Silence Thayer:  How did you first become interested in the supernatural?

Charles Robinson:   Let me start by saying that, by nature I have always been a person of empirical orientation; a skeptic by nature, therefore not prone to believe or even have a pronounced interest in the supernatural. As an academic I certainly have been trained in an empirical manner. To some degree this would be at odds with my ultimate foray into the supernatural. Prior to the advent of the book, there was not a long standing, preexisting interest in the supernatural. It happened by fluke. One Halloween, I believe it was 1991, I decided to run a piece about the work of the parapsychologist, Dr. Hans Holzer in one of my regional columns. At the time, Dr. Holzer was the best selling author in the northeast, as far as books relating to human ghosts were concerned. I think it was a piece for Yankee, but it was one of my regional columns and I wrote about his study of a house in Rehoboth, Massachusetts that was the site of alleged poltergeist activity; a house in which there were all sorts of bizarre phenomena allegedly taking place in the 1960's. The owner of the house allegedly heard many phantom noises, such as dishes crashing down in the kitchen. Upon running down to inspect what had happened she would find nothing broken. In addition to the auditory manifestations (conversations whispered from rooms, phantom conversations), there were allegedly physical manifestations; furniture rearranged on its own, pictures hanging upside down. I thought it was all fun. I didn't believe a bit of it at the time, but again, I thought it would be a fun Halloween piece so I ran it. I believed that would be the end of my foray into the world of the not quite dead. Then something happened. After the article ran, I received, through my editors, a number of responses from readers who either had their own encounters to relay or knew others who did. Many of the accounts that were related to me by readers were silly and contained many of the usual stereotypes, (headless entities, chains being dragged down hallways), you know, the kinds of things I've attempted to avoid in trying to produce the most original and provocative materials in this genre possible. I rejected those. However, there were a few that were very provocative in their originality. They did not contain the usual stereotypes and sensationalism. They contained elements so unusual and so original that if these people hadn't really had these experiences, they should have been writing or telescripting in Hollywood. It was very textured, very interesting stuff. It was obvious that they had not just plucked from other accounts and rehashed. As I said, distinctly original. Those provoked me and established for me an interest in the supernatural, moreover an interest in the folklore. As an anthropologist I was stunned by how many people responded. I began to wonder why there was such a widespread interest in this phenomenon. Although I'm a proponent of science, as these accounts came in I ran a couple of the more provocative accounts in some more of my columns. These in turn generated more calls and letters from readers, and kind of snowballed the whole thing. As an anthropologist I wondered, why such a widespread interest?