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The Premonition Code, by Theresa Cheung and Julia Mossbridge

Publication Details: Watkins, ISBN: 9781786781611.
Publish Date: October, 2018
Cover of The Premonition Code

From the publisher's website: In this groundbreaking book, bestselling author Theresa Cheung joins forces with cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, PhD, Director of the innovation Lab at The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Together they reveal revolutionary new research showing that sensing the future is possible, they also provide practical tools and techniques you

Precognition is the scientific name for the knowledge or perception of the future, obtained through extrasensory means. Often called ‘premonition’, precognition is the most frequently reported of all extrasensory perception (ESP) experiences, occurring most often in dreams. It may also occur spontaneously in waking visions, auditory hallucinations, flashing thoughts entering the mind, the sense of “knowing” and physiological changes. Combining science and practice, Theresa and Dr Julia unravel the mystery of precognition. The book will cover:

• What precognition is and the different types, clearly explaining the cutting-edge science, including what is known and what is still a mystery
• The most common premonitions that people experience and why, including examples from around the world
• Experimental tools to help you cultivate precognition experiences to help get useful information for your life
• Case studies included throughout, with supporting scientific evidence offered alongside to provide validation and explanation
• Personal experiences of the authors, detailing how premonition has shaped their lives and interviews with leading scientists and experts in the field

The Borley Rectory Companion, by Paul Adams, Eddie Brazil and Peter Underwood

Publication Details: The History Press, ISBN: 9780750988124.
Publish Date: September, 2018
Cover of The Borley Rectory Companion

From the publisher's website: Borley Rectory in Essex, built in 1862, should have been an ordinary Victorian clergyman’s house. However, just a year after its construction, unexplained footsteps were heard within the house, and from 1900 until it burned down in 1939 numerous paranormal phenomena, including phantom coaches and shattering windows, were observed. In 1929 the house was investigated by the Daily Mail and paranormal researcher Harry Price, and it was he who called it ‘the most haunted house in England.’ Price also took out a lease of the rectory from 1937 to 1938, recruiting forty-eight ‘official observers’ to monitor occurences. After his death in 1948, the water was muddied by claims that Price’s findings were not genuine paranormal activity, and ever since there has been a debate over what really went on at Borley Rectory. Paul Adams, Eddie Brazil and Peter Underwood here present a comprehensive guide to the history of the house and the ghostly (or not) goings-on there.

What Is it Like to Be Dead? Near-Death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult, by Jens Schlieter

Publication Details: Oxford University Press, ISBN: 978-0190888848
Publish Date: September, 2018
Cover of What Is it Like to Be Dead

From the publisher's website: Studies of "near-death experiences" show that such experiences not only provide a new certainty of post-mortem survival, but often function as a call for fundamental change in the present. Reported aftereffects encompass changes in attitudes, beliefs, and life orientation. It is said that "experiencers" have lost their fear of death, found their purpose in life, or become "more spiritual." The experience - often declared to be indescribable, inexplicable, or ineffable - is held by many to be the most important of their lives and, moreover, the best proof available for matters "transcendent."

In What Is It Like To Be Dead?, Jens Schlieter argues that to understand recent testimonies of near-death experiences, we need to be aware of the history of innumerable reports of earlier near-death experiences that were communicated and handed down in scores of newspapers, journals, and books. Collections of such testimonies have been published for more than 150 years, accompanied by attempts to classify and interpret them. Schlieter analyzes the religious relevance of near-death experiences -for the experiencers themselves, but also for the growing audience attracted by these testimonies. Near-death experiences bear ontological, epistemic, intersubjective, and moral significance, ranging from reassurance that religious experience is still possible to claims that they initiate a new spiritual orientation in life, or offer evidence for the transcultural validity of afterlife beliefs. This study is the first to document and analyze four centuries of near-death testimonies before the codification of the genre in the 1970s, offering the first full account of the modern genealogy of "near-death experiences."

Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions, by Gregory Shushan

Publication Details: Oxford University Press, ISBN: 978-0190872472.
Publish Date: August, 2018
Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions

From the publisher's website:

  • The first book dedicated to near-death experiences in indigenous societies.
  • Offers a unique contribution to our understanding of near-death experience and shamanic phenomena cross-culturally.
  • Presents a new interdisciplinary theory of the origins and development of afterlife beliefs across cultures.
  • Presents dozens of previously unrecognized accounts of near death experiences in societies from three continents.

Further information here: Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions.

Gregory Shushan's website.

