Christianity, especially the Catholic variety, I've come to realize, is very much part of what secular culture refers to as the paranormal.
This realization makes me uneasy. The paranormal of our secular, cultural milieu consists of ghosts, demons, poltergeists, pervasive evil, and vile reports of demonic possession. Generally, Christianity wants nothing to do with any of that...at least the kind of Christianity into which Pam and I were raised—Evangelical verging on Fundamentalism.
That background made me slow to realize that the Judeo-Christian religion, in both the Old and New Testaments and everyday practice, is permeated with a great deal of paranormal activity. And now that we're Catholic, we've grown used to saints hovering about our heads on an hourly basis.
As I look back on my life, even my career as a physicist training NASA astronauts, I have always believed in angels and demons, and everything that accompanies both milieus.
Despite my sheltered Christian life growing up, the secular world's understanding of the paranormal milieu never shocked me. If I ever thought much about it, which I rarely did, I just thought it was incomplete and immature. As a junior at a Christian college, living in an old campus house that resembled a fraternity, beer and Greek letters over the front door were not allowed unless it was a quote from the Greek New Testament about Jesus making wine. (I always wondered if Jesus ever sampled the wine he made. WDYT? I digress.) My roommate was a mathematician who became a celebrated professor at a major university. Yet, across the hall was a room full of sociology majors who began experimenting with a Ouija Board. It didn't turn out well for them, and an ambulance was called. I believed in all that stuff as much as the Devil believes in God. He does, but stays away from the Almighty, and I did, but stayed away from the occult.
But in just the last year, the realization of how Christianity and the paranormal are bedfellows (can I say that?), came to the forefront when I struck a deal with Defiance Press to help with the distribution and marketing of my historical novel, Wizard Clip Haunting (WCH). The first edition (published through my niche entity Nineveh's Crossing) sold several hundred copies in various formats. But something was missing, not necessarily from the novel, but from my ability to reach an audience. It may be too haunting for Catholics and too Catholic for horror fans.
Lisa Woodward, Director of Publishing at Defiance, quickly recognized the flaw in my thinking. Defiance's motto is: "Rooted in Faith. Driven by Patriotism. Published with Purpose." I thought my target audience was American historians and Catholics, although I actually knew Catholics were not my audience, since, for the most part, Catholics don't read. I also thought WCH might be part of the horror genre, but I was not a horror consumer and was ignorant of how to approach such readers.
Lisa understood the obvious, of which I was oblivious. WCH is infused with descriptions of historically documented Early American paranormal activity. That the paranormal audience was a vast and large community, I had no idea.
Paranormal activity is "purported or imagined phenomena...beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding" (Wikipedia) — telepathy, premonitions, clairvoyance, demonology, exorcisms, ghosts and ghost hunting, occultism, telekinesis, apparitions, spiritism, miracles, precognition, and various poltergeist activity.
Being trained as a laboratory and theoretical physicist, and working at NASA, some might conclude that the paranormal was not normal to my way of thinking. But, as I've mentioned, I was also a devout Christian, and the spiritual world was existentially real to me. God, angels, the Devil, demons, contemplation, and prayer were very much part of my life.
Thus, I approached the documented historical events surrounding Adam Livingston and his farm (and my WCH fictionalization of them) as real, while the term "paranormal" took on a sense of fantasy rather than reality.
Yet, in the past week, in anticipation of my new trilogy edition of WCH to be released by Defiance Press, Lisa launched a pre-publication marketing campaign to an industry I did not know existed.
Paranormal investigations and investigators of the supernatural have flourished for centuries. Most notably, in 1944, Lorraine Rita Moran (16) met Ed Warren (17) at the local playhouse, where Ed was an usher. A year later, they were married. Both Roman Catholics had little trouble believing in spirits and were convinced that people who were weak in their faith would be subjected to demonic influences and even possession.
In 1952, the Warrens founded the New England Society for Psychic Research (NESPR), which is the oldest ghost-hunting group in New England. And the rest, they say, is history for the cult-like community of paranormal researchers and investigators in the United States.
To help attract that crowd, Lisa put a tag line on the cover of my books: "Before Amityville, Before the Warrens...there was Wizard Clip." If you haven't guessed, "The Amityville Horror" story and the Warrens live at the heart of paranormal investigations. Lisa knew that, but I didn't.
What I did know, but did not associate with "paranormal activity," was all the scientifically unexplained events and stories described throughout Judeo-Christian scriptures and literature. The Bible is filled with paranormal activity. In the Old Testament, we have Noah's premonition to build an ark that took 120 years, the plagues of Egypt, Moses parting the Red Sea, Elijah disappearing into the sky aboard a fiery chariot, the walls of Jericho falling down, Joshua commanding the sun to stand still during a battle against the Amorites, and a host of other strange events. In the New Testament, we have a myriad of miracles performed by Jesus and the Apostles—healings, food production, raising the dead, prophecies, Christ's resurrection, and the vast and pervasive descriptions in John's Revelation. Although a few have tried (Immanuel Velikovsky comes close), scientific explanations are hard to come by. Then, in modern history, we have the apparitions of saints witnessed by thousands, especially Mary; the bilocation of saints like Padre Pio; apparitions of angels like St. Michael (see my documentary, Angel Quest); and an untold number of visions and miraculous answers to prayer.
The merging in my mind of these two seemingly diverse disciplines (science and spirit) was aided by my understanding that there is no contradiction between natural science and the Bible—both are simply different expressions of truth, goodness, and beauty by the same author.
Thus, while investigating and writing WCH, everything that happens in the story (at least to me) is scientifically and spiritually cogent. They are all a normal part of reality, though one that science cannot explain.
So, there you are: Wizard Clip Haunting—a case study of paranormal activity in American history.
Lisa is lining up interviews for me with podcasters who normally interview paranormal investigators, some who claim to be clairvoyants, mediums, psychics, and animists. I am none of those, all forbidden by Judeo-Christian morals. But I've been forced to reconsider that within the rubrics of Christianity, I am most certainly a paranormal investigator and believer in the supernatural. My YouTube documentary, Angel Quest, is a good example. It was a pilgrimage of investigation into the line of St. Michael monasteries and an investigation into the apparitions and supernatural activities that can easily be classified as angelic paranormal phenomena.
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