Fringe-ology

by Volk, Steve

• ISBN13: 9780061857713
• ISBN10: 0061857718
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-06-07
• Publisher: Harperone

Summary

More than seventy percent of Americans believe in paranormal activity. But even with a family-ghost story lurking in his own background, seasoned journalist Steve Volk has been like most of those millions of Americans- reticent to talk about his experience in polite company. If so many of us have similar stories to tell, why are we so reluctant to take them seriously? Paranormal claims don't traditionally sit well with reporters, but Volk decided to focus his gimlet-eyed tenacity on a new beat: the world of psychics, UFOs, and things that go bump in the night. It's a rollicking ride as Volk introduces us to all sorts of fringe-dwellers, many of them reluctant to admit to their paranormal experiences: a NASA astronaut-turned-mystic, a world-famous psychologist who taught us about dying and then decided death may not exist at all, and brave scientists attempting to verify what mystics have been reporting for millennia. Volk investigates what happens in the brains of people undergoing religious experiences, learns how to control his own dreams, and goes hunting for specters in his family's old haunted house. From his journey into the bizarre, Volk returns with a compelling argument that we need to allow for a middle space, a place where paranormal phenomena can be weird and compelling; raise crucial questions; and, quite possibly, remain unexplainable. He rejects the polarized options the twenty-first century seems to offer us: to passionately embrace or hotly reject, to revere only science or only spirituality. And he underscores, again and again, that by raising our most existential questions-why are we here, are we alone in the universe, and what happens when we die?-paranormal stories are in fact a crucial point of connection. It turns out that these ;fringe ; experiences strike at the core of what it means to be human.

Table of Contents

Introduction: What We Talk About When We Talk About the Paranormal	p. 1
On Death and Not Dying	p. 21
The Provocative Beginning of Near-Death-Experience Research
Do You See What I See	p. 53
The Curious Conflict Between Telepathy Skeptics and Believers
Out of Our Heads? Off with Their Heads!	p. 83
Consciousness Outside the Brain
Blazing Saddles	p. 113
UFOs and the Strange Lights Over a Texas Town
Was There a Ghost in My House?	p. 139
The Unexplained Noises That Fueled a Childhood Mystery
To Infinity and Beyond	p. 153
What Science and Spirituality Look Like from Outer Space
The Open Mind	p. 177
How New Science Is Revealing the Power of Meditation and Prayer
The Impossible Dream	p. 205
Sleep as an Untapped Resource for an Awakened Life
After-Death Communication?	p. 233
How a New Therapy Uses the Dead to Help Patients Live
You Can't Go Home Again	p. 251
Has Anyone Else Encountered a Ghost in My Old House?
Our Time in Hell	p. 255
Lucid Dreaming and its Most Potent Lesson for Science and Spirituality
Acknowledgments	p. 267
Notes and Sources	p. 269
Index	p. 313
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