Noisesome Ghosts, by Clay Thistleton

Publication Details: Blart Books, ISBN: 9780244406844.
Publish Date: August, 2018
Cover of Noisesome Ghosts

From the publisher's website: Noisesome Ghosts is a collection of mainly found poems that investigates the phenomenon of ghosts and poltergeists that can speak and write, crossing the entire documented history of these mysterious entities from the second millennium BCE ghost of the Biblical prophet Samuel to the current case of the so-called demons in Seattle.

Time Loops. Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious, by Eric Wargo

Publication Details: Anomalist Books, ISBN: 9781938398926.
Publish Date: August, 2018
front cover of Time Loops. Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious

From the publisher's website: Time Is not what you think it is. Neither are you. Welcome to a world where participants in psychology experiments respond to pictures they haven’t seen yet … where physicists influence the past behavior of a light beam by measuring its photons now … and where dreamers and writers literally remember their future. This landmark study explores the principles that allow the future to affect the present, and the present to affect the past, without causing paradox. It also deconstructs the powerful taboos that, for centuries, have kept mainstream science from taking phenomena like retrocausation and precognition seriously. We are four-dimensional creatures, and sometimes we are even caught in time loops—self-fulfilling prophecies where effects become their own causes.

Eric Wargo has a PhD in anthropology from Emory University and works as a science writer and editor in Washington, DC. In his spare time, he writes about science fiction, consciousness, and the paranormal at his popular blog, The Nightshirt. Time Loops is his first book.

Further information about the book (including table of contents) can be found at Anomalist Books.

Review by Robert A. Charman

The Supernatural in Society, Culture, and History, edited by Dennis Waskul and Marc Eaton

Publication Details: Temple University Press, ISBN: 9781439915257.
Publish Date: July, 2018

From the publisher's website: In the twenty-first century, as in centuries past, stories of the supernatural thrill and terrify us. But despite their popularity, scholars often dismiss such beliefs in the uncanny as inconsequential, or even embarrassing. The editors and contributors to The Supernatural in Society, Culture, and History have made a concerted effort to understand encounters with ghosts and the supernatural that have persisted and flourished. Featuring folkloric researchers examining the cultural value of such beliefs and practices, sociologists who acknowledge the social and historical value of the supernatural, and enthusiasts of the mystical and uncanny, this volume includes a variety of experts and interested observers using first-hand ethnographic experiences and historical records. 

The Supernatural in Society, Culture, and History seeks to understand the socio-cultural and socio-historical contexts of the supernatural. This volume takes the supernatural as real because belief in it has fundamentally shaped human history. It continues to inform people's interpretations, actions, and identities on a daily basis. The supernatural is an indelible part of our social world that deserves sincere scholarly attention. 

Dennis Waskul is a Professor of Sociology and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and former president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. He has authored, co-authored, or edited a variety of books, including Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life (with Michele Waskul); Body/Embodiment (with Phillip Vannini); The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture (with Phillip Vannini and Simon Gottschalk); and Popular Culture as Everyday Life (edited with Phillip Vannini).

Marc Eaton is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Ripon College, in Wisconsin.

Further information about the book (including table of contents) can be found at Temple University Press.

Psience Fiction: The Paranormal in Science Fiction Literature, by Damien Broderick

Publication Details: McFarland, ISBN 9781476672281.
Publish Date: June, 2018

From the publisher's website:

Science fiction has often been considered the literature of futuristic technology: fantastic warfare among the stars or ruinous apocalypses on Earth. The last century, however, saw through John W. Campbell the introduction of “psience fiction,” which explores themes of mind powers—telepathy, precognition of the future, teleportation, etc.—and symbolic machines that react to such forces.The author surveys this long-ignored literary shift through a series of influential novels and short stories published between the 1930s and the present. This discussion is framed by the sudden surge of interest in parapsychology and its absorption not only into the SF genre, but also into the real world through military experiments such as the Star Gate Program.

The Star Gate Archives. Volume 1: Remote Viewing, 1972–1984, compiled and edited by Edwin C. May and Sonali Bhatt Marwaha

Publication Details: McFarland, ISBN: 978-1-4766-6752-2
Publish Date: June, 2018
front cover of The Star Gate Archives. Volume 1: Remote Viewing, 1972–1984
From the publisher's website: During the Cold War, the U.S. government began testing paranormal claims under laboratory conditions in hopes of realizing intelligence applications for psychic phenomena. Thus began the project known as Star Gate. The largest in the history of parapsychological research, it received more than $20 million in funding and continued into the mid–1990s. This project archive includes all available documents generated by research contractor SRI International and those provided by government officials.

