Barry Markovsky, Author
In his latest book, Barry Markovsky, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of South Carolina, addresses a subject that often gets brushed aside: the paranormal. “The book is a distillation of interests and experiences that go back to childhood,” he says. “Only in my 20s did I start to use my training in social psychology to help understand what attracts many people to magical, bizarre and paranormal claims.”
While acknowledging that for many, belief in things such as ghosts, numerology and alien visitors is fun, he offers practical considerations as well.
“First, it’s even more fun and rewarding to figure out how a magic trick is performed, or how eyes and cameras can be deceived when one is expecting to see a ghost,” he says. “Second, people need to know that the fun often morphs into something more sinister.” An example, he says, is phony psychics profiting by tricking people into believing they’re in contact with dead loved ones.
Markovsky understands the longing to believe in more than meets the eye. “Not only am I open to the claims discussed in the book, I also want most of them to be true!” he says. “But my desire to know what’s really going on outweighs my desire to believe in something.”
Everyday Extraordinary: A Scientist Ponders a Lifetime of Magical, Bizarre, and Paranormal Experiences, March 2026, nonfiction, hardback $29.95, by Barry Markovsky, and published by Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY.
