Tag Archives: jack hunter

261 – Greening The Paranormal: A New Way of Investigating with Dr. Jack Hunter

Last time we spoke with Dr. Jack Hunter, it was upon release of his book Engaging The Anomalous : Collected Essays on Anthropology, The Paranormal, Mediumship and Extraordinary Experience. He’s an anthropologist who has devoted much of his research to exploring paranormal experiences from a more holistic perspective. Instead of just searching for physical evidence in paranormal experiences, he factors everything in from the culture of the experiencer to the history of the surroundings to try and get a deeper understanding of the phenomena.

Dr. Hunter giving a presentation

Humans seem hardwired for extraordinary experiences, so why can’t we prove it? Everyone knows someone that they trust that has had some kind of strange psychic experience or seen something that they absolutely can’t explain. So why is it so hard to prove it? One theory lies in the idea that the very words “paranormal” or “supernatural” are part of the problem. Those words say that metaphysical phenomena is something outside of normal experience.

In our interview with J. Van Ysslestyne, the author of Spirits From The Edge of the World, which is a study of one of the oldest continuous cultures on the planet as well as the one that gave us the very word “Shaman”, she says that to that tribe, the very idea that we’re separate from our surroundings, our land, our ecological system, is an alien thought.

We are part of the land as much as a tree and as much as a bird and they have a spirit or an energy that we can connect with. Paranormal experiences reflect that energy and when we isolate ourselves from it, or try to study the physiology of the experience instead of what happened as a whole, we’re not getting the entire picture. When we do that, we become observers instead of participants. And being a participant seems to be essential in having a paranormal experience.

That form of belief, animism, is one of the oldest kinds of religions, and it’s less of a religion with “rules” and more of a system of belief and conduct. The idea that we’re all connected to the world around us and that spirits are in everything whether it’s an inanimate object or not is how our ancestors viewed their surroundings for much longer than we’ve had modern religion.

Okay, so in this belief system does that mean that rocks have souls? Well, maybe not like humans, but sure, they have their own type of souls. Their own type of energy and it interacts with all the other energies around it and the system itself becomes its own entity. From Bigfoot to faerie sightings to UFO encounters to ghosts, people have often experienced the extraordinary outside in nature. What does that mean?

The new book, feeling at one with his feline friend.

Well, that’s what Jack is tackling in the new book he has edited, Greening The Paranormal: Exploring The Ecology of Paranormal Experience, is a collection of essays that goes deep into the idea that everything in the world is connected. In fact, he took his inspiration from the recent trend of “Greening Religion”, which means that certain churches and faiths are becoming more interested in environmental activism because they realize that pollution and man-made climate change will destroy the wonderful planet their God has created.

And that’s part of the idea of this new book, that perhaps understanding how important nature is to our own ecstatic and spiritual experience will give us new inspiration on how to battle harmful global warming or plastics in the ocean or smog over our cities. If we destroy the system, we could destroy our paranormal connection to it. That’s all very Avatar, sure, but that doesn’t mean that tens of millennia of human nature doesn’t have some ring of truth to it.

My fellow weirdo and sister Allison Jornlin joins Jack and I in this conversation where we talk about:

  • The roots of animism in human belief
  • The modern countries where rivers have been given legal personhood(!)
  • Jack’s own paranormal experiences and how they relate to some classic legends
  • How to approach paranormal investigation from a more holistic anthropological angle
  • How we can open ourselves up more to the spirits and energy that are surrounding all of us

For the song this week, we were inspired by Chapter 9 of the new book, “Ancient Webs, Modern Webs, World Wide Web” and the idea that we’re re-creating with LTE and 5G and the already-here Internet of Things a kind of communicative web among humans and inanimate objects that’s been there all along. And when we thought about that, well, Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” was the first song that came to mind. We used a little homage to that in the lyrics to be an inspirational starting point for this episode’s Sunspot track, “The Web”.

Inside the web
it’s all alive
inside the web
we’re all aligned
from the rocks to the seas to the dirt and the trees, our pets and the breeze, our love and disease,
it’s the wifi you see with your mind’s eye
it’s the wave in the air, our line in the sky.

I can feel you
always with me.
I can hear you
when I can’t see
from the whisper in my ear
to the hair upon my neck
I know you’re somewhere out there
Inside the web.

inside the web
it’s not a trap
inside the web
it’s our wiretap
from the land to the snows, the worms and embryos, mushrooms
and rhinos, our pain and shadows,
it’s the radar love that we dreamt of,
a hidden network we’re all part of

I can feel you
always with me.
I can hear you
even when I can’t see
from the whisper in my ear
to the hair on my neck
I know you’re somewhere out there
Inside the web.

