It's the early 1920s in America, and science and industry are booming.

Joseph Banks' Reign and Luisa Reign are poised to take advantage.

They're a young couple who are smart, curious, and energetic.

They're both PhDs from the University of Chicago, botany, and statistics, and they are

ready and excited to explore the newest thing in science, which they find when they attend

the lecture by a famous author on this latest scientific field.

The lecture is by Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes books, and Doyle

presents on this new emerging science that, just like radio waves and x-rays, is all about

the invisible communication happening all around us.

JB Reign wrote in his diary that his mere possibility was the most exhilarating thought

he had had in years.

JB and Luisa Reign had found their new field of study, what they would devote their lives

to, a field called Pera Psychology.

ESP, telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeist would be the main thing, but anything that can't

be explained.

I'm Bill and Thuris, and this is Alice Obscua, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible and wondrous places.

Today, I'm talking with writer Stacey Horn, the author of Unbelievable, a book about

this period in American history where the study of psychic phenomena in the paranormal

was serious business at places like Stanford and Duke University, and how JB Reign attempted

to find the line where science ended, and the unbelievable began.

We'll start with an easy question, who are you, and what do you do?

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