Even stranger things

When your boss asks for volunteers for an unusual assignment involving Bigfoot, alien abductions, and spiritual warfare, the best strategy is not to make eye contact. But Mary Jackson is no stranger to tough assignments, so she cautiously raised her hand. She started out as a Christian paranormal skeptic, and ended up realizing at least some of the topics had pretty strong connections to the spiritual realm we read about in the Bible. Even so, she still describes this as the strangest story she’s ever written. You can read “Things unseen” in this issue and judge for yourself.

Researching this story turned into a “down the rabbit hole” experience for you. What was that like? I started out with very little knowledge but quickly found myself listening to endless hours of podcasts. My kids would overhear discussions about Bigfoot and make fun of me. They got a little worried that I was losing my marbles. But it turned into conversations over dinner with friends and church members, and I realized more people than I thought were into this stuff. Each person I talked to would give me five more ­people to talk to, or three more podcasts to listen to. It definitely turned into a bit of an all-­consuming interest for a while.

When did you realize this was not quite as fringe as you thought? These people that I thought were pretty fringe in Christian paranormal circles have pretty big followings and a large presence on social media. I didn’t realize so many guys in my church listen to the podcast Blurry Creatures and know these people who are actively exploring issues related to the paranormal. So I thought, if this is true in my small church, it’s got to be that way in other churches across the country.

What is the strangest thing you heard while reporting this story? One source told me about a woman who alleges that she has been impregnated by nonhuman aliens—demonic entities—three times. She claims she was then abducted and the children mysteriously disappeared with no trace of her ever having been pregnant. My source told me this abduction phenomenon is happening around the world as part of a demonic plot to corrupt humanity.

Do you think this interest in transcendence can point people to God? Some of the people I talked to were raised in the church but rarely heard the spiritual realm discussed, rarely heard about angels and demons or any kind of supernatural phenomenon, let alone paranormal phenomena. And they have questions. When there is that dearth in the local church, people are going online, and they’re finding all kinds of content. Some of it is rooted in Scripture. Some of it goes down too far into the conspiracy theory arena and speculation. So I think it’s helpful when pastors and local churches are willing to engage these topics and look at them from a Biblical standpoint.