New Books and Media

From the back cover: A gripping narrative that uses the case files of Tony Cornell and the Society for Physical Research to examine our interactions and obsessions with all things paranormal. Tony Cornell spent his life probing the very edges of reality. A member of the UK’s Society for Psychical Research (SPR), Cornell’s role as an investigator of so-called “spontaneous cases” saw him returning time and again to the unsettling spaces that exist just on the periphery of our ordered, tidy, and rational lives, and which we all do our best to ignore: Ghosts. Spirits. Premonitions. Psychic powers. Glimpses of other worlds that throw into question everything we take for granted about life, death, and material existence itself.

From the publisher's website: A compendium of rare cross-cultural and historical accounts of extrasensory perception Taking readers on a cross-cultural voyage through extrasensory experiences, the author documents and contextualizes these mysterious phenomena. Daniel shares accounts from ancient Greek myth, traditional North and South American, African, and Polynesian stories. He considers unexplained ESP-related happenings, including bilocation, the ability to locate lost items, and early knowledge of one’s own death.

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

From the back cover: An experiencer of OBEs herself, Samantha Lee Treasure has dedicated over a decade to better understanding these extraordinary events. This illuminating guide is the culmination of this research, taking a holistic approach which draws together neurology, psychology, anthropology, parapsychology and religion. Her research has taken her from interviewing Korean and Siberian shamans, to participation in neuroscience experiments, fieldwork with the religious movement Eckankar, a year interviewing alien contactees and attendance at various workshops and retreats marketed within the growing spiritual marketplace. Based on experiencer interviews the author has conducted since 2015, the book will also explore how astral projection changes over the course of an episode or lifetime, taking into consideration generational, cultural, and biological differences.

From the publisher's website: What Lies Beyond answers two questions: What's beyond the functional, mechanistic, and materialistic conceptions of life and consciousness? And why does that matter today? From an overview of paranormal and mystical experiences - in the context of the prevailing mechanistic, materialist view of mind and life - to exploring why the mystery of consciousness remains ‘hard’ and the reasons for doubting that this mystery will be resolved in mechanistic terms, this book aims to encourage open enquiry.

Further information at the publisher's website: Essentia Books,

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: In 2010, a sleepy small-town business plaza in rural New Hampshire rented space to an unusual tenant: a ghost laboratory. The Kitt Research Initiative’s mission was to use the scientific method to document the existence of spirits. Founder Andy Kitt was known as a straight-shooter; and was unafraid — perhaps eager — to offend other paranormal investigators by exposing the fraudulence of their less advanced techniques. Kitt’s efforts attracted flocks of psychics, alien abductees, witches, mediums, ghost hunters, UFOlogists, cryptozoologists and warlocks from all over New England, and the world. And there were plenty of them around.

Further information at the publisher's website: PublicAffairs.

From the publisher's website: In recent years, near-death experience (NDE) researchers have dared to suggest that this “out-of-body,” or dualistic, phenomenon is evidence that consciousness survives death, thereby validating the words of St. Paul that we have two bodies—physical and spiritual—the spirit body separating from the physical body at the time of physical death, or within minutes of it. This “spirit” body has also been referred to as an etheric body, astral body, vehicle of vitality, double, doppelganger, and mental body. Some mystics and psychics claim there are more than two bodies, the so-called “second death” which involves a transition from one spirit body to a higher spirit body.

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

From the back cover: Science does not accept things unseen, so ESP must be fantasy. Similarly, DNA is said to be a book of instructions while biologists know it is not. This book gives the evidence showing how DNA works; it's by ESP from our parents. Our DNA code works like a phone code making connections for the child to copy and grow like its parents. This amazing idea, resulting from an examination of the evidence, details how all life works. A bold and thought-provoking book that challenges scientific dogma by correcting known flaws and dozens of anomalies.

From the publisher's website: In Life-Changing Synchronicities, pioneering psychiatrist Bernard Beitman, M.D., explores the experience and ramifications of meaningful coincidences, including how synchronistic happenings came to define his own life. Building on Carl Jung’s groundbreaking work on this phenomenon, Beitman applies new insights on coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity, and related phenomena to the contemporary age, ultimately helping readers begin to better identify patterns of synchronicity in their own lives, find deeper meaning, and more consciously align with their personal life path and goals.

Further information at the publisher's website: Park Street Press.

From the publisher's website: Based on ethnographic research in England, Doubting Ghosts explores the paradoxes faced by paranormal investigators or "ghost hunters": in spite of spending significant time observing and documenting what they suspect to be paranormal phenomena—in a scientific, secular and rational fashion—many paranormal investigators remain skeptical about the existence of the paranormal. What, then, does it mean to regularly see ghosts and yet to not believe ghosts are real?

Further information at the publisher's website: Routledge.

From the back cover: People encountering UFOs, monsters, or spirits understand that reality is stranger than it seems. Yet an even more unsettling phenomenon lurks in the margins: real encounters with fictional characters from literature, mythology, and even comic books.

These impossibilities litter the paranormal. Flying saucers mimic their pulp depictions. Cryptids emerge from the pages of folklore and fiction. Urban legends manifest as genuine, ghostly phenomena.

This-the permeable ”fourth wall” separating fiction from reality-repreents the final taboo of High Strangeness. Blending celebrated cases with rare and unpublished accounts, Joshua Cutchin invites readers to search for truth in the most unlikely place: the crossroads of the paranormal, the imaginary, and the real.

Further information is available at the author's homepage: Joshua Cutchin.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: Picturing Aura is the first book of its kind: an extended historical, anthropological, and philosophical study of modern efforts to visualize the hidden radiant force encompassing the living body known as our aura. This rich, interdisciplinary study by Jeremy Stolow chronicles the rise and global spread of modern instruments and techniques of picturing aura, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how its images are put to work in the diverse realms of psychical research, esotericism, art photography, popular culture, and the New Age alternative medical and spiritual marketplace.

Further information at the publisher's website: MIT Press.

From the publisher's website: This book offers an up-to-date handling of C. G. Jung’s Theory of Synchronicity and the more mainstream paranormal phenomena known as extra-sensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK), collectively referred to as ‘psi’. Author Lance Storm re-works various aspects of synchronicity, traditionally marginalized by parapsychologists, to bring about a paradigm shift in the field. Most often seen as fundamentally different, the book draws parallels between psi and synchronicity and equates the two, arguing that psi was all along a form of synchronicity – just as Jung had anticipated. To achieve this, Storm necessarily modifies both the parapsychologist’s view about psi, and Jung’s views about synchronicity, enabling a satisfactory merger of the two paranormal phenomena. Based on rigorous scientific research and written in an easy-to-understand style, this book is an important resource for specialists such as anomalistic psychologists, parapsychologists, philosophers, paranormalists and theologians.

Further information at the publisher's website: Routledge.