New Books and Media

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,

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 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.

From the back cover: If you keep your eyes and your mind open, you will see that the paranormal, the miraculous, the merely inexplicable not only happen, but they are not even uncommon. Now the author of Apparitions has provided an overview of more than a dozen phenomena which defy the laws of nature as we know them. Trained in science himself, his procedure is as follows: document everything, attempt a mundane explanation at first instance, don’t accept anything until it is confirmed by a second incident, but at the same time do not reject anything, no matter how fantastic.

From the publisher's website: The evidence for an afterlife is vast, varied, and ancient. Now, meticulously compiled into one place, this evidence can be critically evaluated to resolve the age-old controversy of survival beyond death. Equipping you with a tool kit drawn from science, philosophy, and legal reasoning, Oxford-educated philosopher Chris Carter facilitates a thorough examination of the evidence and its corresponding counterarguments. Explore compelling case studies of near-death experiences, deathbed visions, apparitions, children who remember a previous life, and communications from the deceased. With findings that cannot be explained away by fraud, mistaken eyewitness testimony, incompetence, or extrasensory perception (ESP), this book proves beyond all reasonable doubt that our consciousness endures past bodily death.

Further information at the publisher's website: Llewellyn.

From the back cover: Creators draw on the dreamworld for inspiration … and dreams are often prophetic. This mind-bending exercise in ”psychic deconstruction” closely examines the works and lives of six imaginative and often dream-inspired writers: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Shelley, J. R. R. Tolkien, Stanislaw Lem, Joan Lindsay, and Franz Kafka. Wargo shows that some of the most dazzling and original inventions of the literary imagination are really impossible time loops, premonitions of how the author would look back on their work in hindsight or how its publication would change their life.

From the back cover: Eileen Garrett was one of the most internationally renowned and studied psychic mediums of the twentieth century. She was also an author, publisher, and co-founder of the Parapsychology Foundation. In Behind the Medium’s Mask: Eileen Garrett’s Shadow Self, historian Elisabeth J.C. (Lis) Warwood reveals significant discrepancies in Garrett’s autobiographies. That none of her Spiritualist associates or parapsychological investigators discovered the woman behind the mask may shock those who grew up believing her origin story.

A vital contribution to the historical study of psychic phenomena, Behind the Medium’s Mask sheds new light on a figure who has captivated scholars and the public alike. It is a revealing investigation into the facts of Eileen Garrett’s life. presenting new and important insights that demand a reassessment of Garrett’s abilities, motives, and influence in the world of parapsychology.

From the back cover: What lies behind the hums, whisphers, disembodied voices and booms that defy explanation? This book takes you on a journey through the mysterious world of unexplained sounds from the ocean, sky, forest, ground, blending witness accounts, scientific inquiry, and cultural insights to uncover the secrets behind these auditory phenomena. Are these disturbing sounds natural, psychological, or something far more extraordinary?