Cultures in USA that are more open to the paranormal (phenomena, ghost)

[victimofGM]

I've known people from other parts of the country who were adamant that there was no such thing as ghost or anything paranormal. In my culture (south Louisiana Cajun), we're more open to the possibility. Are there any other cultures in USA that are open to the idea of the paranormal? When I told my relatives about the haunting on my first ship in the Navy, they were open to the possibility it was true. We had one guy on the ship who swore there was no such thing as ghost when we tried to tell him. Then one day he saw something on the ship that had him so scared he was found on the pier curled up in the fetal position shaking and crying. Took a month in a mental hospital before he was willing to set foot on the ship again.

[Chango]

I think Americans in general are very open to the idea.

[Ruth4Truth]

In Native American culture, the paranormal is normal. To some extent that's true of Russian culture, too, including Russian-American culture.

[Vasily]

Try Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC and Cuban areas in FL. Also, the percent of Irish-Americans who believe in the paranormal is fairly high, in my experience (including my Irish grandma).

[2e1m5a]

^Yep-agree that the Irish are very open to the paranormal.

[Vasily]

Thinking about this further, one major difficulty with answering the question is, what does "cultures in USA that are open to the idea of the paranormal" mean? In general, people I've known who have roots in Mediterranean, Celtic, African, Central and South American, Asian, and Mideastern cultures have tended to be more open to the paranormal than those from English-speaking members of the old British empire, Northern European cultures, and the west coast of Europe. But that's just a generalization ... and regional/ethnic based cultures are only one type of culture. For example, people in the business world I would guess would be less open to the existence of the paranormal than those in more artistic fields. In academia, it would depend on the field of study.

It's a complicated question because most of us don't exist only in one culture ... I have ethnic roots in Russia, Lithuania, the British Isles, and Sicily, for example, and have done work in academia and the real world in clinical psychology, theology, and software related fields, and also have long-standing interests in environmental sciences, the arts, and parapsychology. It's hard for me to say I belong to a specific "culture".

"Open to" is also difficult to pin down ... is a culture open to the paranormal if 50% are not sure whether paranormal phenomena are real or not? What if 30% of the culture strongly believes ... does that qualify as "open to"?

There have been some studies on paranormal belief which suggest a 70% belief in various paranormal phenomena among residents of the USA:

Americans' Beliefs in Paranormal Phenomena (Infographic) | Ghosts, Hauntings, Psychics & Telepathy | Why We Believe | Unexplained Phenomena

Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal

[TreeBeard]

Haitians, or a least poor Haitians, I have read and been told are into voodoo and other related cults.

BTW, the person who told me that was a former Haitian roommate from college.

[Utopian Slums]

I work w schizophrenics. Although Irish may believe in paranormal, not to the extent of other Catholics IME. Many Hispanics, Haitians and Portuguese schizophrenics I have seen believe that that a demon is inside them and/or their disease was caused by a spell or a curse.