craft as a way of looking at interest in relationship to the students themselves, not sightings or popularity of the whole concept. Brenda Denzler (2001) undertook fieldwork with various elements of the UFO community, including investigators, people with interest in the topic, and abductees. She is careful with her terms and data (including demographic data), though she does offer some overall broad suggestions for interest in the topic. Matheson (1998) didn't do fieldwork, but instead undertook textual analysis of published books on abduction with the primary goal of analysing the authors, the abduction researchers. He too tries to, unfortunately, give a broad brush answer, but the data about the textual analysis is carefully discussed and separate from this conclusion.

While I have focused on academic articles, this is a regularly occurrence in less formal essays. I am reminded of the months after 9/11/2001. Article after article in the mainstream press, both opinion pieces but also news articles, discussed how ufology is on the decline. They would ask "Why don't people see UFOs anymore?" and then answer that we now had a more substantial hidden threat, terrorists, to worry about. These would also often include the news that some UFO group was disbanding after several decades, not noting that as private organizations the appearance and disappearance of such groups is a regular occurrence. And yet, there have been spectacular sightings all over the mainstream media in the last year, touched off by the O'Hare sighting, but continuing into the new year and being revived by pilot sightings, UFO flaps, etc. And on the pop front, as I just blogged yesterday, Roswell's UFO festival is booked up and healthier than it has been for years. Maybe I could construct some complex or broad social reason. Or maybe if I had actually been paying attention, I could note that there has been a shift in the management of the festival, with more activities and speakers, and more advertising. But that would actually be investigating the question, wouldn't it?

These same essays often took a similar tack to others after 9/11, about how the culture was going to have to be serious now, that we couldn't have the excesses and goofyness of the 1990s. Clearly, I for one am glad that American Idol doesn't exist nor is a top-rated show. Or that Paris Hilton never got famous and became a media sensation. Or that no one repeatedly aired Britney Spears shaving her head. Or Howard Dean's manufactured scream. Or that Deal or No Deal disappeared after the pilot episode. Or that the media and a couple of activists didn't fight full-scale wars over Christmas, or Janet Jackson's nipple. Thank goodness they were right, and had consulted all the requisite data.

Works cited

Cowgill, George
1971 People Who See Flying Saucers. Science, New Series, Vol. 171, Issue 3975: 956 - 959.

Denzler, Brenda
2001 The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter
1956 When Prophecy Fails. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Jung, C.G.
1978 Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Translated by R. F. Hull, C. MJF Books, New York.

Lawson, Alvin H.
1984 Perinatal Imagery in UFO Abduction Reports. The Journal of Psychohistory 12(2):211-239.

Matheson, Terry
1998 Alien Abductions: Creating a Modern Phenomenon. Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York.

Peebles, Curtis
1994 Watch the Skies!: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. Smithsonian Institution Press. Washington, D. C.

Saler, Benson, Charles A. Ziegler, and Charles B. Moore
1997 UFO Crash At Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington.

Sanarov, Valerii
1981 On the Nature and Origin of Flying Saucers and Little Green Men. Current Anthropology 22(2):163-167.

Warren, Donald I.
1970 Status Inconsistency Theory and Flying Saucer Sightings. Science 170:599-603.

Westrum, Ron
1977 Social Intelligence About Anomalies: The Case of UFO's. Social Studies of Science 7:271-302.

Zimmer, Troy A.
1985 Belief in UFO's as Alternative Reality, Cultural Rejection or Disturbed Psyche. Deviant Behavior 6:405-419.

UFO Maps

I've added the fun UFO Maps gadget to the sidebar of the blog. It shows a little window of UFO sightings in the last month, and links to the main site, which also has a kmz file for more detailed perusal in Google Earth. The map is almost exclusively US-centric, but does communicate the large number of sightings reported to ufologists if not carried in the media.

I've already mentioned the Black Triangle Blog, which geographically plotted out a flap of black triangle UFO sightings earlier this year. And a South Dakota State University professor teaches a course on paranormal geography.

Monster Hunters etc. Class Going Well, Syllabus

I've been busy, and also distracted in the run up to finishing grad school. Hence my lack of posting. Then there has been the water running into my apartment, the internet outages, and stuff I can't even talk about.

Anyway, CSAN 291 Monster Hunters, Ufologists, and Vampire Slayers has begun and is going very well. I have about a dozen students, and we' ve gone through some of the basics of anthropology, and in particular concepts of society, subcultures, and how ideas (memes, doxa, what have you) compete and conflict in societies. This last bit is pretty important for a course on alternative methods of knowledge production. Today we also took a look at the paleontology and prehistory of some of the candidates suggested for mystery wild men (and in particular Bigfoot), including various species in the genus Homo, robust Australopithecines, and Gigantopithecus, as well as recent ideas about how humans populated the Americas (since this comes up in discussions of how Bigfoot might have walked across Beringia to the Americas).

The students are very engaged and I have more interaction and a better rapport than I have had in any other class I've taught in archaeology or anthropology.

Here's some of the basics of the syllabus.

Course Overview: Cultural examination of the beliefs, practices, identity, and history of “alternative scientific” fields of study concerning the paranormal, UFOs, and hidden animals. These subcultures are interesting anthropologically in their own right, but also provide a mirror for understanding mainstream knowledge production, and especially the relationship between science, the media, and the public. Are they science, or could they be in the future? Why or why not? Who decides?

Required Texts:
Brown, Alan
2006 Ghost Hunters of the South. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson.

Daegling, David J.
2004 Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek

Denzler, Brenda
2001 The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Mclelland, Bruce
2006 Slayers and their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Monaghan, John and Peter Just
2000 Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, USA.

Class Schedule:

Date	Subject	Reading
5/14	What is Anthropology?	Monaghan and Just 1 – 5
5/16	The Four Fields and the Physical Anthropology of Bigfoot	Monaghan and Just 6 – Afterword Daegling 1 – 3
5/21	Cryptozoology Research and Researchers	Daegling 4 – 8
5/23	What is Sasquatch? Quiz	Daegling 9 – 11 McClelland 1 – 2
5/28	Memorial Day
5/30	Traditional Vampires and Vampire Seers	McClelland 3 – 7
6/4	The Rise of Vampire Slayers	McClelland 8 – 10
6/6	Mid-term UFOs: Introduction	Denzler 1, 2 (not for midterm)
6/11	Ufologists and Science	Denzler 3, Appendix Brown Introduction
6/13	Aliens and Angels Quiz	Denzler 4 Start Reading Brown
6/18	Space Religion	Denzler 5, Afterword
6/20	Parapsychology and Spiritualism	Continue Reading Brown
6/25	Modern Ghost Hunters	Finish Reading Brown
6/27	FINAL EXAM