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When the Extraordinary Hits Home
see them as vaguely “satanic.” Moreover, as discussed elsewhere
(Meintel 2003 ), some who are very involved in the sch combine Spir-
itualism with another spiritual frame of reference (e.g., Catholicism,
neo-Shamanism); even those who consider Spiritualism their religious
affiliation say that they have not renounced Catholicism but simply
added to it or gone beyond it. Neitz ( 2002 ) discusses a somewhat sim-
ilar situation in her study of Wicca. The witches’ notions of belong-
ing were so nebulous and inclusive that they could easily include the
sociologist, without her having to change anything in her way of life
or beliefs. I suspect that had I studied Pentecostals or Charismatic
Catholics, I might have taken a more distant role, as a defense against
pressure to declare religious allegiance. In my work on Spiritualism, I
have never felt obliged to go beyond the truth of my own experience
or convictions; in fact, no one has ever asked what I believe. And so
I have felt free to let experience take me where it will.
Accusations of “going native” have a quaint ring in present-day
anthropology, especially now that so many “natives” are doing an-
thropology. But when the Other is just down the street, somehow the
threat to one’s credibility as a researcher looms all the greater, espe-
cially when the subject is religion. This was one of the factors that
led Neitz ( 2002 ) to study Wiccans far from the university where she
teaches sociology. There are now quite a number of anthropologists
who have written about transformative spirit contacts or other types
of extraordinary religious experiences occurring in the course of their
research (see examples in E. Turner 1996 and B. Tedlock 1991 ). How-
ever, these anthropologists generally write about experiences lived in
societies quite different and distant from their own. As the research
on Spiritualism took form, I became anxious to find out whether other
anthropologists’ extraordinary experiences ever occurred on home
turf, as was happening with me. Were such experiences compartmen-
talized, removed from the researchers’ ordinary lives? I was encour-
aged to read Goulet’s accounts of dreams and visions experienced in
Ottawa, far from the Dene Tha reserve.
Stoller’s Stranger in the Village of the Sick ( 2004 ) gives a brilliant
account of how the author’s long-ago apprenticeship to a sorcerer in
Niger was revitalized to support him as a cancer patient in a modern
