Introducing… Professor Chris Bader

In our Introducing… posts, we’ll tell you a little more about the team behind the National Folklore Survey for England, and how they came to research folklore.

First up is Dr Chris Bader, Professor and Chair of Sociology from Chapman University, California, USA.

You have been studying belief in the paranormal for over two decades. What attracted you to this topic?

I have had a fascination with paranormal subjects since I was young. I grew up in Washington State at a time when Bigfoot tales were prevalent and sightings were reported from near my home. I was obsessed with Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World and In Search Of. I was that kid who looked for books about UFOs and Bigfoot in the library and ordered them at school book fairs. I found the Fortean Times as a teen and still subscribe to this day.

Much later, as a sociologist, I became interested in how belief systems might be changing in the face of declining, organised religion. This led to a renewal of interest in the paranormal from a sociological perspective. I became interested in learning about the types of people who believe in the paranormal and claim related experiences and the extent to which these beliefs might be growing or receding as organised religion fades.

And I have to admit, my research interests rekindled that childhood fascination with the paranormal. I am grateful that my studies have allowed me to visit the sites of famous paranormal encounters, participate in ghost hunts, join in on Bigfoot expeditions, and interview a host of witnesses.

Have you had any extraordinary experiences yourself that might be thought of as paranormal?

I have been present when others have experienced something they would call evidence of the paranormal, but I remain agnostic on what actually happened.

For example, I was with some Bigfoot researchers in the woods when we smelled a terrible stench and heard something knock on a tree. Those researchers were absolutely convinced that we had smelled a Bigfoot and heard it trying to communicate (Bigfoot is claimed to use sticks to bang on trees). I smelled the odour and heard that sound, but I don’t know what it was.

I have been with ghost hunters many times when their equipment has gone off in response to questions they were asking. Again, I have seen this too, but don’t know what to make of it.

So in a certain sense, whether or not I have had paranormal encounters depends upon who you ask.

Chris Bader in the coal shed, Pontefract, England. The Retford Ghost Hunters asked him to conduct an experiment in the coal shed where the ‘black monk’ is supposed to attack, wearing headphones and blindfold. The group asked questions Chris couldn’t hear, and he was invited to shout out if either something touched him, or he heard a ‘response’ to their question.

Are there any similarities and differences in belief in the paranormal in the US and the UK?

Definitely. In both the US and the UK we have found ghosts to be the most common paranormal belief and experience.

Complete rejection of paranormal beliefs is also rare in both contexts. Most respondents to our surveys in both the US and the UK believed in something paranormal. In our UK survey we asked respondents their level of belief in the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, Bigfoot, British Bigfoot and twelve other types of paranormal phenomena, including black magic, dowsing, ley lines, crop circles, curses, Atlantis, faeries, telekinesis, ghosts, fortune telling, and visitations from aliens in modern times as well as the ancient past. The average respondent showed some level of belief in at least four of these things.

We also found in both the US and UK that female respondents were more likely to express belief and engage in paranormal practices related to self-improvement or learning about one’s past, present or future, such as visiting a psychic or reading a horoscope, getting their palms read, etc.

You have a book coming out in April next year, entitled Paranormal Britain: Belief in the Uncanny in England, Scotland, and Wales. What was the most surprising thing you learnt during the course of writing this book?

My co-authors and I engaged in extensive fieldwork for the book project. As we drove around England, I was stunned with the ready availability of paranormal tourism. During a day in Wiltshire, we walked through a crop circle outside Marlborough, had high tea at the Crop Circle Exhibition and Centre in Pewsey, and managed a stop at Stonehenge in between. A day in Scotland began with a visit to Rosyln Chapel to learn about how staff respond to conspiracy theories and ended with a late night ghost tour of the nearby Dalhousie Castle.

As we passed cities, towns and villages of all sizes on our travels, I was continually struck with how many of them offered ghost-related events as part of their tourist activities. Ghost walks were plentiful and many spots offered the opportunity to spend the night at purportedly haunted buildings. The omnipresence of paranormal tourism surprised us so much that we added a related chapter to Paranormal Britain that we had not planned.

We ended up coding up census areas by their availability of ghost-related tourism and found that (outside of the Isles of Scilly) one is never more than 20 minutes from a ghost tourism opportunity in England.

Why were you keen to be involved in the National Folklore Survey for England project?

I think it is an important project. Beliefs and traditions are changing rapidly. As discussed before, organised religious traditions are eroding. The way people share and gather information has changed dramatically in the social media age and it remains to be fully seen how this will impact the development and maintenance of shared traditions. I was immediately thrilled to be part of a project that would try to capture belief and practice at this point in time. It is my hope that the current work can serve as a baseline to help us to understand future change.

It also didn’t hurt that I had come to know many members of the NFS team as I was working on the Paranormal Britain project. I was excited to have the chance to work with a group of dedicated, engaging, and fun, scholars.

Can you tell us about something you're working on now?

I am currently working on putting together the twelfth wave of the Chapman University Survey of American Fears. This is an annual survey of a random sample of Americans that asks them what they are afraid of and tracks these fears, and their predictors over time.

I am also working on an article related to the NFS findings, that will examine the relationship between the supernatural beliefs and practices asked about in the survey and conventional religious beliefs and practices.

Christopher Bader is a Professor of Sociology at Chapman University and affiliated with the Institute for Religion, Economics and Society (IRES). He was principal investigator of the first two waves of the Baylor Religion Survey, a nationwide survey of US religious beliefs and the principal investigator of the the first three waves of the Chapman Survey of American Fears. He is associate director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (www.theArda.com), the world's largest archive of religion survey data funded by the Templeton Foundation and Lilly Foundation and supported by Penn State University and Chapman.