About this Event
Strange things. Serious questions. Good books.
Welcome to The Reading Room, a new monthly gathering from the Midwestern Center for Parapsychological Studies (MCPS) for people who are curious about extraordinary human experience—and willing to ask better questions about it.
For our opening gathering, we're starting at the edge of explanation.
No advance reading. No required beliefs. No quiz at the door.
Instead, we'll meet one another, introduce The Reading Room and the ideas behind it, and open the conversation around our inaugural selection:
Ghost Detective: Adventures of a Parapsychologist
by Andrew Nichols, PhD
Drawing from decades of work in parapsychology, education, and paranormal investigation, Nichols takes readers beyond the familiar question of “Are ghosts real?” and into the considerably messier territory surrounding reported hauntings: witnesses and investigators, fear and expectation, unusual phenomena, competing explanations, and the people trying to make sense of experiences they can't easily explain.
That makes it a particularly fitting place for The Reading Room to begin.
At MCPS, extraordinary experiences don't have to be proven paranormal before they're worth taking seriously. And taking an experience seriously doesn't require us to decide prematurely what caused it.
The interesting part is the inquiry.
What happened?
What was actually observed—and what was interpreted?
What explanations fit the evidence?
What changes when psychology, relationship, culture, expectation, environment, spirituality, and anomalous phenomena are all allowed into the conversation?
And what do we do when the neat answer is simply: we don't know yet?
That's the territory The Reading Room was created to explore.
What happens at the October gathering?
This is our opening gathering, so you do not need to purchase or read Ghost Detective beforehand.
We'll introduce The Reading Room, meet the people gathering around it, explore some of the questions raised by our first selection, and talk about how we'll approach books together at MCPS.
We'll also introduce the reading for our first full discussion in November and leave plenty of room for conversation.
Come as a believer, skeptic, experiencer, investigator, practitioner, academic, enthusiastic paranormal nerd, or person who picked up a weird book once and hasn't quite recovered.
Curiosity is sufficient qualification.
Our inaugural selection
We'll spend November and December with Ghost Detective: Adventures of a Parapsychologist.
NOVEMBER · PART I
Chapters 1–6
From “Ghosts Are People Too” through “Busting the Ghosts: A New Approach”
We'll explore Nichols' approach to ghosts and hauntings, paranormal investigation, the role of the investigator, the relationship between the haunters and the haunted, and the development of his Psi Session approach.
DECEMBER · PART II
Chapters 7–12
From “In the Grip of Evil” through “When Common Sense Falls Victim to Uncommon Events”
The second half takes us into considerably more difficult territory: frightening encounters, perceived hostile entities, possession, exorcism, intervention, and the challenges of interpreting experiences that don't fit comfortably into ordinary categories.
Page numbers vary by edition, so Reading Room assignments will generally be given by chapter rather than page number.
And if November arrives and you're still on Chapter 4?
Come anyway.
The reading gives us something to think with. It isn't an entrance exam.
What is The Reading Room?
The Reading Room is the monthly reading community of the Midwestern Center for Parapsychological Studies.
Our shelves will wander.
We'll read across parapsychology, psychical research, consciousness studies, extraordinary and anomalous experience, psychology, survival research, spirituality, altered states, symbolism, ritual, mysticism, and other attempts—scholarly, clinical, historical, philosophical, and occasionally very strange—to understand human experience at its edges.
Some books we'll read cover to cover.
Some deserve several months.
Sometimes we'll read only selected chapters.
And sometimes we'll put authors who profoundly disagree with one another into the same conversation.
That's intentional.
The Reading Room isn't a place to assemble a canon of things everyone is expected to believe. It's a place to encounter ideas seriously, distinguish experience from interpretation, consider competing explanations, and remain curious when certainty would be easier.
Strange things. Serious questions.
Inquiry · Investigation · Interpretation
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Event Details
Sunday, October 11, 2026
2:00–3:30 PM CT
Fluid · Valparaiso, Indiana
FREE · Advance registration requested
No advance reading or book purchase is required for the October opening gathering.
Please note: Andrew Nichols, PhD is the author of our inaugural selection and is not scheduled to appear at this event.
Event venue & nearby stays
FLUID Coffee Roasters, 260 Franklin Street, Valparaiso, United States
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