Introduction

This chapter explores the meaning of the term “paranormal” as it relates to the religious idea of the sacred and summarizes its function in popular culture as a form of supernatural entertainment. With the advent of 19th-century spiritualism, paranormal pop culture, or “occulture,” served as a means of reenchanting a largely secularized modern West until its social marginalization during the Progressive Era (1890–1920). Occulture reemerged with a vengeance during the 1960s, as an expression of a “spiritual but not religious” mentalité that searches for religious meaning outside the confines of both established religion and institutionalized science. Today it flourishes both as a form of divertissement and as an expression of religiosity, giving rise to new social movements and religions.