Becky Finch never wanted to be special. She just wanted to be a normal high school student in the small, Midwestern town of Mukawgee. Malcolm Chamber wanted something more. A destiny. An answer from the stars. When Becky is marked by an alien’s touch, she’ll stumble into a mystery she never wanted. A mystery that almost ripped apart both their parents’ lives 12 years ago. She’ll need the help of her eccentric young classmate, Malcolm, as she finds the power within herself to uncover the truth.
The Handbook of UFO Religions, edited by scholar of new religions Benjamin E. Zeller, offers the most expansive and detailed study of the persistent, popular, and global phenomenon of religious engagements with ideas about extraterrestrial life.
Are extraterrestrial beings trying to contact us? Is the government covering up evidence? What is the real truth about UFOs, close encounters, and alien abduction? In this fascinating guide, UFO expert William J. Birnes covers everything from theories about the nature of UFOs to where you're likely to find them; from case studies of alien encounters to the scientific studies of otherworldly visitors. Other topics include: The beginnings of modern "Ufology" in the age of rockets A history of military and pilot encounters with UFOs Twenty-first-century UFO sightings around the globe Types of equipment needed to capture UFOs on film or video With reports from credible witnesses and lists of government documents that actually admit to the existence of UFOs, this is the only guide you need to ground yourself in this exciting subject!
A voyage of exploration to the outer reaches of our inner lives. UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin—but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It's about us, our longings and terrors, and especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them and to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, and as a species. In the 1960s, Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life's mission to solve their mystery. He would become a professor of religious studies, with traditions of heavenly journeys his specialty. With Intimate Alien, he looks back to explore what UFOs once meant to him as a boy growing up in a home haunted by death and what they still mean for millions, believers and deniers alike. From the prehistoric Balkans to the deserts of New Mexico, from the biblical visions of Ezekiel to modern abduction encounters, Intimate Alien traces the hidden story of the UFO. It's a human story from beginning to end, no less mysterious and fantastic for its earthliness. A collective cultural dream, UFOs transport us to the outer limits of that most alien yet intimate frontier, our own inner space.
Anthropologists have long sought to engage and describe foreign or “alien” societies, yet few have considered the fluid communities centered around a shared belief in alien beings and UFO sightings and their effect on popular and expressive culture. Opening up a new frontier for anthropological study, the contributors to E.T. Culture take these communities seriously. They demonstrate that an E.T. orientation toward various forms of visitation—including alien beings, alien technologies, and uncanny visions—engages primary concepts underpinning anthropological research: host and visitor, home and away, subjectivity and objectivity. Taking the point of view of those who commit to sci-fi as sci-fact, contributors to this volume show how discussions and representations of otherworldly beings express concerns about racial and ethnic differences, the anxieties and fascination associated with modern technologies, and alienation from the inner workings of government. Drawing on social science, science studies, linguistics, popular and expressive culture, and social and intellectual history, the writers of E.T. Culture unsettle the boundaries of science, magic, and religion as well as those of technological and human agency. They consider the ways that sufferers of “unmarked” diseases such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome come to feel alien to both the “healthy” world and the medical community incapable of treating them; the development of alien languages like Klingon; attempts to formulate a communications technology—such as that created for the spaceship Voyager—that will reach alien beings; the pilgrimage spirit of UFO seekers; the out-of-time experiences of Nobel scientists; the embrace of the alien within Japanese animation and fan culture; and the physical spirituality of the Raëlian religious network. Contributors. Debbora Battaglia, Richard Doyle, Joseph Dumit, Mizuko Ito, Susan Lepselter, Christopher Roth, David Samuels
A scholarly exploration of the "UFO movement" probes life on the fringes of modernity, tracing the fascinating links between science and religion implied by this philosophy.
Of all the possible and probable stories, those of spaceship travel and more if they are driven by beings from other civilizations are among the most fascinating stories, there are an infinite number of colors of human psychology to approach all these stories that the person believes or needs to believe in his or her own psychology and frame of mind. These kinds of experiences of contact with without programming, abductions or even entering an ET-type ship, consciously, create in consciousness a multiplicity of symbols that the person contacted will spend their whole life trying to decipher as if in an enigma.
Conspiracy theories are a ubiquitous feature of our times. The Handbook of Conspiracy Theories and Contemporary Religion is the first reference work to offer a comprehensive, transnational overview of this phenomenon along with in-depth discussions of how conspiracy theories relate to religion(s). Bringing together experts from a wide range of disciplines, from psychology and philosophy to political science and the history of religions, the book sets the standard for the interdisciplinary study of religion and conspiracy theories.
