Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: Sociology of the Cultic
Reading time: 3 minutes
It was a dark and stormy night... the kind that makes everything feel a little more... unsettling.
The wind was howling outside as the trees tap, tap, taped against the window.
Suddenly, out of the night, an unearthly noise echoed through the air, and an eerie chill sweeped over the room.
Your heart quickens as you sensed something—a presence—nearby.
It must be all in your head…
Right?
What drives us to seek answers in the shadows, and how do these beliefs shape the world around us?
From ancient rituals to modern ghost hunts, society’s fascination with the paranormal reflects our deepest fears and hopes. Whether through witchcraft, astrology, or spirits in forgotten places, the cultic milieu has captivated generations, defying the bounds of mainstream thought.
How do we form these beliefs, and what makes them so enduring?
The Cultic and the Paranormal
Paranormal beliefs—witchcraft, astrology, and the occult—have endured across history, defying our rational explanations.
These beliefs, often dismissed as deviant or oppositional to established religious and scientific norms, thrive on the cultural margins.
Yet, believers form tight-knit communities that foster unified support, agreement, and harmony in defending their views.
Supernatural Skepticism
Some scholars have studied the process of how people develop cultic or paranormal beliefs, finding that they often experience layers of doubt before ultimately deciding an event is supernatural.
Sociologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann, in her study of ritual magic in London, describes "interpretive drift" as a slow change in how people see everyday events, making them fit with a magical way of thinking.
These beliefs often come up not as a rejection of science, but as a way to respond to its limits, offering answers where science might not explain everything.
Hauntings
Ghosts and hauntings are more than just spooky tales; they often reveal unresolved trauma, collective memory, or societal fears.
Ghosts may symbolize the loss of life or opportunity, drawing attention to issues society prefers to ignore—violence, oppression, or unspoken history.
Whether or not one believes in the existence of spirits, the cultural impacts of hauntings reveals deeper insights into the human experience—our fears, our histories, and our enduring fascination with the unknown.
Exploring society's beliefs, through a sociology lens, offers a deeper understanding into collective fears, cultures, and our enduring fascination with the unknown.
Refereces
- Avery F. Gordon . 2008. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination . Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
- Colin Campbell . 2002. “The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization.” in The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization , eds. Jeffrey Kaplan and Heléne Lӧӧw. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
- Dennis Waskul and Michele Waskul. 2016. Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life . Pennsylvania: Temple University Press.
- Marc A. Eaton . 2020. Sensing Spirits: Paranormal Investigation and the Social Construction of Ghosts (Interactionist Currents) . New York: Routledge.
- Tanya Marie Lurhmann . 1989. Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England . Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
- Tom Rice . 2003. “Believe It or Not: Religious and Other Paranormal Beliefs in the United States.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42(1):95–106.
- Tony Silva and Ashley Woody . 2022. “ Supernatural Sociology: American’s Beliefs by Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Education .” Socius 8.
