‘Supernatural’ Archives
Pigs
Pigs The flesh of pigs is taboo to Muslims and Jews. Various explanations for the ban have been offered. The anthropologist Marvin Harris offers an economic explanation: after widespread deforestation, the arid conditions in the Middle East were not conducive to pig-rearing, as the animals like to forage for food. Unlike sheep and goats, they [...]
Miasma
Miasma Miasma is a Greek word meaning defilement or pollution. Its opposite, cleansing of pollution, is rendered by the term katharmos. The subject has been discussed at length in a monograph by Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. In classical times, miasma referred to a certain proscribed act that [...]
Hunting Taboos in Japan
Hunting Taboos in Japan Hunters in Japan must observe language taboos when they are stalking game in the forest. The mountain speech (yama-kotaba) employed during the chase uses substitute terms to avoid uttering proscribed words. Often the banned word designates an animal: a snake (hebi) is called a naga-mono (long thing), and a monkey (saru) [...]
Chopsticks
Chopsticks In Japan it was taboo to serve a bowl of rice with chopsticks in except when the rice was prepared as a gift for the dead. In this case, a pair of chopsticks was thrust upright into the bowl. Chopsticks were originally a Chinese invention, widely adopted in the country around 500 bce at the time that the scholar replaced the warrior [...]
Lady Wonder
Lady Wonder In the 1920s a horse named Lady Wonder became famous for supposedly being able to read minds, providing information about her “readings” via a special typewriter with oversized keys that she pushed with her nose. For a fee of one dollar per adult and fifty cents per child, people could visit Lady Wonder’s stall to see whether [...]
Hoaxes and Frauds
Hoaxes and Frauds For decades people have perpetrated hoaxes intended to prove the existence of a particular paranormal phenomenon. Some of the perpetrators of these hoaxes are motivated by a zealous desire to convince others of something they themselves believe; others are simply motivated by a desire for financial gain or fame. In the late [...]
Hangar 18
Hangar 18 Hangar 18 is a hangar at a top-secret military installation, Groom Lake Base (also known as Area 51), located approximately 90 miles (145km) north of Las Vegas, Nevada. This base is rumored to be a testing ground for UFOs, either recovered from UFO crash sites or acquired from aliens as part of a trade of technology or information. As [...]
John A.Keel
John A.Keel Ufologist and parapsychologist John A. Keel is perhaps best known for his book The Mothman Prophecies, about a mysterious being called the Mothman. However, Keel has also written extensively on UFOs and paranormal phenomena, and during the 1960s he collected first-person accounts related to these subjects, interviewing thousands of [...]
Levitation
Levitation Levitation occurs when someone appears to defy gravity and begins to float into the air, or when someone claiming to have psychic powers concentrates on an object and causes it to rise into the air. Many believers in levitation say that this phenomenon is caused by psychokinesis, whereby a person’s mind can affect the physical [...]
Ideomotor Effect
Ideomotor Effect First identified in 1852 by William B. Carpenter, who was both a psychologist and a physiologist, the ideomotor effect occurs when the human brain sends messages to certain muscles in the body without letting the conscious mind know that it is doing so. As a result, a person might make small, involuntarily movements without [...]
