Book excerpt: The willingness of people to believe in magical icons, mystical relics, and miraculous pictures (like the Image of Guadalupe) is almost as curious as these phenomena themselves. Though they cry out for scientific investigation, millions of people blindly accept them as fact. Historical and paranormal investigator Joe Nickell confronts such strange events, powers, and objects as the Shroud of Turin, bleeding or weeping statues, burning handprints, liquefying blood, ecstatic visions, miraculous cures, and people speaking in tongues in Looking for a Miracle. Departing from standard critiques of religion, Nickell carefully investigates the evidence relating to specific claims. Religious believers and rationalists alike have much to learn from this revealing examination of the evidence for the miraculous.