Remote viewing (RV) is an atypical ability that allows some individuals to gain information blocked from the usual senses by shielding, distance or time. Early work benefited from a few “stars” of RV who were successful at convincing investigators of its existence and its potential as a means of gathering intelligence. Research focused on determining the parameters of RV, who may have the ability, how to collect and analyze data and the best way to use RV in intelligence operations. Volume 1 Remote Viewing (1972–1984) and Volume 2 Remote Viewing (1985–1995) include laboratory trials and several operational results.

Table of Contents

Review by Nemo C. Mörck

Our Secret Powers: Telepathy, Clairvoyance and Precognition, by Terje G. Simonsen

Publication Details: Pari Publishing, ISBN: 978-8895604336
Publish Date: May, 2018
Cover of Our Secret Powers: Telepathy, Clairvoyance and Precognition

From the publisher's website: Is the paranormal normal?

Many readers will be surprised when learning that reputable scientists, among them several Nobel laureates, have claimed that telepathy is a reality. Their curiosity will increase when reading that Cleopatra’s lost palace and Richard III’s burial place were recovered by means of clairvoyance. And some will think it to be science fiction when finding out about Stargate––the espionage program where the American military and CIA engaged in the development of psychic spies!

Simonsen, a Norwegian historian of ideas, introduces an array of entertaining paranormal tales from history, archaeology, anthropology and psychology, and presents scientific research that has provided fascinating results. He argues that the stories we hear about telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition ought not to be dismissed as superstition

In step with spiritual and occult traditions, the author suggests that consciousness is not limited to our own head. Rather he thinks that all humans (and perhaps all living beings) are linked together in a “Mental Internet.’ Via this network we may exchange ‘telepathic emails’ with friends and family and make clairvoyant ‘downloads’ of information.  Thus perhaps what we usually call ‘supernatural’ is completely natural but little understood communications via this Mental Internet?

Our Secret Powers gives us a thoughtful and critical analysis of a controversial subject and would make an excellent travel companion.

Engaging the Anomalous: Collected Essays on Anthropology, the Paranormal, Mediumship and Extraordinary Experience, edited by Jack Hunter

Publication Details: White Crow Books, ISBN: 9781786770554
Publish Date: April, 2018

From the publisher's website:

Engaging the Anomalous is a collection of essays written by Jack Hunter between 2010-17. Together, the essays push toward the development of a non-reductive, participatory and experiential anthropology of the paranormal. Over the course of the book, Hunter surveys:

• Trends in anthropology’s engagement with the paranormal

• The anthropology and neuroscience of spirit possession

• The history of Spiritualism and the phenomena of physical mediumship

• The overlaps between mediumistic practices and other mind-body phenomena

Hunter also poses serious questions about consciousness, experience, spirits, mediumship, psi, the nature of reality, and how best to investigate and understand them. In addition, the book features a selection of illuminating interviews with the author, as well as an original Foreword by leading parapsychologist and trickster theorist George P. Hansen. Engaging the Anomalous is a bold contribution to Anomalistic literature.

An extract from the book is available here: White Crow Books.

Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe, by Dean Radin

Publication Details: Harmony Books, ISBN: 978-1524758820
Publish Date: April, 2018
front cover of Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe
From the publisher's website: The chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) turns a critical eye toward such practices as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. Are such powers really possible? Science says yes. According to noted scientist and bestselling author of The Conscious Universe, Dean Radin, magic is a natural aspect of reality, and each of us can tap into this power with diligent practice.

But wait, aren’t things like ESP and telepathy just wishful thinking and flights of the imagination? Not according to the author, who worked on the US government’s top secret psychic espionage program known as Stargate. Radin has spent the last forty years conducting controlled experiments that demonstrate that thoughts are things, that we can sense others’ emotions and intentions from a distance, that intuition is more powerful than we thought, and that we can tap into the power of intention (think The Secret, only on a more realistic and scientific level). These dormant powers can help us to lead more interesting and fulfilling lives.

Beginning with a brief history of magic over the centuries (what was called magic two thousand years ago is turning out to be scientific fact today), a review of the scientific evidence for magic, a series of simple but effective magical techniques (the key is mental focus, something elite athletes know a lot about), Radin then offers a vision of a scientifically-informed magic and explains why magic will play a key role in frontiers of science.

About the author:

Dean Radin, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. For nearly four decades he has been engaged in consciousness research. Before joining the research staff at IONS in 2001, he held appointments at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Princeton University, and several Silicon Valley think tanks, including SRI International, where he worked on a classified program investigating psychic phenomena for the U.S. government.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck