New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: Wales is said to be the most haunted country in the world. Restless spirits roam the ancient land, from the lofty peaks of Snowdonia to the dark depths of the abandoned mines. In Paranormal Wales author Mark Rees takes the reader on a spine-chilling journey to dozens of these locations, which include well-known tourist landmarks and more secluded spots well off the beaten track. These accounts of disembodied voices, supernatural mists and pesky poltergeists range from centuries-old legends to modern-day sightings. Visit the ‘oldest pub’ in Wales, where more than 180 people are claimed to have been sentenced to death by hanging. Explore the majestic opera house built by a world-famous soprano, who some say continues to perform on her beloved stage from beyond the grave. Spend the night in a seemingly idyllic manor house, where the presence of a Victorian housekeeper is said to reduce unsuspecting guests to tears. Or step back in time at one of the many ivy-strewn castles, where ladies in white patrol the Gothic battlements as tortured screams ring out from the dungeons below. Some of these stories might be familiar, others less so, but they all have one thing in common – they will make you think twice about turning off the light at night. Illustrated throughout, Paranormal Wales will be of spine-tingling interest to those wanting to discover more about the country’s haunted and hidden heritage.

Review by Tim Prasil,

The psychic child is one who is sensitive to nonphysical phenomena, energies and influences. The psychic child is sensitive to emotions and thoughts and to many other invisible happenings in the world around the child. The child's psychic nature is innate – born with the child, already functioning in a raw and preverbal form. To some degree, we have all been psychic children.

Review by Athena A, Drewes.

From the book cover: Looking for the paranormal is so much more than standing in a dark room asking for spirits to make a noise. Author Penny Griffiths Morgan discovered this whilst listening to other investigators talk about experiments, and decided to research into the various ideas and look to replicate them. Delve into this book and be ready to ask questions...

From the publisher's website: A new history which overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain. In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science – and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

Further information on the publisher's website: Yale University Press 

From the publisher's website: In Charles Richet: A Nobel Prize Winning Scientist’s Explorations of Psychic Phenomena, author, Carlos Alvarado, presents a collection of previously published scholarly papers about Richet. Charles Richet (1850-1935), the distinguished French physiologist who won a Nobel Prize for his work on anaphylaxis, was a renaissance man. In addition to physiology he wrote poetry and plays and took an interest in many topics including pacifism, eugenics, philosophy, psychology and psychical research, which he referred to as metapsychics—the subject of this book. Richet, in his role of psychical researcher, investigated ESP, mental and physical mediumship, survival of death and hypnosis. While never publically accepting survival and communication with discarnate entities, he became fully immersed in the phenomena and wrote in a letter to British physicist, Oliver Lodge, who had accepted it, “Without being resolutely spiritist in the sense of Conan Doyle and Allan Kardec, I gradually get closer to your ideas. I say to you—which is absolutely true—that your deep and scientific conviction had great influence, a very great influence.”

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

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.