Hello everyone! I know many people in the community may be wondering where they can find supernatural information that is unbiased or logical in nature, and how to discern claims made in the community. It’s not too hard, once you know where to look.

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• Books! Not any books, mind you, but books focused on the supernatural from a non-fiction perspective. Books about different spiritual beings, books about different religious and cultural practices, and books about the supernatural and different mythical beings. You can analyze them and learn more about the supernatural world (or at least part of it) that way. In lieu of physical books you can use websites and online articles, but you need to take some of them with a grain of salt, and sometimes track down the original sources to confirm what they say. 

• Scientific journals. Sometimes you’re not sure if a claim made in a historical source is truly supernatural or not. Sometimes you’re not really sure if what a person claims now is physically possible. Scientific journals are a great way to figure this out and discern different conditions from other supernatural experiences. Is someone in a history book suffering from clinical lycanthropy or are they actually a werewolf? Is someone claiming to shift into animals that seem to defy physics? Check some scientific journals and see what matches up and what doesn’t.

• Experience! Not to say you should run into difficult situations or try and put yourself in harms way, but sometimes you can only understand certain things through real-world experience, or the experiences of others. It’s easier to figure out the differences between demon possession and other conditions when you’ve seen different cases over time. It’s easier to distinguish between roleplayers and genuine supernaturals when you’ve seen them several times. Experience can help and add to the information you have, though it shouldn’t be the sole substitute for other sources of information.

 

Using these you can get a good idea of how things work regarding the supernatural, and what does or doesn’t make sense. 

Similarly, there are poor sources of supernatural info, things that you really cannot count on to tell you too much about the supernatural or spiritual world.

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• Fictional books or newer forms of media. Not to say that one or two things in a fictional book cannot be right, but generally fiction and fantasy do not have anything to do with reality. You may find that a spiritual concept or species noted in a fictional book or show has a real-life counterpart (ex. Yo-Kai with their yokai being inspired by the actual spirits) but the fictional book will generally not be a source of real-world supernatural info. 

• Spiritual realm. The spiritual realm can be good for discerning information about the spiritual, but take anything from there with a grain of salt, especially if it refers to the physical world and/or what supernaturals do or don’t exist.

• Past life memories. Like the above, they can be good for discerning information on the past, but they shouldn’t be relied on too much. Past life memories can be confabulations, stand-ins for trauma, or be real but just not apply to this world, and are best taken as Unverified Personal Gnosis.

 

This is not to say using any of those methods make you an awful person, but they cannot be used as good sources for the supernatural or what does or doesn’t exist here. Be careful when using them to understand the supernatural.

Remember to question everything you encounter! Just because something is supernatural does not mean it doesn’t abide by real-world scientific laws, and just because someone is claiming to be supernatural doesn’t mean they’re automatically real, good or a trustworthy person. Use discretion when interacting with others in the supernatural community, and try to think rationally about things in the supernatural.