New Books and Media

From an article by Stewart Alexander in Psychic World, November 2014, p.9: ‘In the 1990’s I was, for some years, the Archives officer and, for a while, the President of the now defunct Noah’s Ark Society for Physical Mediumship. Prior to that, over a period of several years, I had been most fortunate to meet, on a number of occasions, elderly Spiritualists who some years earlier had sat with legendary Physical Mediums. Unfortunately for us, by then we could only read about these amazing people. However, when relating to me their experiences it was almost as if they were telling of séances which they had attended the previous night as against 10/20/30/40 and in one case, 50 years earlier. Such had been the impression made upon them by what they had witnessed that those séances had been indelibly stamped into their memories. Always, as I listened, it had invariably struck me that I was as close to living history as it was possible to be. When, therefore, I became the Society’s Archives Officer, I determined to appeal to such people to come forward – to make contact with me and arrange to leave on record audio recordings of those wonderful inspiring sittings that, in past years, they had been privileged to attend. Now, no matter how harsh this may seem, the fact is that one by one our forebears were leaving this earth and taking with them their recollections and one by one their experiences – their stories – were being lost to our movement. So, in an effort to address that situation and catch them whilst there was yet time, I placed, on behalf of the Society, an advertisement in its monthly Newsletter and in various Spiritualist publications inviting and imploring them to send in their invaluable accounts. Pleasingly many responded and eventually I was to select a number of them which I grouped together on to a single cassette and this was subsequently marketed by the N.A.S. for its members and understandably proved to be extremely popular. However, with the later collapse of the Society that single cassette was to be the only one produced with the result that so many voices from the past were for many years to remain silent and unheard upon my library shelves. Then, one day, two years ago, I was working at my computer when my eyes fell upon those cassettes and suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, it struck me that I had been guilty of failing to fulfil the wishes of all those contributors. Inadvertently, I had been singularly responsible for failing in my duty to them to keep their inspiring memories alive. … Enter Lew Sutton (friend of many years) who, with the necessary equipment, graciously volunteered to take on the project of transferring all the cassettes on to CD and, in the process, clean up the sound quality which, on some of the tapes, was far from good. Anyway, it was when Lew was working on the old Ark compilation cassette that he telephoned to say that unfortunately the final accounts would not fit onto the one CD and in consequence they would have to be carried over onto a second one. Instantly, it then occurred to us both, that if we made a further selection of accounts to follow on beyond the Ark recording we could fill up the second CD and perhaps issue and make available to anyone interested in Physical Mediumship a double CD album. Now – following months of work … the project has at last been completed. … To the best of my knowledge, with the single exception of that Ark cassette, I know of no other such multiple recording within or outside of our Movement. I therefore believe that not only is this present album historic but it is also unique and it is my absolute intention to make it widely available both in this country and abroad. I believe it to be ‘that important’!

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the author’s introduction: ‘I have spent most of my life in the East Lancashire village of Helmshore … Researching the history of the textile industries and local life in general has taken up much of my time for more than half a century … and led to several books. But I still have material stored in a file labelled ‘The Supernatural’, a collection which, I suspect, describes only a fraction of the inexplicable encounters experienced by local people. Doubtless other towns and villages could yield a paranormal harvest to match my own …’

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Reports of physical mediumship go back centuries, and physical mediums such as D. D. Home, Franek Kluski, Leslie flint, and more latterly, David Thompson, are becoming household names in psychical research. Experiments such as Scole and Professor W. J. Crawford’s Goligher Circle have demonstrated that physical psychic phenomena does indeed exist. One medium not so well known in the West is Australia’s Stan Walsh. Stan was arguably that country’s most talented physical medium during the early part of the 20th century. His mission began in 1919 when he and a group of friends got together in a Melbourne suburb and tried to communicate with the spirit world. In 1927 L.C. Danby joined the circle and became a regular sitter for many years. This book is his account of those years, and the incredible mediumship of Stan Walsh. Leslie Charles Danby was born in Fitzroy, Melbourne in 1899. At the age of 19, he became an entertainer in vaudeville, appearing in theatres all over Australia and New Zealand. At that time, he was a self-confessed atheist. He married a soubrette (singer/dancer), Winnie. While Winnie was giving birth to their first child, both Winnie and the baby girl died. Les was devastated. Whilst sitting at his young wife’s graveside at St. Kilda cemetery, contemplating what type of headstone to buy, he clearly heard his wife’s voice say, “Don’t bother dear. I am not there.” This first experience of clairaudience shocked Les. He mentioned it to a trusted friend, who in turn revealed he had started going to a spiritualist circle where the medium went into trance and channelled souls who had passed over, providing the sitters proof of survival. He suggested Les attend the next meeting. To Les’s amazement, Winnie came through, speaking of personal things only he could possibly know. That evening changed Les Danby’s life forever.

