New Books and Media

From the publisher’s website: Personalised accounts of out-of-body (OBE) and near-death (NDE) experiences are frequently interpreted as offering evidence for immortality and an afterlife. Since most OBE/NDE follow severe curtailments of cerebral circulation with loss of consciousness, the agonal brain supposedly permits 'mind', 'soul' or 'consciousness' to escape neural control and provide glimpses of the afterlife.

Michael Marsh critically analyses the work of five key writers who support this so-called "dying brain" hypothesis. He firmly disagrees with such otherworldly 'mystical' or 'psychical' interpretations, ably demonstrating how they are explicable in terms of brain neurophysiology and its neuropathological disturbances. The original basis and thrust of Marsh's claim sees the recorded phenomenology as reflections of brains rapidly reawakening to full conscious-awareness, consistent with other reported phenomenologies attending recovery from antecedent states of unconsciousness: the "re-awakening brain" hypothesis. From this basis, Marsh also offers a re-classification of NDE into early and late phase sequences, thereby dismantling the untenable concepts of "core" and "depth" experiences.

Marsh further provides a detailed examination of the spiritual and quasi-religious overtones accorded OBE/NDE, highlighting their inconsistencies when compared with classical accounts of divine disclosure, and the eschatological precepts of resurrection belief as professed credally. In assessing the implications of anthropological, philosophical, and theological concepts of 'personhood' and 'soul' as arguments for personal survival after death, Marsh celebrates the role of conventional faith in appropriating the expectant biblical promises of a 'New Creation'.

From the publisher’s website: The Supernatural North is the latest in a long line of books by Darren W Ritson. This exciting new volume details scores of the most terrifying ghost tales and supernatural legends that the north of England has to offer. From the Scottish Borders to South Yorkshire, from the North West Coast to the North East Coast, this book is sure to delight all ghost enthusiasts.

Featured in this volume is a full chapter devoted to the South Shields Poltergeist case which the author co-investigated with Mike Hallowell in 2006. A large section of the book is also dedicated to the north of England’s most famous haunting, Willington Mill, along with various other chapters detailing spine chilling ghosts and blood curdling hauntings from the North Country. There is also a fascinating and detailed look at the north’s screaming skull legends.

Places visited in the book number into their hundreds and include theatres, castles, public houses, hotels, stately homes, public parks and even a lighthouse or two. With a lengthily foreword by Peter Underwood FRSA – acknowledged as the world’s leading ghost hunter, The Supernatural North promises to be one of the finest ghost books you will ever read.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: The first book to explore, in depth, the complete range of paranormal phenomena reported in Cheltenham. Here you will find accounts of well known hauntings, as well as many previously undiscovered locations. 

This fascinating account of local ‘sightings’ looks at traditional historical legends as well as modern day experiences, providing fresh knowledge together with the author’s personal accounts of new and traditional stories. 
Ross Andrews’ ghostly tour of the area is illustrated with many of his own photographs.

Review by Chris Romer

From the publisher’s website: The first book to explore, in depth, the complete range of paranormal phenomena reported in Brighton & Hove. Here you will find accounts of well-known hauntings, as well as many previously undiscovered locations.
 
This fascinating account of local ‘sightings’ looks at traditional historical legends as well as modern day experiences, providing fresh knowledge together with the author’s personal accounts of new and traditional stories.
 
Janet Cameron’s ghostly tour of the area is illustrated with many of her own photographs.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: A Beginner’s Guide to Paranormal Investigation is an ideal guide for anyone who is curious about paranormal investigation and the supernatural.
 
The authors guide the reader through the required steps for paranormal investigation and identifies the core concepts of successful investigations. This book will provide readers with basic information that will help them to start their own supernatural searches. Readers will be introduced to the basic historical backgrounds of each phenomena, alternative theories for each phenomena, a grounding of common sense and what equipment to use and how to use it.

A Beginner’s Guide to Paranormal Investigation is a fantastic book for anyone with an interest in the paranormal.

Review to Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Thirteen essays on the psychology and parapsychology of anomalous experience explore a range of experiences, including extrasensory perception, haunting experiences, apparitions, alien contacts, seance room phenomena, and out-of-body experiences. The contributors are Daryl Bem, Etzel Cardena, Jezz Fox, Chris French, Craig Murray, Ciaran O'Keeffe, Chris Roe, Simon Sherwood, Christine Simmonds-Moore, Paul Stevens, Caroline Watt, Richard Wiseman and Robin Woofitt.  Matt Smith has conducted research on paranormal experiences for more than 15 years and was the resident psychologist/ parapsychologist for the television show Most Haunted.

From the publisher’s website: Since his late teens, Louis Proud has suffered from chronic sleep paralysis and has undergone hundreds of such episodes, many of them terrifying but ultimately transformational and eye-opening. These experiences, he believes, allow access to the "spirit realm" and could well hold the key to a whole host of paranormal phenomena, including poltergeist disturbances, out-of-body-experiences, mediumship, spirit possession, and succubi and incubi encounters. Drawing on the work of Colin Wilson, Joe Fisher, Stan Gooch, Whitley Strieber, Robert Monroe, Dion Fortune, and a number of other paranormal experts, Proud lucidly demonstrates that many sleep paralysis experiences involve genuine contact and communication with incorporeal entities, some of them parasitic and potentially dangerous. In this comprehensive, open-minded exploration of the sleep paralysis phenomenon, filled with fascinating descriptions of his own experiences, as well as those of others, no stone is left unturned as Proud attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery.

