Co-authors of the The Haunting of America, Joel Martin and Bill Birnes detailed how paranormal events have influenced politics, law, psychology, and other areas, from the Salem Witch trials to the present. Among the topics they discussed:
- President Richard Nixon consulted with psychic Jeane Dixon, and would tell his advisors-- "Get me that fortune teller!" Also, Dixon told her friend Col. Philip Corso that the CIA tried to recruit her to do psychic work for them.
- The Salem Witch Trials were one of America's first conspiracies, and at their root may have involved a dispute over land between neighbors.
- Mesmer's development of "mesmerism" lead to the popularity of hypnosis in the 1800s, and the idea of altered states and spiritual exploration.
- The Fox Sisters, whose "spirit rapping" helped trigger the Spiritualism movement, began their rapping after Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven (which famously featured a rapping at the door) had been released. The sisters were said to have been secretly brought to the White House for a seance by the wife of President Franklin Pierce, and again during the Lincoln administration.
- Edgar Cayce was also secretly brought to the White House by the wife of Woodrow Wilson.
- Inventor Thomas Edison was working on a machine to communicate with the dead shortly before he passed away, and believed that life after death would have an electromagnetic component.
- Harry Houdini had a falling out with Arthur Conan Doyle, whose wife was a medium. Mrs. Doyle gave Houdini a faulty reading about his deceased mother.
- Before he was president, Andrew Jackson investigated claims about the Bell Witch in Tennessee and heard disembodied voices and saw evidence of poltergeist activity with people being thrown about.
- Father Malachi Martin reportedly knew about alien bodies being kept by the US government.
Wilde's Visions
Last hour guest, author and metaphysician Stuart Wilde shared some of his visions. He saw sea level rising 20 to 30 feet, and the Earth's rotation "stuttering." He also had a vision of a "massive light" with a radius of 40-60 ft. that moves across the land and has a transcendent and healing effect on those in its path.