Apparitions, Healings, and Weeping Madonnas: Christianity and the Paranormal

Is there a middle ground between miracles and tall tales? Here's a book to help believers in Christianity make sense of it all. In Apparitions, Healings, and Weeping Madonnas, Lisa Schwebel examines a broad variety of mystical experiences through the twin lenses of scientific and paranormal research. Her fascinating and important book sets out to record how religious people have described there "supernatural" experiences and then places these accounts within the wider context of the Christian mystical tradition. The author closely examines accounts of such seemingly "miraculous" phenomena as ghosts and apparitions, weeping icons, prophesy, healings, and visions. The author then examines what psychology and the physical sciences teach us about the phenomena of visions and miracles. She explores mystical accounts that have been reported throughout history-often without accompanying claims of divine intervention and investigates what such accounts reveal about the authenticity of mystical phenomena. Schwebel also demonstrates how research in parapsychology can provide a theoretical framework for analyzing visions and miracles. Taken together, the anecdotes and stories in this book provide compelling documentation of events that defy the teachings of modem science. And the author provides modem Christians with the knowledge that will help them to differentiate between tall tales and the truly inexplicable.