New Books and Media

From the publisher’s website: A cross between Medium and Unsolved Mysteries, this award-winning book is now available in paperback for the first time…

In Witnesses to the Unsolved, author Edward Olshaker turns to some of the world’s most accomplished psychic detectives and mediums in a quest for the missing pieces to some of our most puzzling mysteries, including the cases of:

-- Martin Luther King, Jr., whose assassination is still an open case after a Memphis trial and a federal investigation reached opposite conclusions in 1999 and 2000.

-- Vincent Foster, the White House deputy counsel found shot to death in 1993. Three-quarters of Americans polled in 2000 did not believe the official ruling of suicide.

-- Kurt Cobain, the voice of his generation whose death by shotgun triggered scores of “copycat suicides” worldwide, even though America’s leading forensic pathologist maintains that the rock icon, with triple the lethal dose of heroin in his body, could not have shot himself.

Also explored are the mysteries surrounding the death of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, the bizarre fate of former CIA chief William Colby, and much more.

The highly regarded cast of police psychics includes Nancy Myer, investigator of hundreds of homicides in North America and overseas; Robert Cracknell, who was labelled “Britain’s number one psychic detective” when he provided accurate information to investigators of the Yorkshire Ripper serial murders and other high-profile crimes; and Bertie Catchings, named “best psychic in Texas” in The Book of Texas Bests. Prominent mediums Betty Muench, Janet Cyford, and Philip Solomon provide further illumination, along with dramatic evidence of life after death.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Fortune Telling (The Houdini Hearings) A must for any Houdini fan! This amazing book contains page after page of colourful first-person testimony from Houdini, sparring with the world of spiritualists as well as sometimes-sceptical congressmen during the 1920s fortune-telling hearings in Washington D.C. Absolutely fascinating...a new light on Houdini! Handcuff Secrets Houdini reveals secrets of his lockpicking, handcuff escapes, straitjacket techniques, and more! An unbelievable treasure-trove of Houdini's methods and Houdini's stories of his imitators. Dozens of illustrations. (Handcuff Secrets is also available as part of the CD set Houdini Unbound: The Houdini Research Collection from the Miracle Factory.) See www.miraclefactory.net for further details of both titles.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Often seen as supernatural, unpredictable, illusory and possibly dangerous, ESP, telepathy, clairvoyance and other parapsychological activities are actually happening all the time and help us make sense of everyday experiences. First Sight provides a new way of understanding such experiences and describes a way of thinking about the unconscious mind that makes it clear that these abilities are not rare and anomalous, but instead are used by all of us all the time, unconsciously and efficiently.

Drawing upon a broad array of studies in contemporary psychology, the author integrates a new model for understanding these unusual abilities with the best research in psychology on problems as diverse as memory, perception, personality, creativity and fear. In doing so, he illustrates how the field of parapsychology, which, historically, has been riddled with confusion, skepticism and false claims, can move from the edges of science to its center, where it will offer fascinating new knowledge about unmapped aspects of our nature. The author demonstrates that the new model accounts for accumulated findings very well, and explains previous mysteries, resolves apparent contradictions, and offers clear directions for further study. First Sight also ventures beyond the laboratory to explain such things as why apparent paranormal experiences are so rare, why they need not be feared, and how they can be more intentionally accessed. Further study of this theory is likely to lead to a “technology” of parapsychological processes while drastically revising our conception of the science of the mind toward a new science more humane and more replete with possibility than we have imagined in the past.

From the publisher’s website: The ghosts of Ireland are as numerous and interesting as they are varied. Indeed, there have been accounts of a man carrying a basin containing his severed head, a frightened girl whose hands are dripping with blood, and a body floating in blood-red water. It is also possible to hear the wail of a banshee, the sounds of mocking laughter, the din of battle, and the sound of someone choking, and many other sounds and experiences that bring a shiver to your spine.