From the publisher’s website: Induced After Death Communication (IADC) is a therapy for grief and trauma that has helped thousands of people come to terms with their loss by allowing them the experience of private communication with their departed loved ones. This is the definitive book on the subject. Botkin, a clinical psychologist, created the therapy while counseling Vietnam veterans in his work at a Chicago area VA hospital. Botkin recounts his initial—accidental—discovery of IADC during therapy sessions with Sam, a Vietnam vet haunted by the memory of a Vietnamese girl he couldn't save. During the session, quite unexpectedly, Sam saw a vision of the girl's spirit, who told him everything was okay; she was at peace now. This single moment surpassed months—years—of therapy, and allowed Sam to reconnect with his family. Since that 1995 discovery, Botkin has used IADC to successfully treat countless patients—the book includes dozens of case examples—and has taught the procedure to therapists around the country.

From the publisher's website: People everywhere carry with them extraordinary, deeply comforting experiences that arrived at the moment when they most needed relief: when they lost a loved one. These experiences can include clear messages from beyond, profound and vividly beautiful visions, mysterious connections and spiritual awareness, foreknowledge of a loved one’s passing—all of which evade explanation by science and logic. Most people keep these transcendent experiences secret — deathbed experiences, Nearing Death Awareness, and shared death experiences. Individuals and families guard them for fear they will be discounted by hyperrational scrutiny. Yet these very common occurrences have the power to console, comfort, and even transform our understanding of life and death.

Prompted by her family’s surprising, profound experiences around the death of her father and her sister, reporter Patricia Pearson sets out on an open-minded inquiry, a rare journalistic investigation of Nearing Death Awareness. Pearson discovers that roughly half of bereaved people, as well as nurses, hospice workers, soldiers, and others who constantly observe the dying, have had intimations of enduring bonds that can radically help people to process their grief and their fear. Opening Heaven’s Door offers deeply affecting stories of messages from the dying and the dead in a fascinating work of investigative journalism, pointing to new scientific explanations that give these luminous moments the importance felt by those who experience them. Pearson also delves into out-of-body and near-death experiences, examining stories and research to make sense of these related but distinct categories that shed light on Nearing Death Awareness. Countless people experience these coincidences when a loved one dies, while others experience such visions while they are dying themselves. These phenomena point toward a larger spiritual reality, and the reality of life (or something else) after death, yet are ignored in a cultural framework that dismisses anything that cannot be explained by the physical brain. But by dismissing or discounting these occurrences, we hamper our own healing. Challenging current assumptions about what we know and what we are still unable to explain, Opening Heaven’s Door is a groundbreaking, beautifully written exploration that will forever alter your perceptions of the nature of life and death.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: In this, the first biography and personal memoir of Wolf Messing to appear in the West, Tatiana Lungin limns a revealing portrait of one of the greatest psychic performers of the twentieth century. Born a Polish Jew near Warsaw, Messing ran away from home at the age of eleven and soon discovered his psychic gifts. Supporting himself by performing mind-reading acts in Berlin theatres, at fourteen Messing was sold by his unscrupulous manager to the famous Busch Circus. In no time Wolf gained an international reputation as the world’s greatest telepath as he toured the capitals of Europe. In Vienna Messing met Albert Einstein who brought him to the apartment of another admirer of his abilities, Sigmund Freud. His touring days ended abruptly in 1937 when, after Messing publicly predicted the downfall of the Third Reich, the Nazis placed a sizable bounty on his head. Summoning all his hypnotic powers, he escaped capture by the Gestapo and fled to Russia. In the USSR Messing’s displays of telepathy, uncannily accurate predictions, and psychic crime solving gained him a rare celebrity status. While most parapsychologists were forced to conduct psychic research in secrecy, Messing thrilled audiences in packed theatres across the country. His fame was all the more amazing coming as it did in the Marxist society dominated by Joseph Stalin, the man who had officially abolished ESP. Even Stalin himself was intrigued by Wolf’s ability to influence thoughts at a distance, and devised a number of unusual tests of Messing’s powers. The stories of how Messing successfully took on Stalin’s challenges to hypnotically elude his personal security force, and even commit psychic bank robbery, are colourfully related. As Messing’s long-time friend and confidante, Lungin draws from personal notes, conversations with Wolf, and reports of other eyewitnesses of his performances to chronicle Messing’s incredible life and career. At the same time, she provides an inside look at parapsychology and psychic research behind the Iron Curtain.

From the author’s website: Unlock the mysteries of life after death and explore the enlightening discoveries of a private investigator’s 15-year investigation. This book is a comprehensive resource answering 150 of the most crucial questions about what happens when we die.

Now you can delve into the life-changing insights we learn from near-death experiences, after-death communications, spirit contact through mediums, past lives, past-life memories, past-life and life-between-lives regressions, out-of-body experiences, soul pre-birth planning, deathbed visions, dream visitations, shared-death experiences, and so much more.

Whether you’re grieving the loss of a loved one, curious about what happens when we die, or pondering your own mortality, this book will leave you feeling less fear about death, inspired to live a more loving and purposeful life, and comforted by new thoughts about your loved ones in the afterlife.

