Believe it or not

At the close of the twentieth century, 93 percent of the U.S. population professed to believe in angels, 49 percent were sure that the federal government was hiding information about the existence of unidentified flying objects, and 25 percent thought they could communicate with the dead. Many Americans chose mystical options over the grimmer aspects of millennial life, but popular interest in the fantastic also signaled a love of creative fabrication dating back into U.S. history (linking, for example, the contemporary antics of the more outrageous tabloid press with the mid-nineteenth century showmanship of P. T. Barnum).

Source: Weekly World News, August 13, 1991.