The Beholder: Experiencing the Super Natural and Its Aftereffects

Abstract

This dissertation explores how assumptions about reality and the super natural can affect the ways in which both experiencers and non-experiencers approach the paranormal and super natural. Using written accounts of paranormal encounters at specific locations, this dissertation unpacks how time, location, and culture can influence how a person may or may not experience the super natural. This work seeks to provide experiencers with a resource that might help them to integrate a traumatic super natural encounter using a hermeneutics of openness and understanding, rather than one of skepticism, reduction and ridicule.