New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: 

Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, E.M. Forster and Ingmar Bergman all made the paranormal essential to their depiction of humanity. Freud recognized telepathy as an everyday phenomenon. Observations on parapsychological aspects of psychoanalysis also include the findings of the Mesmerists, Jung, Ferenczi and Eisenbud.

Many academicians attribute such psychic discoveries to “poetic license” rather than to accurate understanding of our parapsychological capacities. The author—a practicing psychoanalyst and parapsychologist, and a lawyer familiar with Navajo culture—argues for a fresh appraisal of psi phenomena and their integration into psychoanalytic theory and clinical work, literary studies and anthropology.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: The mechanised slaughter of the First World War brought a sudden and concentrated interest in life after death. This book explores the role of spiritualism, superstition and the supernatural during and after that war.

After a miraculous escape from the German military juggernaut in the small Belgian town of Mons in 1914, the first major battle that the British Expeditionary Force would face in the First World War, the British really believed that they were on the side of the angels. Indeed, after 1916, the number of spiritualist societies in the United Kingdom almost doubled, from 158 to 309. As Arthur Conan Doyle explained, 'The deaths occurring in almost every family in the land brought a sudden and concentrated interest in the life after death. People not only asked the question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" but they eagerly sought to know if communication was possible with the dear ones they had lost.' From the Angel of Mons to the popular boom in spiritualism as the horrors of industrialised warfare reaped their terrible harvest, the paranormal - and its use in propaganda - was one of the key aspects of the First World War.

Angels in the Trenches takes us from defining moments, such as the Angel of Mons on the Front Line, to spirit communication on the Home Front, often involving the great and the good of the period, such as aristocrat Dame Edith Lyttelton, founder of the War Refugees Committee, and the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, Principal of Birmingham University. We see here people at every level of society struggling to come to terms with the ferocity and terror of the war, and their own losses: soldiers looking for miracles on the battlefield; parents searching for lost sons in the séance room. It is a human story of people forced to look beyond the apparent certainties of the everyday - and this book follows them on that journey.

Excerpts from the book can be read on Leo Ruickbie's website: Angels in the Trenches.

From the publisher's website:
 

• A comprehensive study of the major revival of supernatural beliefs, superstition, and spiritualism during the First World War and its aftermath.
• A look at what the beliefs, practices, and contemporary opinions on magic can tell us about broader issues in early twentieth-century society, the experience of war, and the psychology of belief.
• Relates how the prophecies of Nostradamus were used as propaganda by both sides, a diverse range of talismans and charms were carried by soldiers, and the myriad tales of battlefield ghosts came to be.
• Includes previously unpublished accounts from soldiers and fortune-tellers on their faith and practices, for a remarkable insight into the nature of popular belief.

From the publisher's website: 

A fascinating first-hand account of an awakening into a psychic consciousness, paired with a revolutionary analysis by a respected professor of religion
 
When Elizabeth Krohn got out of her car with her two young sons in the parking lot of her synagogue on a late afternoon in September 1988, she couldn’t have anticipated she would within seconds be struck by lightning and have a near-death experience. She felt herself transported to a garden and engaging in a revelatory conversation with a spiritual being. When she recovered, her most fundamental understandings of what the world is and how it works had been completely transformed. She was “changed in a flash,” suddenly able to interact with those who had died and have prescient dreams predicting news events. She came to believe that some early traumatic and abusive experiences had played a part in preparing her for this experience. 

Told in matter-of-fact language, the first half of this book is the story of Krohn’s journey, and the second is an interpretation and analysis by respected professor of religion Jeffrey Kripal. He places Krohn’s experience in the context of religious traditions and proposes the groundbreaking idea that we are shaping our own experiences in the future by how we engage with near-death experiences in the present. Changed in a Flash is not about proving a story, but about carving out space for serious discussion of this phenomenon.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck

From the publisher's website: Reexamining the purported 1949 exorcism of a 13-year old boy in Mount Ranier, Maryland—the most famous and widely documented case in history—the author explores the subject of demonic possession in the light of science. Eyewitness accounts, unpublished photos and never before published documents from the archives of the Rhine Research Foundation provide fresh perspective on the events that inspired the novel, and later the film, The Exorcist.

Review by Nemo C, Mörck.

In Enchanted Ground, Sharon Hatfield brings to life the true story of a nineteenth-century farmer-turned-medium, Jonathan Koons, one of thousands of mediums throughout the antebellum United States. In the hills outside Athens, Ohio, Koons built a house where it was said the dead spoke to the living, and where ancient spirits communicated the wisdom of the ages. Curious believers, in homespun and in city attire, traveled from as far as New Orleans to a remote Appalachian cabin whose marvels would rival any of P. T. Barnum’s attractions.

Yet Koons’s story is much more than showmanship and sleight of hand. His enterprise, not written about in full until now, embodied the excitement and optimism of citizens breaking free from societal norms. Reform-minded dreamers were drawn to Koons’s seances as his progressive brand of religion displaced the gloomy Calvinism of previous generations. As heirs to the Second Great Awakening, which stretched from New York State to the far reaches of the Northwest Territory, the curious, the faithful, and Koons himself were part of a larger, uniquely American moment that still marks the cultural landscape today.

Further information on the publisher's website: Enchanted Ground.

Review by James McClenon.

