New Books and Media

Friedel’s Conversations with the Dead: The Fascinating Story of Friedrich Jürgenson, Pioneer of EVP, by Anabela Cardoso and Anders Leopold

Publication Details: White Crow Books, ISBN: 9781786772305
Publish Date: July, 2023
Cover of Friedel's Conversations with the Dead

From the publisher's website: Friedel’s Conversations with the Dead is the story of the Swedish painter and opera singer Friedrich Jürgenson, who pioneered the discovery of Electronic Voice Phenomena, in which deceased people appear to be able to make contact with the physical world utilising electronic devices such as radios, tape recorders, computers and televisions.

Further information at the publisher's website: White Crow Books.

Review by Edgar E Müller.

The Elusive Force: A Remarkable Case of Poltergeist Activity and Psychokinetic Power, by Anna Ostrzycka and Marek Rymuszko

Publication Details: Anomalist Books, ISBN: 9781949501261
Publish Date: June, 2023
Cover of The Elusive Force

From the publisher's website: In the spring of 1983, a thirteen-year-old Polish schoolgirl named Joasia Gajewski suddenly began to exhibit astounding paranormal abilities (often beyond her conscious control) that mystified and frightened the people around her. The inexplicable, often destructive psychokinetic effects she randomly generated (even in her sleep!) met with disbelief, exasperation, and superstitious fear. Attempts by local authorities to ascribe these puzzling events to physical causes (settling of walls, geopathic anomalies, etc.) proved superficial and unsatisfactory. Eventually Joasia's plight caught the attention of several courageous, open-minded Polish scientists. Over a period of forty months, they administered tests and conducted numerous experiments with her under controlled laboratory conditions. Their detailed studies, though ultimately inconclusive, did succeed in confirming the girl's remarkable powers, which she continued to manifest long after the end of puberty-a singular case in the annals of parapsychology.

Further information at the publisher's website: Anomalist Books.

Staring at a Red Sky: A History of Psi Research in the Ganzfeld, by Andrew Endersby

Publication Details: Independently published, ISBN: 9798398813760
Publish Date: June, 2023
Cover of Staring at a Red Sky

From the back cover: Sitting back in a comfortable armchair.Eyes covered by goggles such that only a diffused red haze is visible. Ears covered by headphones playing static noise. In this audio-visual fog, is it possible that the faint telepathic signal from another person can be detected? Since the 1970s researchers around the world have been trying to answer that question. This is the story of their work. Their theories, their failings and their one-in-a-million successes.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy: Working with the Curse Position in Clinical Practice, by Alex Monk

Publication Details: Routledge, ISBN: 9780367707477
Publish Date: June, 2023
Cover of Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy

From the publisher's website: Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy explores how traumatic experience interacts with unconscious phantasy based in folklore, the supernatural, and the occult.

Drawing upon psychoanalysis, anthropology, the arts, and esoteric philosophy, Alex Monk presents examples from folklore and literature to enrich his case illustrations which offer therapists important clinical perspectives on ways of working with clients who feel cursed and repeatedly manifest self-sabotaging states. The book examines the challenges that can arise when working with this client population and illustrates how to work through them while navigating potent transferences and projective identifications. Monk illustrates the way in which clients with developmental trauma may experience the supernatural and its psychic representatives as persecutory and/or a source of empowerment and healing. Trauma and the Supernatural in Psychotherapy also considers the historically conflicted relationship between psychoanalysis and the supernatural and proposes treatment perspectives which are not implicitly dependent upon a materialist paradigm.

This book will be of great interest to psychotherapists and counsellors who have an interest in clinical work concerning the connection of relational trauma to unconscious forms of communication and uncanny phenomena arising between therapist and client.

Further information at the publisher's website Routledge

Women of the Paranormal: Volume 1: A Brief History, by Alex Matsuo

Publication Details: Independently published, ISBN: 9798394011436
Publish Date: June, 2023
Cover of Women of the Paranormal

From the back cover: Discover the legacies of some of the most influential women in the paranormal field. If you’re looking for a celebration of women throughout the history of parapsychology, folklore, and psychical research, then look no further! This book is for you! Sharing the stories of over 35 groundbreaking women in a male-dominated field, paranormal researcher Alex Matsuo excavates the buried legacies of women in the paranormal who were often overshadowed and almost forgotten. From paranormal investigators to parapsychologists to psychic mediums to cryptozoologists, you’ll discover an incredible world where women not only inspired the paranormal world, but set the very foundation for modern-day investigation and psychic practices.

New Thinking Allowed Dialogues: Is There Life After Death?, by Jeffrey Mishlove

Publication Details: White Crow Books, ISBN: 9781786772282
Publish Date: June, 2023
Cover of New Thinking Allowed Dialogues

From the publisher's website: During the past five decades, psychologist and parapsychologist Jeffrey Mishlove has been dialoguing with scientists, academics, experiencers, historians and mystics on the subject of life’s biggest questions, the mind beyond the brain and the nature of reality.

In 2022, Jeff was the winner of the “Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies” prize for an essay demonstrating the best evidence for survival of bodily death. He was no doubt aided by more than a thousand discussions he has hosted and hosts on his YouTube channel “New Thinking Allowed “which continues to expand in subscribers and relevance year on year.

This anthology titled “Is There Life After Death” includes luminaries in the genre such as Eben Alexander, Miranda Alcott, Stafford Betty, Michael Cremo, Alan Hugenot, Leslie Kean, Betty Kovács, Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Vernon Neppe, and a foreword by James Tunne

Further information at the publisher's website: White Crow Books.

