New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: You don't have to 'be religious' to believe there may be a life after death!

The Medium and the Minister explores psychical and religious approaches to the possibility of an afterlife. The tensions and conflicts between these two approaches and the heated controversies they have generated are illustrated by a number of case studies. These focus on the challenges posed by psychical research and spiritualism to orthodox religion as the ultimate authority for information and teaching about the afterlife. Prominence is given initially to the campaigns of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge which aimed to publicise the psychical evidence and to the Church’s reaction to them. Later developments and initiatives to try to reconcile the opposing positions are then examined in the light of further psychical research. The issues raised are shown to be still highly relevant to current beliefs and attitudes and to the question of what might constitute evidence for life after death.

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

From the publisher's website: Exploring the paranormal through musical phenomena, this encyclopedia covers a range of anomalies, from musical mediumship to locations throughout the world where music has been heard with no obvious source. Other manifestations, such as the abilities of musical savants and the anesthetic use of music during surgical procedures, are included with a focus on paraphysical aspects. Entries describe examples from earliest history up to the present—interpretation is left to the reader. Broader themes and concepts are discussed in appendices, with additional references provided for further study.

Further information on the publisher's website: McFarland.

From the back cover: Does consciousness continue after death? For 150 years, scientists, doctors, and other highly qualified investigators have carefully collected evidence in hopes of answering this question. In this award-winning essay, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette analyzes the best of that evidence to date.

Starting with third-person phenomena such as after-death apparitions, mediumship, and telephone calls from the dead and moving on to first-person phenomena like near-death experiences, memories of previous lives, and memories of the period between lives, Rawlette lays out the vast landscape of evidence for life beyond the grave. She argues that extensive cross-validation between first- and third-person evidence cripples the strongest skeptical arguments brought against each type considered alone. Ultimately, she concludes that the survival of consciousness is the best explanation for the evidence taken as a whole and considers what implications this has for our understanding of the world we live in, even while we are still on this side of death.

From the back cover: When strange things happen to people, or when they experience bad luck, they may come to believe that they've been cursed. In this well-researched and well-referenced book, Dr Peter McCue looks at curses or alleged curses from an evidential and parapsychological perspective. He also examines what appear to be strange coincidences. He presents a wide array of cases, and asks how strange coincidences arise and how curses might work.

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?