195 – Anthropology and the Paranormal: Engaging The Anomalous with Dr. Jack Hunter

Since the last time we talked with paranthropologist Jack Hunter, he’s become a Doctor. So congratulations  to this hard-working academic! His new book, Engaging the Anomalous: Collected Essays on Anthropology, the Paranormal, Mediumship and Extraordinary Experience is coming out this week and for those of you who are interested in learning about the universality of paranormal experiences across cultures, this is the book you want!

engaging the anomalous

Seeing that there was a lack of academic resources that brought together the anthropological approaches to paranormal beliefs and systems (and indeed what I remember from my university days is that we just talked about it in Folklore class), he came up with Paranthropology which is an awesome (and free so you can read it right now!) online academic journal dealing with it. 

Things we learned from our latest conversation:

  • The world’s most famous anthropologist Margaret Mead was instrumental in getting the Parapsychological Association into the American Association for the Advancement of Science (we mention her in our track “Cannibal”!)
  • Sir E.B. Tylor, thought of as the founder of anthropology, had his own paranormal experience (but was ashamed to admit it, because he was a hardcore evolutionist!)
  • Anthropologists have been reporting paranormal experiences for centuries now but that never seems to come up in the discussion
  • There is many ways to explain supernatural or paranormal occurrences and everyone seems to think their explanation is right, but Jack’s more interested in looking at all of them and how they intersect
  • What we think about paranormal events has more to do with the environment and the planet’s ecology then we often think of. We think of the spirit world as “supernatural” but maybe we can think of it as just another part of nature and our environment.
  • Allison brought up the Kogi people, who raise their Shamen in dark caves for nine years to make their senses more attuned to the spirit world (even that maybe something dramatized for a movie…)
  • There’s lots of talk about the universality of these experiences. What is it about spirituality that makes it so fundamentally human across all cultures?

Jack has also started an educational podcast that you can enjoy on YouTube that connects some of his philosophy on ecology and permaculture (which is the idea of creating agricultural systems that are sustainable and self-sufficient). It’s called “One School One Planet”.

You can also find Doctor Jack Hunter’s latest work, blogposts, and appearances on his website.

Something that really struck me from his book, is having to deal with an academic community that treats the paranormal as hokum. As the forward of Dr. Hunter’s book, Engaging The Anomalous says, there are probably only less than 5 people in the Unites States who make a living as a parapsychological researcher at a university. As someone who dreamed of that as a young man (parapsychology was always my backup plan in case the band didn’t pan out, yeah, guess I was thinking ahead<cough>). the idea that there’s no universities in the United States that are going for parapsychological research while there were several working labs in the 80s shows that we’ve gone backwards when it comes to open minds in our academic communities instead of forwards.

We thought this might be the perfect opportunity to breakout  our song about what it feels like when you go up seemingly immovable objects, sometimes it’s hard to try to be the irresistible force, which we sing about in “Path of Most Resistance”.

I should’ve been an athlete,
but my knees were too weak.
I should’ve been a scholar,
instead of a pubcrawler.
I should’ve moved to California,
like the Chili Peppers said.
I should’ve read more Tony Robbins,
and tried to get ahead.

Every time I try I fail,
I’m Jonah and I’m stuck inside this,
Whale of a time we’ll never have together.
Oh, woe is me.

On the path of most resistance,
Carry on banging my head against the wall.
Keep the world at shouting distance,
There’s no safety net and I’m in freefall.

I should’ve been a rocker,
but never took my chances.
I’m finally on my own now,
like I broke Piggy’s glasses.
Somedays I’m just miserable,
and others I feel boned.
I should’ve been something special,
but instead, I just got pwned.

Every time I try I fail,
I’m Jonah and I’m stuck inside this,
Whale of a time we’ll never have together.
Oh, woe is me.

On the path of most resistance,
Carry on banging my head against the wall.
Keep the world at shouting distance,
There’s no safety net and I’m in freefall.

It’s unacceptable.
It’s unreliable,
in@#$%ingcredible,
unjustifiable.
I’m in crisis mode,
and always on the run,
Starbucks to wake up,
pass out to Ketel One.
Have you tasted loco?
Your mind won’t let you go,
you can’t sit still, you can’t think,
worst-case scenario.
I *HEART* MELANCHOLY.
I love to curse my luck.
My finger’s on the button,
that says self-destruct.

