New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: The Spiritualist Prime Minister by historian Dr. Anton Wagner presents former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s quest for spirit communication within the historical and cultural context of British, Canadian, and American Spiritualism. Mackenzie King was Canada’s longest-serving Prime Minister from 1922 to 1930 and from 1935 to 1948. Historians have ranked him as Canada’s greatest Prime Minister for his political leadership in winning Canada’s autonomy from the British Empire and for organizing Canada’s enormous war effort that enabled Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt to lead their countries to victory in World War II.

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

From the publisher's website: Volume 2 of The Spiritualist Prime Minister: Mackenzie King and His Mediums examines how prominent mediums in Canada, New York, and London such as Etta Wriedt, Eileen Garrett, and Gladys Osborne Leonard influenced King before, during and after the Second World War. The volume includes transcripts of seven of the Prime Minister’s séances with Hester Dowden, Florence Jane Sharplin, Gladys Osborne Leonard, Helen Hughes, and Geraldine Cummins in London during 1945-1947. The through-line of the biography is King’s search for means to communicate with the divine and to become a servant of God so that the material world could be transformed into the Kingdom of God on earth.

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

From the publisher's website: Do we survive our biological death? This is a most important question; many people are very interested to know the answer. This book provides a rational answer, combining empirical evidences and conceptual analysis. It also examines the implications of postmortem survival on science, personal morality, and the meaning of life. Empirical evidences used include those from the existing literatures in English and Chinese, and personal experience. Some photographical evidence is provided and a repeatable paranormal experience is suggested that any reader may try. A theory on the emergence of souls from minds is also advanced. If consciousness may emerge from mindless things by ‘brute force’ (natural random changes, including in Darwinian evolution) in our un-created universe of only 14 billion years old, as believed in simple materialism (apparently the position of most scholars, including scientists and philosophers), it should be easier for souls to emerge from minds if our universe was created for fast evolution.

Further information at the publisher's website: Eliva Books.

Review by Graham Kidd.

From the back cover: Eileen Jeanette Lyttle (Garrett) was born in Co. Meath, Ireland in 1892 as Emily Jane Savage. She was a renowned psychic and trance medium, having first trained at the British College of Psychic Science. From 1930 she gained international notoriety from what became known as the ‘R101 airship séance’ following her trance communication with the spirit of the captain of a crashed British airship. In 1940 she moved to New York and some years later founded the Parapsychology Foundation. Not all the facts of Garrett’s official life story add up.

From the publisher's website: Artists and writers very often predict future events in their work. Skeptics dismiss these anomalies, but what if they hold the key to the creative imagination? In this mind-bending book, the 40,000-year history of art is reconsidered as a literally prophetic enterprise. From Ice Age cave paintings to the novels of Virginia Woolf and Philip K. Dick, the films of Werner Herzog and David Lynch, and even the songs of The Beatles, Wargo makes a case for the inherently time-defying nature of inspiration. Creators often channel their own futures—and the future of their culture—in their art. It is an entirely new way of thinking about one of humanity’s oldest questions: Where do new ideas come from?

Further information at the publisher's website: Anomalist Books.

Review by Fred Andersson.

In this short, mind-expanding book, veteran investigative journalist Michael Schmicker takes you on his personal journey in search of a hard-science backed argument for an afterlife. Spoiler alert: He found one. With accessible summaries of contemporary scientific thinking and entertaining illustrations, Schmicker walks readers through a hidden, afterlife hypothesis in quantum physics that–to his great surprise and delight–is both grounded in scientific evidence and astonishingly optimistic: Our consciousness survives death because, contrary to what Newtonian science assumed, consciousness isn't made of matter—it's not a product of the physical brain.

From the author's website: In these pages of exploration, Dr. Davis K. Brimberg takes the reader through the fascinating world of parapsychology and the paranormal. Grounded by serious academic research from major institutions and Nobel laureates, Dr. Brimberg translates the scholarship of the field into readable, page-turning prose for the general audience. By weaving in heartfelt personal anecdotes as teaching examples, Dr. Brimberg paints a moving picture of how the paranormal touches us all.

Further information at the author's website: Davis K Brimberg

Review by Gregory M. Westlake

From the back cover: Dive deep into one of the UK's most chilling and debated paranormal phenomena with "Enfield Poltergeist Revisited." This gripping account by seasoned paranormal investigator Lee Brickley offers a fresh perspective on the mysterious events that haunted the Hodgson family in 1977. With meticulous research and riveting narrative, Brickley brings new life to the story that has captivated millions.

In an ordinary London suburb, an extraordinary series of events unfolded that would challenge the boundaries of reality and provoke a national sensation. Lee Brickley, leveraging years of investigative expertise, revisits the unsettling occurrences at 284 Green Street, where furniture moved on its own, chilling voices filled the air, and reality seemed to warp before the eyes of the witnesses.

Review by Melvyn Willin.

From the publisher's website: What if the British Museum isn’t a carefully ordered cross section of history but is in instead a palatial trophy cabinet of colonial loot – swarming with volatile and errant spirits? When artist and writer Noah Angell first heard murmurs of ghostly sightings at the British Museum he had to find out more. What started as a trickle soon became a deluge as staff old and new – from overnight security to respected curators – brought him testimonies of their supernatural encounters. It became clear that the source of the disturbances was related to the Museum’s contents – unquiet objects, holy plunder, and restless human remains protesting their enforced stay within the colonial collection’s cabinets and deep underground vaults. According to those who have worked there, the institution is heaving with profound spectral disorder. Ghosts of the British Museum fuses storytelling, folklore and history, digs deep into our imperial past and unmasks the world’s oldest national museum as a site of ongoing conflict, where restless objects are held against their will. It now appears that the objects are fighting back. 

Further information at the publisher's website: Monoray.

From the back cover: The summer of 1960 saw the Spiritualist world rocked by scandal, arguably the greatest to hit the movement. This author calls the scandal "Rifflegate." The editor of the Psychic Observer, America's leading psychic newspaper, and a paranormal investigator filmed six blatantly fraudulent seancés in infrared. Dressed as spirits, conspirators moved in and out of the seancés, unaware that their fraud and identities were about to be exposed on the front page of the Psychic Observer.

From the publisher's website: Ghostly encounters, alien abduction, reincarnation, talking to the dead, UFO sightings, inexplicable coincidences, out-of-body and near-death experiences. Are these legitimate phenomena? If not, how should we go about understanding them? In this fascinating book, Chris French investigates paranormal claims to discover what lurks behind this “weird shit.” French provides authoritative, evidence-based explanations for a wide range of superficially mysterious phenomena, and then goes further to draw out lessons with wider applications to many other aspects of modern society where critical thinking is urgently needed.

Using academic, comprehensive, logical, and, at times, mathematical approaches, The Science of Weird Shit convincingly debunks ESP, communicating with the dead, and alien abduction claims, among other phenomena. All the while, however, French maintains that our belief in such phenomena is neither ridiculous nor trivial; if anything, such claims can tell us a great deal about the human mind if we pay them the attention they are due. Filled with light-bulb moments and a healthy dose of levity, The Science of Weird Shit is a clever, memorable, and gratifying read you won't soon forget.

Further information at the publisher's website: The MIT Press.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: Explores the extraordinary states of expanded consciousness that arise during comas, both positive and negative Examining the beautiful and disturbing experiences of those who have survived comas, Alan and Beverley Pearce explore the mysterious levels of consciousness this near-death experience unlocks. They also share proven alternatives to medically-induced coma that are safer for treating critically ill patients and kinder for the patients and their families.

Further information at the publisher's website: Park Street Press.