New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally ‘believe’ or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries – yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older…

The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?

From the publisher's website: Why do people love ghost stories, even when they don’t believe (or say they don’t believe) in ghosts? Is it simply the adrenaline rush that comes from being terrified by a great storyteller? Or is it that such tales give form to our own inner demons?

‘Looking  back  over  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  of  serious  therapeutic  work,’ writes Stephen Johnson, ‘I’m  struck  by  how  often,  in  trying  to  explain  my  own  terrifying  mental  states  to  psychotherapists,  I’ve  resorted  to  images or turns of phrase in some of my own favourite ghost stories.’

With contributions from Alexander Pushkin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Tove Jansson, Penelope Lively, Flann O’Brien and more, this uniquely curated anthology brings together some of the most chilling – and enigmatic – stories from around the world. 

From the back cover: One in ten people claim to have encountered a ghost, yet science refuses to acknowledge their existence. However, it turns out that ghosts are by no means the only, or most mysterious of apparitions. Now, an author with a background in science has sought to uncover the parameters of this bewildering field. In this, he has adopted three principals: 1. to first seek a mundane explanation 2. not accept anything until it has been confirmed by further data, and 3. not to discard any item, but to file it away in case something similar appears later. In this manner, he documents the little known phenomenon of apparitions which can be shown to result from the mind of a third party. From there he moves to apparitions of the living, then to standard ghosts and hauntings, before delving into far more profound phenomena: elves and fairies, plus a variety of even weirder apparitions, some of which are truly terrifying, and others benevolent. These remarkable phenomena are all fully documented, and by the time you finish this book, you will find it hard to reject the conclusion that there exists a whole parallel world of immaterial entities, which is only on rare occasions perceptible to our senses.

From the back cover: This book follows the journey of Druze individuals who can remember their former lives and go on search for their previous families. For the Druze, an ethno-religious minority in the Middle East split between different nation-states, such cases and related discourses embody ambivalent bridges between personal, familial, and ethnic identities.

The contributions in this book, presented by Eléonore Armanet, Nour Farra Haddad, Gebhard Fartacek, Tobias Lang, Lorenz Nigst, and Salma Samaha, draw on ethnographic inquiries and illuminate the broad field of Druze conceptions of rebirth and group coherence against the backdrop of everyday challenges and recent conflicts in the Middle East and beyond.

The book is freely available on the publisher's website: Peter Lang.

From the publisher's website: “Parapsychology and Religion” is perhaps the most controversial research area in the psychology of religion. However, in recent decades, psychology of religion has witnessed a growing literature bearing on ontological issues including parapsychological topics such as distant healing and near-death experiences. This book argues that despite the methodological and theoretical controversies that still surround the field of parapsychology, the findings of research on alleged anomalous processes can inform the study of religious/spiritual experiences. Psychological literature on the paranormal is critically reviewed and it is argued that it became less a scientific endeavor and more an ideological program devised to denigrate paranormal believers and experiencers. This volume explores how an open-minded dialogue between parapsychology and psychology of religion might help us move beyond the present ideological disputes and reviewes the complex relations between parapsychology and religion over time as well as their implications for interdisciplinary research on religion and spirituality.

Further information at the publisher's website: Brill.