From the publisher's website: Contemporary parapsychology tends to be preoccupied with ESP (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition) and psychokinesis. In contrast, this cutting-edge anthology assembles an international team of experts from the fields of psychology, parapsychology, philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience to examine critically what is referred to as the survival hypothesis: the tentative statement or prediction that some aspect of our personhood (e.g., consciousness) persists subsequent to the death of the physical body.The appraisal of the survival hypothesis will be restricted to the phenomenon of mediumship; that is, humans who ostensibly communicate with the deceased. The book has been divided into four main sections: Explanation and Belief; Culture, Psychopathology and Psychotherapy; Empirical Approaches; The Present and Future. The issue of postmortem survival is supremely relevant to us all because the human encounter with death is, of course, a certainty.

From the publisher’s website: A hard-nosed, logical, and skeptical non-materialist metaphysics according to which the body is in mind, not mind in the body. The present framing of the cultural debate in terms of materialism versus religion has allowed materialism to go unchallenged as the only rationally-viable metaphysics. This book seeks to change this. It uncovers the absurd implications of materialism and then, uniquely, presents a hard-nosed non-materialist metaphysics substantiated by skepticism, hard empirical evidence, and clear logical argumentation. It lays out a coherent framework upon which one can interpret and make sense of every natural phenomenon and physical law, as well as the modalities of human consciousness, without materialist assumptions. According to this framework, the brain is merely the image of a self-localization process of mind, analogously to how a whirlpool is the image of a self-localization process of water. The brain doesn’t generate mind in the same way that a whirlpool doesn’t generate water. It is the brain that is in mind, not mind in the brain. Physical death is merely a de-clenching of awareness. The book closes with a series of educated speculations regarding the afterlife, psychic phenomena, and other related subjects.

From the publisher’s website: How does it feel to live in a ‘haunted home’? How do people negotiate their everyday lives with the experience of uncanny, anomalous or strange events within the domestic interior? What do such experiences reveal of the intersection between the material, immaterial and temporal within the home? How do people interpret, share and narrate experiences which are uncertain and unpredictable? What does this reveal about contested beliefs and different forms of knowledge? And about how people ‘co-habit’ with ghosts, a distinctive self - other relationship within such close quarters? This book sets out to explore these questions. It applies a non-reductive middle-ground approach which steers beyond an uncritical exploration of supernatural experiences without explaining them away by recourse only to wider social and cultural contexts. The book attends to the ways in which households in England and Wales understand their experience of haunting in relation to ideas of subjectivity, gender, materiality, memory, knowledge and belief. It explores home as a place both dynamic and differentiated, illuminating the complexity of ‘everyday’ experience - the familiarity of the strange as well as the strangeness of the familiar - and the ways in which home continues to be configured as a distinctive space. Contents: Approaching the ghost. Part I Spaces and Times of the Haunted Home: The material uncanny; The temporalities of the haunted home. Part II Strategies of Cohabitation: Embodying, domesticating, gendering the ghost; Strategies of distance and communication. Part III Belief, Knowledge and Experience: Knowledge and uncertainty; Belief, evidence and experience; Conclusion: the liminal home/self; Appendix: the households; References; Index. About the Author: Dr Caron Lipman is Research Fellow at the School of Geography, University of London, UK.

From the publisher's website: Talking With the Spirits is a cross-cultural survey of contemporary spirit mediumship. The diverse contributions to this volume cover a wide-range of ethnographic contexts, from Spiritualist séances in the United Kingdom to self-mortification rituals in Singapore and Taiwan, from psychedelic spirit incorporation in the Amazonian rainforest, to psychic readings in online social spaces, and more. By taking a broad perspective the book highlights both the variety of culturally specific manifestations of spirit communication, and key cross-cultural features suggestive of underlying core processes and experiences. Rather than attempting to reduce or dismiss such experiences, the authors featured in this collection take the experiences of their informants seriously and explore their effects at personal, social and cultural levels.

From the publisher’s website: This book investigates the wide range of near-death experiences (NDEs) of patients that Penny Sartori has encountered during her nursing career, as well as the hundreds of cases of people who have reached out to her over the years. Many people take near-death experiences at surface value and are misinformed about the full extent of this highly complex phenomenon. Dr Sartori argues that, by pathologising the NDE, we are missing out on vital insights that can empower us to live fulfilled and meaningful lives. Dr Sartori does not offer superficial physiological or psychological explanations for why these experiences take place. Rather, the crucial point of this book is that near-death experiences undoubtedly occur and have very real, often dramatic, and life changing aftereffects. Further to that, the wisdom gained during the NDE can be life enhancing and have hugely positive effects on those who don’t have an NDE – all we have to do is take notice of and hear what these people have to say. A greater understanding of near-death experiences can not only enhance the way in which we care for dying patients, but also revolutionise our current worldview. This book encourages readers to take notice of and incorporate the wisdom and powerful messages of near-death experiences into their own lives.

Review by Robert A. Charman.