From the publisher's website:

Jott is derived from Just One of Those Things, meaning things that fall on the floor and are never seen again, or were placed on a table for ready access but were next seen a few weeks later in a box of corks inside a drawer in a trunk, or which are not where you left them but unaccountably re-appear, on top of something you have just placed there... Jott takes a variety of forms, but is generally dismissed as your faulty memory, your faulty perception, your inability to report facts correctly, or just as a nuisance best forgotten. But sometimes the anomaly really is a blip in our causal reality. The author presents some cases that resist conventional explanations and goes on to examine the far-reaching implications of these seemingly trivial incidents.

Further information about the book (including table of contents) can be found at Anomalist Books.

Review by Robert A. Charman

From the publisher's website:

Among the most profound questions we confront are the nature of what and who we are as conscious beings, and how the human mind relates to the rest of what we consider reality. For millennia, philosophers, scientists, and religious thinkers have attempted answers, perhaps none more meaningful today than those offered by neuroscience and by Buddhism. The encounter between these two worldviews has spurred ongoing conversations about what science and Buddhism can teach each other about mind and reality.

In Mind Beyond Brain, the neuroscientist David E. Presti, with the assistance of other distinguished researchers, explores how evidence for anomalous phenomena―such as near-death experiences, apparent memories of past lives, apparitions, experiences associated with death, and other so-called psi or paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition―can influence the Buddhism-science conversation. Presti describes the extensive but frequently unacknowledged history of scientific investigation into these phenomena, demonstrating its relevance to questions about consciousness and reality. The new perspectives opened up, if we are willing to take evidence of such often off-limits topics seriously, offer significant challenges to dominant explanatory paradigms and raise the prospect that we may be poised for truly revolutionary developments in the scientific investigation of mind. Mind Beyond Brain represents the next level in the science and Buddhism dialogue.

Review by Robert A. Charman.

From the publisher's website: 

London’s shadowed alleyways, ancient buildings and misty open spaces simply swarm with phantoms – spirits of the famous and the forgotten, the lovelorn, the loveless, the damned, and the damnable. Paranormal London takes the bold ghost seeker on a hair-raising journey to visit and explore some of the capital’s spookiest places. We visit the haunts of murderers and sail on a phantom boat. There are close encounters with chilling manifestations at infamous No. 50 Berkeley Square and you can hear wails and tormented screams from Jack the Ripper’s eternally restless victims as they roam the East End’s cobbled streets. You can find a headless duke, visit the graves of plague victims and come into contact with an unseen force that tries to push you downstairs.

Many of the city’s most famous landmarks are haunted, but hundreds of lesser-known sites claim paranormal happenings – pubs, hotels, parks and tunnels, churches, roads, Underground stations, banks, cinemas, council estates and the lake in St James’s Park. If you are not a true believer in the paranormal when you start to read this book, you will be by the end.

Review by Graham Kidd

From the publisher's website: Exploring everything from visions, hunches, vibes, astrology, and the occult arts and sciences, to modern physics, geomagnetism, and bio-electricity, Psychic Literacy is renowned artist and remote viewer Ingo Swann's grand overview of human psychic potential. He looks at the long history of human societies' involvement with psychic abilities to show that these things have always been with us, and he makes the argument that it is necessary at this time in history for us to rediscover them to usher in a "psychic renaissance"

Review by Nemo C. Mörck

From the publisher's website: This ground-breaking book is about the emerging academic and practical study of subtle energies, which historically, have not been easy to detect. The unique experiments, numerous measurements, and resulting data presented here, have been collected over 30 years of research. The findings have resulted from pioneering discoveries leading to equations, graphs, universal constants, formulae, and laws of nature that eventually connect to cosmology, and the structure of the universe. The book proves, with high scientific and mathematical precision, that consciousness involves more than just the brain, but actually depends on the very fabric of the universe. 

Some of the discoveries prove that certain information can be communicated across the solar system, not only faster than light, but instantaneously. The book deals with the entanglement of large objects, and the fact that the cosmos possesses a universal consciousness. Also shown is that the mind can detect information from the outer planets, and identifies connections to a five dimensional universe and the mysterious, recently discovered dark energy. 

This text will be of interest to the considerable number of people worldwide involved in similar studies. These include researchers at universities and colleges currently or wishing to teach and develop this up-and-coming subject, non-professionals, and members of relevant academic societies.

From the publisher's website: In this groundbreaking book, bestselling author Theresa Cheung joins forces with cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, PhD, Director of the innovation Lab at The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Together they reveal revolutionary new research showing that sensing the future is possible, they also provide practical tools and techniques you

Precognition is the scientific name for the knowledge or perception of the future, obtained through extrasensory means. Often called ‘premonition’, precognition is the most frequently reported of all extrasensory perception (ESP) experiences, occurring most often in dreams. It may also occur spontaneously in waking visions, auditory hallucinations, flashing thoughts entering the mind, the sense of “knowing” and physiological changes. Combining science and practice, Theresa and Dr Julia unravel the mystery of precognition. The book will cover:

• What precognition is and the different types, clearly explaining the cutting-edge science, including what is known and what is still a mystery
• The most common premonitions that people experience and why, including examples from around the world
• Experimental tools to help you cultivate precognition experiences to help get useful information for your life
• Case studies included throughout, with supporting scientific evidence offered alongside to provide validation and explanation
• Personal experiences of the authors, detailing how premonition has shaped their lives and interviews with leading scientists and experts in the field

Review by Nemo C. Mörck