Paranormal Parastates: Bio-Healing, Energies, and Alternative Sciences in Post-1989 Bulgaria

• In Event: Close Encounters: Seeing and Believing after Socialism in Bulgaria and Beyond

Abstract

This paper examines the early 90s Bulgarian landscape of alternative scientific and healing communities that blossomed after 1989. So-called bio-healers and energy therapists, UFOlogists and doswers, so-called 'Clubs For Alternative and Paradoxical Forms of Life' - this fantastical landscape was not only a symptom of the new press and public space, but also alternative forms of science and knowledge that vied for truth claims in an uncertain transition period. This paper will use the letter pages of supernatural-focused papers and conferences of 'alternative scientists' in the Bulgarian 1990s to explore to what extent were these responses to uncertain state capacities (bio-healers as alternatives to the national health service; UFOlogists as challengers to state-dominated science and secrecy) and to what extent they were outgrowths of the new democratic market in information.

Author

• Victor Petrov, U of Tennessee