Every time I try I fail,
I’m Jonah and I’m stuck inside this,
Whale of a time we’ll never have together.
Oh, woe is me.

On the path of most resistance,
Carry on banging my head against the wall.
Keep the world at shouting distance,
There’s no safety net and I’m in freefall.

I love to flirt with failure,
I love to make it tough.
Take the hardest way,
close but not close enough.

On the path of most resistance,
Carry on banging my head against the wall.
Keep the world at shouting distance,
There’s no safety net and I’m in freefall.

155 – Buffy The Vampire Slayer: 20 Years of Paranormal Inspiration

It’s no secret that my sister, Allison Jornlin from Milwaukee Ghosts is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer superfan. I had seen the original movie, which I thought was more interesting because it was one of the first  Pee-Wee Herman cameos after his “incident” (and he’s hilarious in the film), but I thought the whole thing was silly and way too lightweight, I was into heavier duty horror at the time it came out and didn’t like what I thought was the “Valley Girl” aspect of the whole thing (which also prevented me from truly enjoying Clueless until I finally read Emma a couple of years later.)

So, when the show launched on the WB network in 1997, well, I had trouble caring. They were more known for 7th Heaven and Sister, Sister, could they really have a sweet paranormal show or was it ust going to be another cheese-fest. After all, The X-Files inspired not-so-great copycat shows like Baywatch Nights (David Hasselhoff instead of David Duchovny, for real!) and Psi-Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal (which couldn’t even be saved by a game Dan Aykroyd.) Why should Buffy be any different?

While I watched a few episodes back in the late 90s and enjoyed them, I took my paranormal much too seriously back then.  I didn’t start getting into the Joss Whedon-verse until Firefly in 2003, but by then Buffy the Vampire Slayer had become a phenomenon and I missed the train.

buffy the vampire slayer

Our amazing Buffy the Vampire Slayer round table today, however, did not. These are Buffy superfans that know the show inside and out. That includes our friends from the Traveling Museum of Paranormal and the Occult, Greg and Dana Newkirk, Paranthropology author Jack Hunter, and Marquette University professor James South, who edited the book, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear And Trembling in Sunnydale.

During this conversation to celebrate Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s 20th anniversary, they go into detail on how the show and characters inspired them to take up paranormal missions of their own!

For the song this week, Wendy and I, who are unfortunately not Buffy superfans, but we did some research and came across this Joss Whedon quote:

 So I thought, ‘Well, a TV show needs something that will sustain it, and a California girl fighting vampires, that’s not enough. So I thought about high school and the horror movie, and high school as hell and about the things the girl fights as reflections of what you go through in high school. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s a TV series.’
“High School as Hell”, well, that’s something we can all understand. And our Sunspot song, “Loser of the Year” (a song written in the 90s and a couple decades old in its own right!) perfectly encapsulates that idea!

Remember when you told me,
I’m not worth the time of day?
Remember when you slapped my face,
By just looking away?

But I won’t hold a grudge,
I just wanna see you die (a painful death),
I won’t feel bitter,
It just feels good to see you cry…
Over and over again.
It looks like I have lost again…

I’ll be your loving puppy,
I’ll be your slave for torture,
I’ll be the one you call the
LOSER OF THE YEAR.
I’ll be your willing victim,
I’ll be your favorite scapegoat,
I’ll be your one and only
LOSER OF THE YEAR.

Remember when you tripped me,
Because I looked so lame?
Remember when you laughed at me,
Because I didn’t dress the same?

But I won’t feel hurt,
I won’t break in front of you.
Don’t you think I feel?
Don’t you think I have emotions too?
Don’t you remember gym class?
Looks like I’m chosen last again…

Yeah, you need me.
Yeah, you need me.
I’m the one who makes you feel good about yourself,
So you can go $%^& yourself.

But I won’t hold a grudge,
I JUST WANT TO SEE YOU DIE.
Don’t you think I feel?
Don’t you think I have emotions too?
Don’t you remember gym class?
Looks like I’m chosen last again…

I’ll be your loving puppy,
I’ll be your slave for torture,
I’ll be the one you call the
LOSER OF THE YEAR.
I’ll be your willing victim,
I’ll be your whipping boy,
I’ll be your one and only
LOSER OF THE YEAR.

LET ME BE YOUR LOSER.