In this fascinating book, renowned ghost hunter, writer and parapsychologist Peter Underwood provides a practical handbook of over a hundred of Ireland’s most interesting and haunted places with details of the history, the people involved, expedient anecdotes, reported ghostly encounters, the frequency of paranormal activity and the available evidence together with the names of witnesses.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: The study of the effect of "exceptional" experiences and beliefs on health--including anomalous, placebo, or hypnotic healing and mystical, religious, transpersonal, and creative experiences--has expanded and gained wider acceptance. This collection of essays explores the nature of mind, its impact on the body, and the relationship between "exceptional" experiences and physical health, mental health, and the potential for other types of perception. Examining the influence of spiritual practices, different types of mental imagery, and the practice of alternative healing methods such as reiki and johrei, the pieces propose ways of harnessing positive potential and encourage the expansion of mental health practice to include the full range of exceptional experiences. By normalizing experiences that are often pathologized, this book recognizes that exceptional human experiences can and do have value for physical and mental health.

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1. Overview and Exploration of the State of Play Regarding Health and Exceptional Experiences, by Christine Simmonds-Moore

Part one – Belief, Mind and Body

Chapter 2. The Mind-Body Connection and Healing, by John Gruzelier
Chapter 3. Altered States of Consciousness, Mental Imagery and Healing, by David Luke
Chapter 4. Excerpts of Intercorporeality: A Phenomenological Exploration of Energy Healing, by Carl Williams, Diane Dutton & Chris Burgess
Chapter 5. The Function of Religious Beliefs and Practices: Buffering the Impact of Exposure to Traumatic Events, by Eve Binks

Part two – Exceptional experiences and mental health

Chapter 6.  What Meditation Can Do -Mental Health or Exceptional Experiences, by Stefan Schmidt
Chapter 7. The Muse in  the Machine: Creativity, Anomalous Experiences  and  Mental Health, by Nicola J. Holt
Chapter 8. Exploring ways of manipulating anomalous experiences for mental health and transcendence, by Christine Simmonds-Moore
Chapter 9. Transformative and/or destructive: Exceptional experiences from the clinical perspective, by Isabel Clarke
Chapter 10. Counseling at the IGPP – An Overview, by Eberhard Bauer and Martina Belz
Chapter 11. Clinical Psychology for people with Exceptional Experiences in practice, by Martina Belz
Chapter 12. ‘Clinical Parapsychology’ in the UK, by Ian Tierney

About the editor: Christine Simmonds-Moore teaches in the department of psychology at the University of West Georgia and has received several Bial grants, given to promote exploration of a variety of topics pertinent to understanding exceptional experiences.

From the publisher’s website: Ghost Taverns is a fascinating, in-depth look at some of the north of England’s most haunted public houses and the spectres that are said to reside in them. Written by two of the UK’s most respected paranormal researchers, Ghost Taverns takes the reader on a supernatural pub-crawl that starts off at Ye Olde Crosse at Alnwick. In between, the authors visit dozens of inns, taverns and watering holes across the region to uncover the truth about their haunted reputations.

Characters such as the legendary Giggly meg who glides the corridors of the Alum Ale House at South Shields, the Sad Cavalier who has been seen at the Black Horse in West Boldon and the two children seen running from a spectral lady in the Tynemouth Lodge Hotel are brought to life – metaphorically, of course – in the hope that they will enchant a whole new generation of readers who may be unaware of them. After reading Ghost Taverns, popping in to your local may never be the same again...

Darren W. Ritson is a Civil Servant who lives on North Tyneside with his long-term partner Jayne and their daughter Abbey. He has had an interest in the paranormal for most of his life due to some strange experiences he had as a child. Mike Hallowell is a full-time author and columnist who specialises in writing about the paranormal. He has spent over forty years investigating hauntings both old and new and regularly appears on TV and radio. Mike has contributed to magazines such as Quest, Beyond, Paranormal, Magonia and Vision. His WraithScape column in The Shields Gazette has now been running for over a decade.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publishers’ website: With subjects ranging from the Croglin Vampire and the Renwick Cockatrice to witchcraft and the Cursing Stone of Carlisle, this collection of first-hand accounts contains all manner of weird and wonderful events from Cumbria's long and tumultuous history. With more than 50 photographs, both archive and modern, and sightings of everything from lake monsters and anomalous big cats to fairies, phantom airships and the Solway Spaceman, prepare to be astonished!

Geoff Holder is the author of more than twenty titles exploring strange and unexplained events in the North of England and in Scotland, and this collection will fascinate and amaze both residents and visitors alike.

