The Paranormal and Popular Culture: A Postmodern Religious Landscape (Routledge, 2019). This book makes a contribution to a number of academic disciplines, from the paranormal and religious studies to popular culture and media studies. As a hardbound academic volume it’s pricey, but perhaps you can secure one through university interlibrary loan, or a future paperback version. Here’s the description and table of contents:

Interest in preternatural and supernatural themes has revitalized the Gothic tale, renewed explorations of psychic powers and given rise to a host of social and religious movements based upon claims of the fantastical. And yet, in spite of this widespread enthusiasm, the academic world has been slow to study this development. This volume rectifies this gap in current scholarship by serving as an interdisciplinary overview of the relationship of the paranormal to the artefacts of mass media (e.g. novels, comic books, and films) as well as the cultural practices they inspire.

After an introduction analyzing the paranormal’s relationship to religion and entertainment, the book presents essays exploring its spiritual significance in a postmodern society; its (post)modern representation in literature and film; and its embodiment in a number of contemporary cultural practices. Contributors from a number of disciplines and cultural contexts address issues such as the shamanistic aspects of Batman and lesbianism in vampire mythology.

Covering many aspects of the paranormal and its effect on popular culture, this book is an important statement in the field. As such, it will be of utmost interest to scholars of religious studies as well as media, communication, and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Darryl Caterine

Part I: The Return of the Sacred

1 What Can the Paranormal in Popular Culture Tell Us About Our Relationship with the Sacred in Contemporary Society?

Madeleine Castro

2 Paranormal Medicine

Charles F. Emmons

3 The Right to a Narrative: Metamodernism, Paranormal Horror, and Agency in The Cabin in the Woods

Linda C. Ceriello and Greg Dember

4 The Dark Knight Rises: Shamanic Transformations in Gotham City

Jack Hunter

5 These Lovers Are Out of This World: Sex, Consent, and the Rhetoric of Conversion in Abductee Narratives

Elizabeth Lowry

6 The Mystery of Everything Out There: Bigfoot and Religion in the Twenty-First Century

Joshua Paddison

7 The Haunters and the Hunters: Popular Ghost Hunting and the Pursuit of Paranormal Experience

Leo Ruickbie

Part II: The Spell of Occulture

8 Religions of the Red Planet: Fin de Siècle Martian Romances

Christa Shusko

9 Paranormal Women: the “Sexual Revolution” and Female Sexuality in Hammer Studios’ Karnstein Trilogy

Jay Daniel Thompson

10 “We’re Ready to Believe You!” Spiritualism and the Interpretation of Paranormal Experience in Ghostbusters (1984)

Matthew N. Anderson and Collin L. Brown

11 Jesus and The Undead: Resurrected Bodies in Scripture and the Zombie Apocalypse

Kelly J. Murphy

12 Haunting the Ghost of Mark Twain

Ann M. Ryan

13 Accounts of High Strangeness: A Brazilian Perspective on the Paranormal and Popular Culture

Leonardo Martins

14 How the Necronomicon Became Real: The Ecology of a Legend

Joseph P. Laycock

15 Miranda Barbour and the Construction of a “Satanic Cult” Murder

Daniel Linford

16 “What Would You Do When…?”: Ostensive Play in the Zombie Apocalypse Narrative

Brent C. Augustus

17 Paranormal Beliefs, New Religious Movements and the New Age Spiritual Milieu

James R. Lewis and Sverre Andreas Fekjan

18 Cryptofiction! Science-Fiction and the Rise of Cryptozoology

Justin Mullis

19 When Did Fairies Get Wings?

Simon Young

20 A Contactee Canon: Gray Barker’s Saucerian Books

Gabriel McKee

Conclusion

John W. Morehead