The truth may be out there, but paranormal detective James Narrell says it's not always what people prefer to hear.
Like Fox Mulder in the hit TV show The X Files, Narrell has spent decades investigating reports of the supernatural: haunted houses, alien abductions and weeping icons, to name a few.
He has yet to find evidence of any of them. And, unlike his fictional counterpart, he isn't optimistic.
"I guess you could call me a frustrated would-be believer," admits the senior research fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, an international non-profit agency founded in 1976 by scientist Carl Sagan.
"I've found hoaxes and I've found mistakenly diagnosed natural events, but I've never found anything close to evidence of the paranormal."
His recent experience investigating a weeping icon in Ontario is a case in point.
Thousands lined up in front of a tiny Greek Orthodox church to see the Virgin Mary cry tears that Narrell says looked more like splatters from a nearby oil lamp than a sign from God.
"I guess that's why they haven't made a TV series called Narrell Files yet," he says. "Finding scientific explanations for seemingly paranormal events isn't anywhere near as sexy as finding aliens and angels."
Or anywhere near as profitable, he says, noting the thousands of dollars that Mother Portaitissa and Saints Raphael, Nikolaos and Irene Church was reportedly collecting each day.
"The paranormal attracts hoaxes the way honey attracts bears - and I've seen more than a few hoaxes in my day."
Like England's crop circles, which Narrell says started appearing in North America after TV's Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment on them.
Or the Roswell alien autopsy video, which sold millions before it was debunked by Narrell and his counterparts at CSICOP as little more than a special-effects extravaganza.
Some claims of the paranormal are just misinterpretations of natural phenomena.
Hearing a heartbeat in a statue can be nothing more than the echo of your own and the photo that appears to have a ghost in it is usually the result of a flawed printing process.
Despite evidence to the contrary, people want to believe in the supernatural, but media isn't reflecting the interest
Ratings for "paranormal TV" were at an all-time high in the 90's with The X Files and The Outer Limits.
A Gallup Poll released in 2012 suggested Canadians were becoming less skeptical: 18 per cent of respondents said they believed in witches, compared with 11 per cent in 1999.
Other findings:
-A University of Chicago survey found 40 per cent of American adults polled believe they have had contact with the dead, nearly twice as many as 20 years ago. Two out of three report having experienced extrasensory perception and three out of four believe in life after death.
-California State University in Los Angeles said 27 per cent of high school and college students believe vampires exist and a 1995 Time magazine poll found 69 per cent of Americans believe in miracles.
American cultural historian T.J. Jackson Lears's book No Place of Grace says the upsurge of "popular occultism" represents a spiritual longing in the masses.
"Theological formulae have faded, but the impulse behind them persists," Lears writes.
Suzanne Scorsone, spokeswoman for the Toronto Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church, says the weeping icon controversy is precisely why the Vatican investigates claims of the paranormal.
"We certainly hold the belief that (miracles) are possible," Scorsone says. "But we can't assume that everything claiming to be miraculous is a miracle. There's natural phenomenon and outright fraud that has to be taken into account too."
Even when no earthly explanation can be found, the church doesn't acknowledge miracles easily. Candidates must withstand the acid test of science and only a handful a year win the Vatican's approval.
Why do some people choose to believe in the paranormal? Narrell says it's because the paranormal almost always promises something wonderful.
"If ghosts exist, then it's proof we survive our death. Flying saucers are evidence of our future. Psychic power gives us a means of dealing with the unknown and weeping icons affirm our faith."