New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: Silver Birch’s Medium emerges as a vivid, deeply researched portrait of Maurice Barbanell, the journalist‑turned‑medium whose voice helped shape twentieth‑century Spiritualism. Drawing on years of dedicated research, archivist and historian Nick Richbell reconstructs Barbanell’s journey from East London idealist to the steady hand behind Psychic News and the earthly channel for Silver Birch. Despite his profound influence, Maurice Barbanell has remained an overlooked figure in the development of Modern Spiritualism.

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

From the publisher's website: During the years 1994-'97, depth psychotherapist Maureen B. Roberts experienced a series of fatefully impactful Dreams. The first involved Formula One racing legend Ayrton Senna, while the final Dreams featured Princess Diana. In July 1994, another powerful, precognitive Dream foreshadowed Maureen’s relationship with prominent Australian science fiction author Damien Broderick (who coined the term virtual reality). While they spent relatively little time together, for almost two years they corresponded regularly. These letters from the author, which amount to a colourful banquet of scholarly, anecdotal, personal, and psychospiritual reflections, shed light on how this unusual relationship became a challenging, mutually educational, yet eventually conflicted ‘dance of orbiting twin stars’ - one of the key images in the Dream. This uniquely intriguing book should appeal to lovers and students of science fiction, depth psychology, soul healing, transformational spiritual experiences, dreamwork, and philosophy (as the ‘love of wisdom’).

Further information at the publisher's website: 6th Books.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.
 

From the publisher's website: This book explores the historical and social dynamics of Spiritualism - a religious movement associated in the popular imagination with nineteenth-century parlour séances and ghost photography. It continues to be practised actively today in Australia, the UK, and USA. The authors draw on their deep fieldwork, interviews, and archival research to analyse Spiritualism's resilience and the enduring popular appeal of mediumship.

There are three key contributions of the book: the first is that the scholarly study of "belief" should be rehabilitated. The authors propose a model of belief as a dialogue between claims to truth and commitments to institutions supporting those claims. The second is women's agency in Spiritualism. From the movement's beginnings, strong female leaders have decisively shaped its religious and political profile. The third is the need to analyse Australian Spiritualism as a distinct variant of a transnational Anglophone family of ritual practice.

Further information at the publisher's website: Manchester University Press.

For centuries, people across the world have reported encounters with the same mysterious figure: a woman dressed in white, appearing on lonely roads, in ruined castles, and among ancient landscapes. Beginning in Pembrokeshire, Wales, this book follows the trail of one of history's most enduring apparitions. But is the Lady in White a genuine ghost, or has her story become something far stranger a viral memory embedded deep within human consciousness? Blending folklore, eyewitness accounts, history, and paranormal investigation, The Lady in White, a Ghost or a Viral Memory? explores whether we are witnessing a restless spirit, or the power of a legend that refuses to die.

Review by Peter G. Maxwell-Stuart.

From the back cover: Forget everything you think you know about hauntings. For centuries, poltergeist activity—unexplained knocking, moving objects, electrical disturbances, and unsettling household chaos—has been blamed on spirits or unseen entities. But what if that explanation is only scratching the surface? In Poltergeists: A Grounded Investigation into Real Cases, Psychology, and the Forces Behind the Phenomenon, psychic medium and paranormal investigator Kevin Paul moves beyond fear-based narratives to explore what may actually be driving these experiences.

From the publisher's website: Paranormal researcher Ashley Knibb takes readers on a chilling, deeply personal journey through more than a decade of ghostly encounters, unexplained phenomena, and life-altering revelations at a historic English pub. The Royal Oak, located on the outskirts of Swanage, is no ordinary pub - those within whisper strange tales of apparitions, vanishing objects, and eerie sensations that blur the line between the seen and unseen.

Further information at the publisher's website: 6th Books.

Review by Peter McCue.
 

From the publisher's website: The Psi Enigma: When Anomalous Experiences Transcend the Everyday World explores one of science’s most fascinating frontiers: the study of psi phenomena including telepathy, precognition and mind– matter interactions.
While these phenomena remain controversial, recent research suggests current scientific paradigms may be too narrow to account for them. Professor Thomas Rabeyron draws on psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy and physics to introduce the groundbreaking Orpheus Model – the first comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding psi.

