More than half the college students polled in three states, including California, said they are creationists who believe that God created Adam and Eve, while about one-third believe in aliens, Big Foot and the lost city of Atlantis. …The poll results, released yesterday by Texas researchers, also indicated that students who believe in creationism are less likely to read books, tend to be more politically conservative and have a lower grade-point average than students who dispute that God created Earth in six days. …Last fall, about 1000 students attending colleges in Texas, Connecticut and California filled out detailed questionnaire on their beliefs. …In Texas, 71 percent of students said they believe in the story of Adam and Eve, while 51 percent in Connecticut and 47 percent in California said they believed in the biblical first couple. An average of 44 percent of the students in the three states said the story of Noah's Ark is true. About one-third of all the students surveyed believed that Big Foot, a hairy man- like creature reputed to live in the mountains of northwest America, actually exists. An equal number believed in the lost city of Atlantis, a legendary island of advanced civilization that supposedly sank into the ocean. Thirty percent of the students responding to the survey said aliens from outer space visited Earth in ancient times. Overall, 37 percent said they believed in ghosts, and 39 percent said it is possible to communicate with the dead.

[San Francisco Chronicle, 3 November 1986 (UPI)]