Ghostly Encounters: Cultural and Imaginary Representations of the Spectral from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, edited by Stefano Cracolici and Mark Sandy

Publication Details: Routledge, ISBN: 9780367677015
Publish Date: May, 2023
Cover of Ghostly Encounters

From the publisher's website: This volume reflects on the ghostly and its varied manifestations including the uncanny, the revenant, the echo, and other forms of artistic allusion. These unsettling presences of the spectral other occur in literature, history, film, and art. The ghostly (and its artistic, literary, filmic, and cultural representations) remains of burgeoning interest and debate to twenty-first century literary critics, cultural historians, art historians, and linguists. Our collection of essays considers the wider implications of these representations of the ghostly and notions of the spectral to define a series of different, but inter-related, cultural topics (concerned with questions of ageing, the uncanny, the spectral, spiritualism, eschatology), which imaginatively testify to our compulsion to search for evidence of the ghostly in our everyday encounters with the material world.

Further information at the publisher's website: Routledge.

Review by Tim Prasil.

Edge Walker: The Many Lives and Deaths of PMH Atwater, by P.M.H. Atwater

Publication Details: Rainbow Ridge Books, ISBN: 9781937907754
Publish Date: May, 2023
Cover of Edge Walker

From the publisher's website: In her many books examining NDEs and other extraordinary phenomena, P.M.H. Atwater has, thus far, only revealed bits and pieces about her own life. Now, in Edge Walker, she finally tells us the whole story. This book explores, in great detail, her journey as a near-death experiencer, prolific author, wife, mother, and spiritual human. A courageous trailblazer, P.M.H. has spent her entire life walking between worlds and trying to build bridges between them. Perhaps she sums it up best in her own words: “I’ll be almost eighty-six when this book is published. I leave you my laughter and my life and my books, and a host of questions still to be answered. No regrets. I did the best I could each step of the way.”

Probing Parapsychology: Essays on a Controversial Science, edited by Grant R. Shafer

Publication Details: McFarland, ISBN: 9781476680385
Publish Date: May, 2023
Cover of Probing Parapsychology

From the publisher's website: Parapsychology is a science made controversial by its subjects: extrasensory perception, psychokinesis (mind over matter) and disembodied minds, which imply life after death. Moreover, these parapsychological phenomena (called “psi”) challenge physicalism, the philosophy that everything can be completely understood in terms of physics. This book is a snapshot of the parapsychological field, with essays written by authors of diverse academic backgrounds and experiences. Essays examine parapsychological phenomena from prehistory, through the founding of the science by intellectuals distressed by physicalism, to the postmodern present. It includes both experimental and theoretical evaluations of the phenomena. Parapsychology is a science which may overturn the philosophy which has dominated science since Newton and may inspire curious readers who are disheartened by the consequent denial of the spirit.

Further information at the publisher's website: McFarland.

Third Eye Spies: Learn Remote Viewing from the Masters, by Russell Targ

Publication Details: Red Wheel Weiser, ISBN: 9781637480137
Publish Date: May, 2023
Cover of Third Eye Spies

From the publisher's website: Russell Targ has been successfully teaching people how to tap into their psychic abilities for more than fifty years. This began in 1972 when he cofounded a CIA-sponsored ESP research program at Stanford Research Institute. The program yielded such incredible results as the description of a secret Russian weapons factory in Siberia and the location of several kidnapped US officials, including the ambassador to Iran. The founders also trained six Army intelligence officers to create an Army psychic corps that became known as Stargate. Third Eye Spies will introduce you to the most successful and gifted remote viewers in the world along with the evidence of their psychic abilities. Remote viewing is the opportunity to describe and experience objects and events in the distance, the past, and the future. Targ shares the simple techniques masters of remote viewing use to expand the mind’s eye beyond one’s physical location. With Third Eye Spies, you will be able to step beyond the boundaries of your physical body and learn to live with psychic abilities.

Further information at the publisher's website: Red Wheel Weiser

Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other, by Ben Alderson-Day

Publication Details: St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 9781250278258
Publish Date: March, 2023
Cover of Presence

From the publisher's website: A psychologist's journey to understand one of the most unusual experiences known to humankind: the universal, disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. These experiences of sensing a Presence when no one else is there have been given many names—the Third Man, guardian angels, shadow figures, “social” hallucinations—and they have inspired, unsettled, and confounded in equal measure. While the contexts in which they occur are diverse, they are united by a distinct and uncanny feeling of visitation by another. But what does this feeling mean, and where does it come from? When and why do presences emerge? And how can we even begin to understand a phenomenon that can be transformative for those who experience it, and yet so hard to put into words? The answers to these questions lie in this tour-de-force through contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy. Presence follows Ben Alderson-Day's attempts—as a psychologist and a researcher—to understand how this experience is possible. What is a voice when it isn’t heard, and how otherwise do we know or feel that someone is in our presence? Is it a hallucination connected to psychosis, a change in the working of the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds. Presence is the story of who we carry with us, at all times, as parts of ourselves.

Further information at the publisher's website: St. Martin's Press.

Review by Graham Kidd.

Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing, edited by Emily Pierini, Alberto Groisman, and Diana Espírito Santo

Publication Details: Berghahn Books, ISBN: 9781800738461
Publish Date: February, 2023
Cover of Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing

From the publisher's website: When approaching the multiplicity of the spiritual experiences of healing, ethnographers are often presented with ideas of the existence of “other” worlds that may intersect with the so-called “material” or “physical” worlds. This book proposes a sensory ethnography of healing with a focus on ethnographic knowing as embedded in an embodied epistemology of healing. Epistemological embodiment signals that personal scholarly experience of the “unknown”—be it in the form of trance, or as the embodiment of an “other”—shapes the concepts of healing, body, trance, self, and matter by which ethnographers craft out analysis. 

Further information at the publisher's website: Berghahn Books