Alec made a really cool analogy in the comments that I wanted to take a snapshot of for posterity. To paraphrase a little bit, he said that if life itself were a movie on DVD, then the occult, religion & conspiracy theory are sort of like the “special features” disc(s) that come along with the movie. It’s sort of like the “making of” specials which allow you to have a more in-depth knowledge of the movie itself. Or it could be like an alternate voice-over track with dialogue between the actors and director, etc:

Digging into that sort of thing, you sometimes develop a better appreciation for or a different way of looking at the Feature Presentation. Some gesture or backdrop you wouldn’t have noticed before takes on a new significance, even though the subject itself hasn’t changed.

Great analogy and probably a really excellent shortcut to explaining to regular people what exactly is so fascinating about the subject matter that we delve into.