Further information at the publisher's website: Routledge.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: When attorney-turned-psychic Nancy du Tertre traveled to St. Petersburg to train with Russia’s most renowned psychokinesis experts to learn how to bend metal with the mind, she discovered, that instead they were bending her mind. Her surreal descent into a strange world of Russian psychic training resembled both a Cold War science experiment and a psychological thriller.

In The Cult of the Occult: Falling Down the Russian Rabbit Hole, du Tertre takes readers deep into a shadowy Institute where the promise of learning to move objects with the mind is tangled with something far more sinister. The Institute keeps du Tertre and her fellow American colleague in a state of total isolation, locked in rooms for hours, deprived of meals, bathroom breaks, and often sleep, lied to about the training, blackmailed, and deliberately confused. At the center, is Roza, the mercurial second-in-command to the founder of the Institute, the so-called “wizard,” Vadim Medvedev. Roza’s method alternates between friendliness and heartless cruelty – classic prisoner methods used for interrogation and brain-washing.

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

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: P. M. H. Atwater draws upon decades of scholarship, personal experiences, and testimonials to explore connections between near-death experiences (NDEs) and alien contact. She shares research from pioneers of alien contact, including Greta Woodrew, Leo Sprinkle, and John Mack. She also tells the story of her own NDEs and their revelations of her past lives.

Further information at the publisher's website: Bear & Company.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: Dimensión Paranormal ofrece una síntesis científica de las experiencias anómalas, desplazando los fenómenos de telepatía, precognición y psicoquinesia del mito al laboratorio. A través de décadas de investigación clínica, el Dr. Alejandro Parra analiza las fronteras de la consciencia y el enigma de la supervivencia biológica, devolviendo estos estados extraordinarios al terreno de la psicología académica con rigor y espíritu crítico. Esta obra se consolida como un manual esencial para profesionales y buscadores que exploran lo que la ciencia tradicional suele ignorar. Es una invitación directa a replantear nuestra realidad y a descubrir si lo paranormal es, sencillamente, una capacidad humana aún no cartografiada por nuestra especie. Parra cree que la parapsicología puede contribuir a este banco de datos e incluso puede tener un impacto en la sociedad y la cultura. Este libro preparará a los lectores hispanohablantes para seguir los futuros acontecimientos en el campo de la parapsicología a medida que se desarrollen y decidir por sí mismos el impacto que los acontecimientos sorprendentes y su estudio tienen en el mundo y en los intentos de la humanidad por comprenderlos. Stanley Krippner Journal of Scientific Exploration.

Further information at the publisher's website: Kier.

Review by Massimo Biondi.

From the publisher's website: Have you ever noticed that libraries emanate a certain energy? If you've ever been alone in a library, chances are you've noticed a not-quite-empty feeling. This isn't surprising. From the constant flow of people, the echoing voices from authors on the shelves, and archives full of artifacts and records, libraries are inherently haunting spaces. There is no other place in society quite like the library, in fact, and their liminal nature might just serve as a beacon to the strange. It's no wonder that people experience anomalous phenomena in libraries around the world.

Further information at the publisher's website: Bloomsbury Academic.

From the publisher's website: Paranormal Britain is the most systematic study available of the nature and scope of paranormal beliefs, experiences, and subcultures in contemporary Britain. Using original survey data from British citizens regarding their beliefs and experiences with UFOs, ghosts, psychics and other paranormal phenomena, this open access book details the prevalence and patterns of paranormalism in the U.K.

In addition to presenting original findings based on novel data, the authors also engaged in extensive ethnographic fieldwork with different paranormal subcultures. Among other adventures, readers get to ride along as they spend the night with the 'most violent poltergeist in history,' participate in the high ritual of a UFO cult, search for Nessie and werewolves, visit crop circles, learn to read Tarot, talk with alien abductees, and go on shamanic vision quests.

Authoritative and systematic, yet readable and entertaining, Paranormal Britain will be of interest to scholars researching the sociology of religion, science, and belief in late modernity.

Further information at the publisher's website: Bloomsbury Academic.