BOB ABERNETHY (anchor): For many religious believers, this is considered the season of miracles. Christians celebrate the miraculous birth of Jesus; Jews have been celebrating Hanukkah, when an oil lamp miraculously burned in the temple for eight days; Muslims have been observing Ramadan and the miraculous revelation of the Koran. Miracle stories are central to all the world's religions.

In our cover story this week, Kim Lawton reports on the search for modern-day miracles.

KIM LAWTON: Some do their seeking at a little adobe church in the mountains of New Mexico, where the dirt is said to have healing properties. Others come to a Jewish cemetery in New York City, to petition for a beloved rebbe's intercession with God. There are dozens of new books ... magazine articles ... a PAX TV series ... even Internet sites. The search for the miraculous, it seems, is everywhere.

PROFESSOR TERRY NICHOLS (St. Thomas University): People want miracles. People need to believe and want to believe that God is capable of acting in their life. And miracles are such signs.

LAWTON: According to a recent NEWSWEEK poll, 84% of Americans believe God still performs miracles today. Nearly half, 48%, believe they personally have experienced or witnessed a miracle.

One of them is novelist Ann Hood, who has just written a book about her personal search for a miracle.

ANN HOOD (Author, DO NOT GO GENTLE): My dad, who I was very close to, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, and the prognosis was grim. And as we sat around our kitchen table one day, sort of absorbing that information, I just announced, without much forethought, "I'm going to get a miracle cure. There's a place in New Mexico, where they say the dirt has healing powers. And I'm going to go there."

LAWTON: Chimayo [New Mexico] has been considered a sacred place for centuries, first by Native Americans, then by Spanish-speaking Christians, who came later. Today, tens of thousands of pilgrims still come here every year to pray for a miracle.

Like Ann Hood, they come to take dirt from a room adjacent to the chapel. Some pray over the dirt, others rub it on places they want to be healed. Many fill a small bag to take home. The area outside is covered with crutches, photos, and other mementos from people who say they were healed.

FATHER ROCA: I've been here 45 years, and I've seen hundreds of cases.

LAWTON: Ann Hood prayed that her father's lung tumor would disappear, and she brought back a bag of holy dirt for him. Twenty-four hours later, he went into the hospital.

MS. HOOD: A CAT scan they performed while he was there, they were certain that it would show that the tumor had indeed grown, and, in fact, it had disappeared.

LAWTON: It was gone?

MS. HOOD: Completely gone. Even with chemotherapy and radiation, they had hoped to shrink it by 20 to 30%, but this was 100% gone. The doctor, when he walked in, said the words we had been hoping for, "It's a miracle."

LAWTON: But the family's elation was short-lived. Doctors insisted Ann's father still go through chemotherapy, just in case. Weakened by the chemo, he contracted an infection and died, cancer-free.

Grief-stricken and her faith shaken, Ann set off on a series of journeys to places in Latin America and Europe, where people of many traditions say the miraculous happens.

Miracle stories are foundational to all of the world's great religions. In Judaism, the Red Sea is parted to free the Hebrew slaves. In Christianity, Jesus, God in human form, is born to a virgin and grows to perform numerous miracles. Hinduism's estimated three million local deities perform miraculous deeds.

The Buddha worked [through] many signs and wonders. And Muslims believe the Koran itself is miraculous.

In all the traditions, miracles help convey key theological understandings.

KEN WOODWARD (Author, BOOK OF MIRACLES): Miracles are little stories inside larger stories. The larger story is what you think reality is all about. The miracle stories really show you that to move from one religion, say from Hinduism to Judaism to Buddhism to Christianity, or vice versa, is to move, really, into different conceptual worlds.

LAWTON: There are those in every tradition who believe miracles still happen. While the NEWSWEEK poll found that American Jews are the least likely to believe in modern miracles, the tradition is still strong among Hassidic Jews. Members of [the] Chabad Lubavitch community believe their late Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, intercedes with God. People bring their petitions to his grave site in Queens. If they can't make it in person, they fax or call Rabbi Abba Refson, who takes down requests on his palm computer.