New Books and Media

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 Eyewitness accounts, unpublished photos and never before published documents from the archives of the Rhine Research Foundation provide fresh perspective on the events that inspired the novel,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

From the publisher's website: During the Cold War, the U.S. government began testing paranormal claims under laboratory conditions in hopes of realizing intelligence applications for psychic phenomena. Thus began the project known as Star Gate. The largest in the history of parapsychological research, it received more than $20 million in funding and continued into the mid–1990s. This project archive includes all available documents generated by research contractor SRI International and those provided by government officials.

Remote viewing (RV) is an atypical ability that allows some individuals to gain information blocked from the usual senses by shielding, distance or time. During the final decade of Star Gate, the emphasis shifted to a support role of a government in-house psychic spying unit at Ft. Meade, MD, and to engage a number of full-time scientists to investigate the physical and biological properties of RV, which proved successful. Results included how to identify the RV-gifted, what constitutes an RV target, some correlations with parts of the nervous system, and an indication of a potential 6th sense. This volume includes numerous examples as well as operational simulations.

Table of Contents.

From the publisher's website: What can a case of demonic possession in 1970's Germany teach us about free will? What might we learn about how we construct reality from the case of a poltergeist in the Fens? And what can a supposed instance of reincarnation in Middlesbrough tell us about how we develop a concept of the self? Taking incidents once thought of as supernatural or paranormal and questioning whether radical ideas in science might provide a new but equally extraordinary explanation, Unexplained asks what real-life unexplained events can reveal of our unique human experience.

From the publisher's website: Spiritual Science offers an alternative, spiritual view of reality that transcends both conventional science and religion, and answers many of the riddles that neither can explain. The standard model of science has had little success in explaining such areas as human consciousness, the connection between the mind and the body, altruism and ‘anomalous’ phenomena such as near-death experiences, psi phenomena (such as telepathy) and spiritual experiences. But from a ‘panspiritist’ point of view – which sees spirit or consciousness as a fundamental essence of reality – it is possible to make sense of all these things. Steve Taylor puts forward the evidence for a spiritual view of reality, drawing on the insights of philosophers, physicists, mystics, as well as spiritual traditions and indigenous cultures. He systematically shows how a ‘panspiritist’ view can explain many puzzling aspects of science and the world, including evolution and the origins of life, and a wide range of other phenomena such as quantum physics, the placebo effect, precognition and neuroplasticity. Spiritual Science offers a new vision of the world that is compatible with both modern science and ancient spiritual teachings. It provides a more accurate and holistic account of reality than conventional science or religion, integrating a wide range of phenomena that are excluded from both. After showing how the materialist worldview demeans the world and human life, Spiritual Science offers a brighter alternative – a vision of the world as sacred and interconnected, and of human life as meaningful and purposeful. Spiritual Science explains how the standard materialist model of reality developed, and turned into a belief system. This belief system can only function by denying (or explaining away) a whole range of phenomena that are part of human experience.

Review by Robert A. Charman.

From the publisher's website: Borley Rectory in Essex, built in 1862, should have been an ordinary Victorian clergyman’s house. However, just a year after its construction, unexplained footsteps were heard within the house, and from 1900 until it burned down in 1939 numerous paranormal phenomena, including phantom coaches and shattering windows, were observed. In 1929 the house was investigated by the Daily Mail and paranormal researcher Harry Price, and it was he who called it ‘the most haunted house in England.’ Price also took out a lease of the rectory from 1937 to 1938, recruiting forty-eight ‘official observers’ to monitor occurences. After his death in 1948, the water was muddied by claims that Price’s findings were not genuine paranormal activity, and ever since there has been a debate over what really went on at Borley Rectory. Paul Adams, Eddie Brazil and Peter Underwood here present a comprehensive guide to the history of the house and the ghostly (or not) goings-on there.