One thing you can always count on is that human beings will believe anything, especially if it's invisible and it doesn't exist. Televangelists, popes, prophets, storytellers, and mediums count on it.
In fact, the invisible is history's most successful business. In most human cultures, you can't be considered a good person unless you believe in the authorized fantasies. Simple people of faith are the happy, cheerful ones. Throughout most of history, if you didn't publicly profess your faith in these superstitions, you ran the risk of being burned, boiled, or hanged. In many parts of the world, that's still true.
So in the immortal words of
Fantasy Island's Ricardo Montelban, "Smiles everyone. Smiles!"
Even as the United States is one of the most progressive nations on the planet, it is also one of the most backward. So it should come as no surprise that necromancy is presented as front-page news in medieval Columbiana County, Ohio. See The Morning Journal:
Cleveland ghost hunters forming local chapter.
Today's necromancers have given up the crystal ball and Quija board. Now they show up in dark, scary old buildings (particularly the basements and attics, where the invisible dead live) with "computers, digital cameras and digital recorders" so as to "capture things not seen by the naked eye"--orbs, mists, etc.
Oh, and don't forget your "spirit box," which, according to The Morning Journal, is "a device that allows spirits to speak through the white noise created through radio channels as they are being scanned."
I shit you not. This is in the newspaper.
Also, 21st century necromancers no longer practice the "dark arts" or "the occult." No, what they do is "research." And of course they have web sites with scientific-sounding names like
clevelandparanomalresearch. The web site tells us that the "researchers" now active in East Palestine are "official members" of the GAC. And what is the GAC? Well, it's the Ghost Adventure Crew!
Scoobie snack, anyone?
And as for those pesky skeptics, The Morning Journal warns us against them. Yes, there are always going to be a few lost souls who are familiar with real science and real research, but their ranks are few, so pay them no mind. They are the Unbelievers, and we know what to do with them.