Halloween Resources at SUNY Broome

The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brainsconnect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths. Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.

"Little Miss Muffet is not the only one who's ever been terrified by a spider. In fact, arachnophobia, or the fear of spiders, afflicts millions around the world. Some people are so tormented that they cannot ever relax, even at home, for fear they'll encounter a "creepy crawler." And yet, a love of spiders -- or at least a fascination with them -- touches just as many millions, perhaps more. Though some spiders are dangerous, even deadly, most are perfectly harmless -- except to smaller bugs. In The Book of the Spider, naturalist Paul Hillyard examines the engaging world of arachnids and the humorous and frequently absurd ways in which humans respond to this most misunderstood of God's creatures. Hillyard, an arachnologist at the Natural History Museum in London, covers the full spider spectrum, from folklore and myths to Aristotle's early scientific studies to Space Age spiders building webs in outer space.

Did you know that "flying" squirrels are incapable of true flight? Were you aware that opossums don't "play dead," as in the common folk saying "playing possum"? In this fascinating and gorgeously illustrated new book, wildlife expert and enthusiast Warner Shedd, former executive for the National Wildlife Federation, uncovers the scientific realities obscured by our numerous long-held misconceptions of wild animals. Setting the most tenacious of these age-old superstitions against evidence that he and other biologists and naturalists have gleaned from careful observation and investigation, Shedd refutes such popular myths as beavers can fell trees in a desired direction, gray squirrels remember where they bury nuts, wolves howl at the moon, and cougars are an endangered species.

Surveys centuries of folklore about vampires and offers a scientific explanation for the origins of the legends

A study of the natural world as imagined by contemporary writers, specifically their portrayals of nature as monster In Zombiescapes and Phantom Zones: Ecocriticism and the Liminal from "Invisible Man" to "The Walking Dead," Lee Rozelle chronicles the weirdest, ugliest, and most mixed-up characters to appear on the literary scene since World War II--creatures intimately linked to damaged habitats that rise from the muck, not to destroy or rule the world, but to save it.

By the time Nate Fisher was laid to rest in a woodland grave sans coffin in the final season of Six Feet Under, Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling.Grave Matters follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor. Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death.

Tales of magic, the supernatural, and the uncanny have been around as long as people have been telling stories. This volume presents a variety of new essays on the perennial theme.

From ancient times to the present, magic and science have always been intertwined. In this fascinating book, astronomer/anthropologist Anthony Aveni conducts a whirlwind tour of occult practices--from astrology, alchemy, and phrenology to psychokinesis, crystals, and channeling--and finds that many of magic's ancient rites have been revived and reexamined in the New Age.

A book of Gestalt therapy sessions

An introductory guidebook to dream interpretation which will be of interest to analysts and therapists both in practice and training and to a wider readership interested in the origins and significance of dreams.