This book has been reviewed by Christopher C. French in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Vol 75(3).

From the publisher’s website: Haunted Gardens is a brand new book from the renowned supernatural writer, Peter Underwood. The world today is fascinated by life after death, and the affect that the 'other side' has on our lives. Peter Underwood has decided to explore ghostly gardens for the very first time in history, and shows, with examples from all over the world, just how spooky gardens can be! Fully illustrated with Peter's own photographs, and carefully researched, this new book is sure to be an ideal gift for anyone interested in ghosts and the paranormal.

Review by Tom Ruffles

 

From the publisher’s website: Welcome to the world of Mysterious Minds: The Neurobiology of Psychics, Mediums, and Other Extraordinary People. Here, experts in the emerging field of neurobiological study make the case that while many claims of psychic ability are easily proven false, there may well be claimants who can obtain information in ways not easily explained by mainstream science—and there might be scientific tools and approaches available to confirm those experiences.

Written by an expert team of distinguished investigators from a half dozen countries around the world, Mysterious Minds introduces readers to the current state of research into parapsychological experiences, emphasizing the neurobiological data obtained by those who claim to be psychics or mediums. It offers specific examples of paranormal claims of extraordinary people—claims scrutinized through the use of high-tech brain imaging, clinical neurological examinations, and psychotropic drugs. The book concludes by proposing a series of models based on fundamental neurobiology, psychology, and quantum physics that could help us unravel these mental mysteries.
 
Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at Saybrook University in San Francisco, CA. Harris L. Friedman, PhD, is a research professor of psychology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL.

From the publisher’s website: Welcome to the world of Mysterious Minds: The Neurobiology of Psychics, Mediums, and Other Extraordinary People. Here, experts in the emerging field of neurobiological study make the case that while many claims of psychic ability are easily proven false, there may well be claimants who can obtain information in ways not easily explained by mainstream science—and there might be scientific tools and approaches available to confirm those experiences.

Written by an expert team of distinguished investigators from a half dozen countries around the world, Mysterious Minds introduces readers to the current state of research into parapsychological experiences, emphasizing the neurobiological data obtained by those who claim to be psychics or mediums. It offers specific examples of paranormal claims of extraordinary people—claims scrutinized through the use of high-tech brain imaging, clinical neurological examinations, and psychotropic drugs. The book concludes by proposing a series of models based on fundamental neurobiology, psychology, and quantum physics that could help us unravel these mental mysteries.
 
Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at Saybrook University in San Francisco, CA. Harris L. Friedman, PhD, is a research professor of psychology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL.

From the publisher’s website: Leading the reader through the darkened séance rooms and laboratories of Imperial and inter-war Germany, The Stepchildren of Science casts light on the emergence of psychical research and parapsychology in the German context. It looks, in particular, at the role of the psychiatrist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing - a figure who fashioned himself as both propagandist and Grand Seignior of German parapsychology - in shaping these nascent disciplines. In contrast to other recent studies in which occultism is seen as a means of dealing with or creating “the modern”, this book considers the epistemological, cultural and social issues that arose from psychical researchers’ and parapsychologists’ claims to scientific legitimacy. Focusing on the boundary disputes between these researchers and the spiritualists, occultists, psychologists and scientists with whom they competed for authority over the paranormal, The Stepchildren of Science demonstrates that in the German context both proponents and opponents alike understood psychical research and parapsychology as border sciences.

From the publisher’s website: Is death the end? Or, to put it another way, do we survive bodily death?  Some shrug their shoulders and declare we simply can’t know. Others just say no. And a few, flying their philosophical colours, pretentiously profess to not even understand the question.
 
Curiously, the overwhelming majority of human beings throughout the course of history have taken it for granted that death is not the end, that there is a life after death. This striking and seemingly instinctive belief has been embodied in the religious traditions and philosophical reflections of most cultures. 
 
There Is Life After Death is the first of its kind in that it assembles and analyzes a comprehensive range of data on life after death and then provides the framework needed to understand the data. No previous book has presented such concrete evidence—evidence based on the accounts of eyewitnesses as well as on data derived from diverse sources throughout the world and history—supporting the existence of an afterlife. 
 
Above all, the book provides exciting and compelling answers to the urgent question: What lies on the other side?

From the publisher’s website: In recent years there has been a surge of scientific interest in the related phenomena of out-of-body (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs). These experiences are altered states of consciousness in which the person may feel that their consciousness has become separated from the confines of their physical bodies. They may occur at mundane times, such as when on the verge of going to or waking from sleep, or at times of increased stress, such as during potentially life-threatening situations, or even when having been clinically dead and revived. These experiences have similar, recurring phenomenological features and cultural motifs. Both forms of experience may be characterised by lucid thinking, a belief that such experiences are 'real' or veridical, and may involve the observance of the physical body, others and the surrounding environment from a disembodied point of view. Both OBEs and NDEs may be accompanied by profound personality changes. the NDE in particular, which is characterised by seemingly real encounters with spiritual beings and deceased persons, being interpreted by those having the experiences as a spiritual one which leads to changes in their world view. Since past research, there has been growing academic interest over the years to help explain the mechanism for and content of these experiences. 

This book brings together the most up-to-date research within the psychological sciences on these topics in one authoritative, accessible text. From developments in understanding brain function to research methodologies which probe the phenomenological depths of these experience, this book offers a timely summary of the work of leading experts on these phenomena.