The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures

"The essays are clear and well written. Recommended. All readers."— Choice

"This is just a marvelous collection of essays (and essayists) - deeply versed in the theoretical literatures and the historical materials, smart, critical, sympathetic, as interested in the popular as the elite, and, above all, sufficiently weird. What they show as a whole is that the paranormal is normal, or, better, that the normal is not what we thought it was. Exactly the kind of notes we should be striking in cutting edge scholarship."— Jeffrey J. Kripal, Rice University, USA and author of Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred

"This welcome collection takes a refreshingly eclectic approach to the meaning, expression, and representation of the paranormal, demonstrating the scholarly value of research in the field. Drawing upon the diverse expertise of its contributors, it provides an intellectually stimulating look at ghosts, UFOs, spiritualism, and broader paranormal cultures without getting unnecessarily bogged down in abstruse theory."— Owen Davies, University of Hertfordshire, UK

"The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures sounds like something to have handy by your bedside in case of ghosts, ghouls or other unexplained phenomena and maybe it is, but it is so much more. This work showcases exciting new research into intriguing everyday aspects of parapsychology, critiqued through different filters and from different viewpoints. This work offers interesting and entertaining insight for casual readers curious about the paranormal although part of a series from the same publisher, targeted at scholars and graduate students through presenting cutting-edge scholarly research. While early parapsychology research was criticized for failing to prove the existence of the paranormal this work offers new and timely, plural and refreshing angles on the manifestation, meaning and representations of the paranormal within our lived experiences, supporting the need for more research while being seriously weird enough to be wonderful."— Media Culture Reviews

"This work represents an important leap forward in exploring the full range of beliefs, practices, and cultures that have so far been largely ignored by scholarship."— Nova Religio

"The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures should be of interest to... students and professors of culture, literature, religion, and the supernatural. Libraries should own it."— Jeannie B. Thomas, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA, Folklore