The library at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County is pretty typical: rows of books, cafe. But there is also a haunted stuffed mongoose. We visit a large collection of parapsychology.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The University of Maryland Baltimore County Library has rows of academic books and a café. But there is also a haunted stuffed mongoose. Just before Halloween, WYPR's Scott Mochione visited her parapsychology collection.
SCOTT MOSION, AUTHOR: Parapsychology is the study of psychic phenomena that cannot be explained by science. Think clairvoyance, telepathy and séances. And that stuffed mongoose.
BETH SAUNDERS: Yes. It was Gef, the talking mongoose, a supernatural mongoose who lived in a small farmhouse on the Isle of Man.
MOSION: Beth Saunders is the curator in charge of this creepy hodgepodge at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, which also includes such artifacts as UFO pictures and books about ghosts.
Saunders: Some people were kind of offended by the fact that the university library was collecting materials that they thought were full of hoaxes and things that weren't true.
MOSIONE: Saunders says advanced technology has always been a source of conflict between believers and skeptics. For example, Polaroid photographs do not require dark rooms, so in the mid-20th century it was believed that the photographs could not be faked. But the scammers still found a way out.
Saunders: And it becomes sort of a feedback loop of, you know, skepticism and faith.
MOCIONE: The collection contains hundreds of hours of recordings with Hans Holzer, an occultist who documented trips to the Amityville Horror House with psychics, and his interviews with Dorothy Sherry, a medium who claims she could channel Elvis from beyond the grave. In this 1978 recording, Holzer is talking to Sherry when she says Elvis is in the building.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DOROTHY SHERRY: He's standing here, and he's here now.
HANS HOLZER: That's the thing, he…
SHERRY: Yes. He's here now.
HOLZER: Yes. He…
SHERRY: And he's dressed in black.
HOLZER: What material?
SHERRY: He's wearing a black cashmere V-neck sweater.
MOSIONE: She goes on to say that Elvis was tired of Graceland being open to the public. So this just goes to show: ghosts don't like you being in their house either.
For NPR News, I'm Scott Mocione in Baltimore.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROCKWELL'S SONG, “SOMEONE'S WATCHING AT ME”)
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