From the publisher’s website: The poltergeist of ‘noisy ghost’ phenomenon is commonly thought to be the result of a dead person’s angry spirit expressing that anger by violence in the physical world, or the projected energies of an emotionally volatile human being, often a teenager. In fact, poltergeists are more interesting than either of those suggested explanations, because they are actually something of a mystery. Are they spirits of some kind, natural or anomalous forms of energy, or the products of trickery or self-delusion, or something else altogether? This account sets out to seek answers to those and other questions by providing examples of poltergeist activity from late antiquity to the present day, and discussing who recorded them, why, and for what kind of audience. It also clarifies the mystery and presents the reader with explanations of increasingly common, well documented and intriguing manifestations of apparently paranormal phenomena.

P. G. Maxwell-Stuart is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St. Andrews. His other books include Satan: A Biography (also published by Amberley), The Chemical Choir: A History of Alchemy and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, and The Malleus Maleficarum. He lives in St. Andrews.

From the publisher’s website: Although the saying, ‘Pigs might fly…’ may bring a smile to one’s lips, even stranger things have been reported as appearing in Britain’s skies over the centuries. Eye-witnesses have testified that various terrifying and bizarre forms have appeared in the skies, from ghostly planes, phantom airships and UFOs, to reports of sky serpents, celestial dragons, flying jellyfish, rains of fish (or blood, or metal, or frogs…) – even reports of a griffin seen over London! It also considers reports of haunted aircraft hangars and airfields.  Shadows in the Sky compiles hundreds of accounts from the spine-chilling to the downright bizarre, that’ll keep your eyes fixed looking upwards!

Neil Arnold is a full-time folklorist, monster-hunter, author and speaker. He has written several books and conducts talks on his investigations. He regularly writes for magazines such as Fortean Times, Fate, and Paranormal, and has appeared on Sky, BBC, Channel 4, ITV, NBC and radio across the world. A member of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, his 2007 book Monster! was voted Fortean Zoology Book of the Year. He lives in Kent.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the editor’s website: The Internationalization of Ayahuasca is composed of 27 articles (almost 500 pages) and is divided in three parts: “Ayahuasca in South America and the world”, “About medical, psychological and pharmacological Issues: is the use of ayahuasca safe?” and “The expansion of the use of Ayahuasca and the establishment of a global debate on ethics and legalization”. The book brings together the work of scholars from different countries and academic disciplines to offer a comprehensive view of the globalization of this Amazonian brew. It presents a rich array of reflections on the complex implications of this expansion, ranging from health, spiritual and human rights impacts on individuals, to legal and policy impacts on governments. As ayahuasca drinking becomes an increasingly established practice beyond the Amazon in the early 21st century, Labate and Jungaberle have put together a collection that is an unprecedented contribution to a growing field of research. It is a must-read for people interested in the present and future of ayahuasca, as well as in spirituality, ethnobotany, social science theory, contemporary religious and ritual studies, therapeutic potentials of psychedelics, and international drug policy. From the publisher’s website: This is a fascinating compilation of medical, psychological and sociological papers on the spread of ayahuasca use ... in Brazil and in several European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands), as well as the USA. ... Highly recommended for serious students of this subject. (Ralph Metzner, Ph.D, Psychologist and author of Sacred Vine of Spirits – Ayahuasca) The Internationalization of Ayahuasca provides reliable information that has never before appeared in print, ranging from the rain forests of the Amazon to the churches in Western Europe. ... Like it or not, ayahuasca has left the jungle and is here to stay! Read this book and you will understand the importance of its arrival on the global scene. (Dr. Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Alan Watts Professor of Psychology, Saybrook University) The contributors provide a detailed consideration of the legal situation of ayahuasca ... as well as a multidisciplinary assessment of the health implications of its use. The Internationalization of Ayahuasca is a must-read for anyone attempting to understand the global implications of ayahuasca today. (Dr. Michael Winkelman, M.P.H., Ph.D., Author of Shamanism -A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing)

From the publisher’s website: A Different Perspective on the Titanic Disaster.

As the Titanic plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, Colonel Archibald Gracie was sucked down with it.  However, he somehow managed to surface and survive, and he soon found himself sprawled on an overturned life raft, his clothes waterlogged and his teeth chattering from the icy cold.  He noticed that the seaman next to him on the raft had a dry cap and asked him if he could borrow it for just a few minutes to warm his head.  “And what would oi do?” was the curt reply.  “Ah, never mind,” said Gracie, as he thought “it would make no difference a hundred years hence.”
 
