A Christian look at the "occult":

The word “occult” is generally associated with secret knowledge and practices dealing with the supernatural or “psychic” phenomena often for the purpose of obtaining personal power. Some occult practices rely on demons or “spirits” to achieve their goals. Occultism is rapidly increasing throughout the world. There are now thousands of publishers of occultic books and magazines (not to mention Web sites). Interest in the occult has been promoted by the New Age movement, the rise of neo-paganism, movies and even some heavy-metal rock bands.

Please understand that the terms “occult” and “cult” refer to completely different things—although there can be crossover in some specific instances. That is, some cults have occultic practices.

A non Christian look at the "occult" like me: Well As a Athiest, I gotta say I believe in chemistry, so yeah I have to believe in the occult.
Ok, so chemistry's no longer classed as alchemy, therefore it's no longer a hidden(occult) science...but you get where I'm going with this I'm sure.
For me, as someone whos spent  two years studying occultism, I'd have to say it's just branches of science that are yet to be accepted by the majority of scientific peers, such as has been the way for all the sciences we know and accept today.
It's TV fiction and gullible minds that make for a belief in the hocus-pocus you may be referring to.

As for an "occult realm", yes there are many! The atomic world, the quantum world and any other realm/world/existence that is hidden from the human eye is by definition, an occult realm. Notwithstanding the more exotic, such as different dimensions in space/time, which would also be occult:)

           -Johnny White