Ghosts, aliens and us

When my wife and I had our twin baby boys circumcised in our home last year, the Hasidic rabbi who performed the bris left us with a surprising parting gift: an amulet for protection against demons. It was a laminated card printed with Hebrew texts including imprecations against Lilith, a female demon of the night. Alluded to in the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, she seduces men to sin and kills infants in their sleep. When I queried the rabbi about this, especially about some esoteric and incantation-like phrases on the card that I couldn't decipher, he gracefully dodged, referring me to unspecified kabbalistic secrets.

Though amused by the curious souvenir, I was also glad to have it. I hung the card above our babies' crib.

It was a reminder that, as much as we think of our age as cynical and literally disenchanted, supernatural belief has hardly been erased. In fact, it may be on the rise. A CBS poll in October reported that 48% of Americans believe in ghosts (and 22% claim to have seen one). Among those younger than 45, 54% believe, as opposed to 41% over that age. Belief in other forms of paranormal and occult phenomena is on the rise too: In the 1980s, 25% of Americans accepted the idea of alien abductions, for instance, but 40% say they do now, according to Newsweek.

CBS poll in October What individual surveys don't capture is the impressive diversity within what psychologist William James called "the reality of the unseen," or Puritan witch-hunter Cotton Mather called the "invisible world." Polls ask mostly about well-known experiences -- Have you used a Ouija board? -- but neglect wilder phenomena.

A few weeks ago, I found myself seated on an airplane next to a lively, curly haired woman in her 50s. She introduced herself as a career and spiritual counselor and regaled me with accounts of reincarnation she has elicited from clients and from her own recovered memories. When I told this to a Jewish-born colleague, a cerebral guy who occupies a prominent media perch, he launched into a narrative of his supernatural encounters with spirit beings, mediated by a syncretist Brazilian church, Santo Daime, and aided by drinking a foul-tasting concoction mixed from psychotropic jungle vines and leaves.

A popular nightly radio program, "Coast to Coast AM" with George Noory, draws 3 million listeners nationwide and is devoted to sharing all types of experiences outside the mainstream. The show comes on at 9 p.m. in Seattle, where I live, and my ritual is to listen to Noory as I bustle around the kitchen, making dinner and drinking wine.