Those hundred years are up this year on April 15 and we might assume that it no longer makes any difference to Colonel Gracie, wherever and however he now exists.  But understanding Gracie’s ordeal and those of the other 2,222 passengers, including the crew, of the Titanic, might make a difference now for some people – those interested in learning from the experiences of others while searching for greater meaning in life’s suffering and tragedies.

Basically, the Titanic story is about dying and death, a subject many people don’t like to think about. “Dying is especially difficult in America,” writes Kathleen Dowling Singh, Ph.D., an experienced hospice worker, in her 1998 book, The Grace in Dying.  “Our cultural blinders to the world of Spirit, to the transpersonal realms, have left us bereft of meaning, struggling alone with the chaos of psychic deconstruction and physical dissolution.”

This book is not quite like other books about the Titanic.  As the title suggests, it is an attempt to explore the more transcendental aspects of the Titanic story – those suggesting a non-mechanistic universe. The subjects include premonitions, apparitions, out-of-body experiences, telepathic communication among the living, and after-death communication, many related to the Titanic passengers, others offered in support of the Titanic phenomena.  Key among the passengers is William T. Stead, a British journalist.  Although much has been written about Stead’s spiritual pursuits and experiences, very little of it has been discussed in other books about the disaster. Thus, the book is somewhat unique in this respect.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Is there a ‘special connection’ between twins? Can they read each other’s minds? Are they telepathic? These questions are often asked, but have never been convincingly answered until now.

The author became interested in the subject when he was given vivid first-hand testimony of how a man whose twin brother had been shot dead had reacted several miles away at the exact time. This prompted him to embark on a thorough search of the literature and collect accounts of similar examples of apparent telepathy, some dating back to the 18th century, to question numerous twins regarding their own experiences, to compile a substantial file of case histories, and eventually to help set up properly controlled scientific experiments in which telepathy could be seen to take place on a polygraph chart, two of which have now been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Are they telepathic? These questions are often asked, but have never been convincingly answered until now.The author became interested in the subject when he was given vivid first-hand testimony of how a man whose twin brother had been shot dead had reacted several miles away at the exact time. This prompted him to embark on a thorough search of the literature and collect accounts of similar examples of apparent telepathy, some dating back to the 18th century, to question numerous twins regarding their own experiences, to compile a substantial file of case histories, and eventually to help set up properly controlled scientific experiments in which telepathy could be seen to take place on a polygraph chart, two of which have now been published in peer-reviewed journals.

As he makes clear in this ground-breaking book, the first ever to explore the ‘special twin connection’ in detail, the answer is simple: some twins are telepathy-prone and some, probably the majority, are not. How can this be, you might wonder? Aren’t all identical twins supposed to be identical in all respects? They are not. The fact is that, as Orwell might have put it, some twins are more identical than others. What seems to make the difference is exactly when division of the fertilized zygote (egg) takes place. This can take place almost immediately, or up to twelve days later. Without going into detail here, what this means is that ‘late splitters’ develop extremely close bonds after birth, bonds that can last a lifetime, whereas ‘early splitters’ become more independent, and regard their twins just like an ordinary brother or sister. Sure enough, when experiments were carried out in London and Copenhagen, on each occasion it was a late-splitting pair who showed the clearest evidence for telepathy on their polygraph charts. The often heard critical complaint that here is no repeatable experiment for any kind of psychic effect is no longer true.

This new revised and updated edition contains the most comprehensive survey yet written on the history of research into twin telepathy. The author explains why experiments have generally been unsuccessful in the past, and why those that he helped design have been consistently successful, and point the way ahead for future researchers.He also explains that a better understanding of the special twin connection is of more than academic interest, especially to parents, some of whom already know that it can save lives and has already done so.Earlier editions of this book were well received by such authorities as psychologist Stanley Krippner, a former president of the Parapsychological Association, for whom it ‘reads like an intriguing detective story’, and Rupert Sheldrake, who has contributed a Foreword in which he states:‘For many years I have been looking in vain for authoritative research on this intriguing subject. At last I have found it, in this book’.Colin Wilson, in his Introduction predicts that the book ‘will obviously become a classic of psychical research.’