Michael Kinsella

Researchers increasingly recognize that the mind and culture interact at many levels to constitute our lived experience, yet we know relatively little about the extent to which culture shapes the way people appraise their experiences and the likelihood that a given experience will be reported. Experiences that involve claims regarding deities, extr...

Researchers increasingly recognize that the mind and culture interact at many levels to constitute our lived experience, yet we know relatively little about the extent to which culture shapes the way people appraise their experiences and the likelihood that a given experience will be reported. Experiences that involve claims regarding deities, extr...

Cross-cultural similarities and differences in “nonordinary” experiences—experiences that stand out to people relative to what they consider ordinary or everyday—are not well understood by clinicians or researchers. Although such experiences—many of which are interpreted as religious, spiritual, extraordinary, or psychopathological—can give rise to...

At the turn of the 20th century, researchers compared case studies of patients diagnosed with hysteria and mediums who claimed to channel spirits. In doing so, researchers recognized the phenomenological overlap between the experiences reported by their subjects: alterations in the sense of self. Yet, notwithstanding its early promise, this compara...

When operationalizing ‘religiosity’ or ‘spirituality’ or ‘religious experience’ as measurable constructs, researchers tacitly treat them as if they were cross-culturally stable ‘things’ rather than investigating the way culturally-laden concepts, such as ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual,’ are used to interpret or appraise contested aspects of human life w...

Reports of people who have survived death have captured the attention of mainstream audiences. Why do these ideas enjoy persistent and widespread success in contemporary Western culture? Adopting a cognitive approach to the study of afterlife accounts and drawing upon our own research, we argue that mainstream survival narratives are popular becaus...

Near-death experiences (NDEs) were first introduced to the public in 1975. Shortly thereafter, an entire field of near-death studies emerged that began outlining an NDE-based spirituality. This spirituality draws heavily upon an aspect of NDEs known as the "life review," which involves the reliving or witnessing of significant autobiographical even...

The final stage of legend-tripping involves discursive attempts by participants to make sense of the entire ordeal. While this process might seem to signal the end of the ritual, it actually renews the legend complex and parallels the third stage of interpretive drift wherein interpreted events justify the very frameworks from which they arose. In...

Stories of anomalous experiences, such as strange objects in the skies or goliath bipedal monsters, comprise what is known as supernatural legendry. From chain letters promising either blessings or curses, to rumors about vast satanic conspiracies, reports of alien beings and unidentified craft, and testimonies to the healing power of sacred sites,...

The term magic refers to a complex process of imaginatively affecting perceptions of reality using distinctive and persistent rhetorical strategies and ritual performances. Both magic and legend-tripping make use of the imagination to conjure events described by supernatural legends or occult texts for particular effects. Technology has long been u...

A legend complex consists of narratives, practices, and experiences that build upon and reinforce one another to encourage legend-tripping performances. Legend-trippers interpret any number of events by drawing upon stories and legends. Similar to legends, occult texts guide or even goad readers to use supernatural or magical frameworks to make sen...

This chapter focuses on the Incunabula Papers and the legend-tripping performance that arose from their online circulation. It examines the two documents that comprise the Incunabula Papers as well as their exploration of supernatural legends and the mysticism of the mail art movement: Ong’s Hat: Gateway to the Dimensions! A Full Color Brochure for...

This chapter discusses the legend-trip to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey to investigate the numerous claims surrounding the Ong’s Hat ashram, as well as the emergence of web forums built around the Incunabula Papers. It considers the second stage of legend-tripping evident in the travel to Ong’s Hat, as well as the various interpretations that aris...

A legend-trip culminates in contact with the supernatural. In the case of the Incunabula Papers, this contact occurs when participants perform the belief, or literally believe, that the documents have some supernatural or initiatory quality and when they start to interpret events or perceptions as supranormal. Personal experience reports offer a gl...

In 2005, the author of this book attended the Mid-South Paranormal Convention at the Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Kentucky, which culminated in an all-night ghost-hunting tour of the premises. The event drew ghost hunters and spirit photographers, all wanting to see with their own eyes the ghosts residing at the sanitarium, where 63,000 tuberculosis...

On the Internet, seekers investigate anonymous manifestos that focus on the findings of brilliant scientists said to have discovered pathways into alternate realities. Gathering on web forums, researchers not only share their observations, but also report having anomalous experiences, which they believe come from their online involvement with these...

There has been much debate over whether New Age spirituality (NAS) is a useful category and, if so, how best to characterize the phenomena clustered under that heading. Historically minded scholars generally agree, however, on the value of distinguishing between narrower and broader uses of the term “new age”! In the narrower sense, it refers above...