After the release of Supernatural Encounters in South Korea, one of the comments Shawn received surprised him.

Several readers expected a book about ghosts to be written by a true believer. Instead, they found a surprisingly skeptical approach to paranormal claims. One reviewer described the book as “a rather clever turn,” while another called Shawn “a more discerning Peter Underwood.”

In this episode, Joe and Shawn discuss why skepticism is essential when researching ghost encounters, supernatural folklore, shamanism, and alleged hauntings. They explore pareidolia, memorates, social media ghost hunters, fraudulent psychics, and why cultural traditions should never be treated as automatic evidence for the supernatural.

The conversation also examines famous haunted locations, including why Yongma Land is probably Seoul’s most successful ghost story despite not being haunted at all.

Book recommendations

• Into the Occult, Peter Underwood
  • So many books; others to consider:
    • A Ghost Hunters Handbook
    • Dictionary of the Supernatural
• The Supernatural, Douglas Hill and Pat Williams
• Shawn’s book! (Not too many books about true alleged encounters in Korea)

   

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Credits

Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey

Music by Soraksan

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Why a Ghostlore Researcher Should Be Skeptical

One of the more surprising reactions Shawn received after publishing Supernatural Encounters in South Korea came from a reader who thought he believed too little.

The reader had apparently expected a book full of unquestioning belief in ghosts, shamans, and supernatural encounters. Instead, they found discussions of skepticism, psychology, folklore, and the possibility that many alleged hauntings aren’t hauntings at all.

They weren’t the only one to notice. One reviewer commented that reading ghost claims researched by a skeptic was refreshing. Another described Shawn as “a more discerning Peter Underwood.”

That reaction says a lot about how people think paranormal research works.

For some reason, people assume that if you spend years researching ghosts, you must believe every story you’re told. The opposite is usually true.

The longer you spend around ghost stories, haunted locations, psychics, shamans, and paranormal investigators, the more skeptical you become.

Not because mystery disappears.

Because bullshit doesn’t.

Loving the Weird

One of the first things Shawn discusses in the book is his lifelong fascination with the supernatural. It shaped the movies he watches, the music he listens to, the art he enjoys, and the books that fill his shelves. Gothic horror films. Doom metal. Horror comics. Folklore collections. Ghost stories. The weird has always been there.

When he uses the word “weird,” though, he doesn’t mean unusual. Everybody calls themselves weird these days. If you have to tell people you’re weird, you’re probably not.

He’s using the older sense of the word. The unexplained. The uncanny. The things that seem to sit just outside our understanding of reality.

That’s what attracts him.

It’s also why skepticism matters.

The Problem with Charlatans

The supernatural attracts charlatans the way streetlights attract moths.

Religion is full of them. Folk traditions are full of them. Social media may have produced more than all previous generations combined. Spend enough time researching ghosts and eventually you’ll meet people whose stories don’t quite line up. Dates change. Timelines shift. Historical details are wrong. The supernatural claim gets bigger every time they tell it.

The problem is that many people assume cultural tradition itself is evidence.

It isn’t.

Culture deserves respect. Folklore deserves preservation. Traditions deserve study. None of those things automatically prove that a ghost, spirit, ancestor, demon, or deity was actually present.

This is one reason Shawn’s comments about Korean shamans occasionally surprise people. He doesn’t believe shamans automatically deserve to be believed simply because they’re shamans. The same standard should apply to everyone. Claims require evidence.

Ghosts Have Gone Electric

That includes ghost hunters.

One section of the book, “Ghosts Have Gone Electric,” takes aim at the modern paranormal industry that has grown up around social media. Every week seems to produce another YouTube investigator waving blinking gadgets around an allegedly haunted building while dramatic music plays in the background.

Many of these places aren’t haunted.

Some aren’t even abandoned.

Yongma Land is probably the best example. It’s routinely described online as one of Seoul’s most haunted locations. The problem is that visitors pay admission to enter. It functions as a photography and filming location. The ghost stories generate attention. The attention generates visitors. The visitors generate money.

That’s not a haunting.

That’s marketing.

The Stories Behind the Stories

None of this means ghost encounters don’t happen.

Shawn makes it very clear throughout the book that he believes genuinely unexplained experiences occur. They’re simply much rarer than most people think.

The biggest lesson he learned while researching the supernatural isn’t that ghosts are everywhere.

It’s that most people who report ghost encounters aren’t trying to tell ghost stories.

They’re trying to explain something they genuinely experienced.

Whether their explanation is correct is another question entirely.

That’s where skepticism becomes valuable.

Not because it kills the mystery.

Because it helps us get closer to whatever truth might be hiding underneath it.