New Books and Media

From the publisher’s website: In 1945 the celebrated researcher Harry Price published Poltergeist over England, popularising the word poltergeist (German for ‘noisy ghost’) and making famous the kind of physical haunting characterised by thrown objects, mysterious noises, and damage by fire or water. Now, for the first time, an astonishing array of historical Scottish poltergeist cases are gathered together, from the seventeenth century to the modern period – unearthing many episodes that have remained neglected for centuries. Some were no doubt hoaxes, but in others, multiple witnesses testified to disturbing events enacted over months. Whatever the true cause of the events, the historical evidence from Scotland suggests that poltergeist phenomena are undoubtedly real. Author Biography Geoff Holder is an expert on the darker side of Scottish history. He has written more than 20 books on the subject, including various volumes in the Paranormal and Haunted series, the Guide to Mysterious series and Scottish Bodysnatchers. His upcoming books include Bloody British History: Edinburgh. A long-standing member of institutions such as The Ghost Club, he lecturers and leads guided walks throughout the year. He lives in Perth.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Some three years after the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882, Leonora Piper, a young Boston, Massachusetts housewife, was “discovered” by William James, a pioneering psychologist, of Harvard University. Messages were delivered through Mrs. Piper that seemed to be coming from spirits of the dead. Soon after the discovery of Mrs. Piper, the American branch of the SPR (ASPR) was formed under the guidance of Professor James, and its primary task became the study of her mediumship, although it undertook the investigation of other mediums and paranormal phenomena, as well. A number of other reputable scientists and scholars studied Mrs. Piper for a quarter of a century. Unfortunately, because of the resistance of mainstream science on one end and orthodox religion on the other, the latter seeing communication with spirits as demonic, the research has been, for the most part, filed away in dust-covered cabinets and written off by many as outdated. Skeptics deride it as the product of hallucination and delusion and conclude that Mrs. Piper was just another charlatan, one clever enough to dupe many intelligent men and women in hundreds of observations over some 25 years. As the researchers came to understand, spirits face many obstacles in communicating with the earth realm and thus their messages are often fragmentary, confusing, distorted, meaningless, and wrong. Professor James called it the “bosh” material, seeing it as one major reason why Mrs. Piper’s mediumship was not more widely accepted. In this book, author Michael Tymn filters out much of the bosh, permitting the reader to better appreciate the genuine communication. He explores the various interpretations, other than fraud, considered by the researchers. He approaches the subject as a lawyer arguing for the reality of spirit communication. He believes that those who carefully study the research and take the time to understand it will likely see Leonora Piper as the “white crow” that William James proclaimed her to be – the one who proved that all crows are not black, the one who gave science some very intriguing evidence that, under certain conditions, the “dead” can communicate with us. A sample chapter can be found on the White Crow Books website: http://whitecrowbooks.com/books/sample/resurrecting_leonora_piper_how_s… Michael Tymn discusses the book: http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/entry/an_interview_with_the_autho…

From the publisher’s website: Discover how psychic you really are with this comprehensive and practical guide to developing and honing your psychic skills. The Everyday Psychic shows you how to harness your natural psychic abilities and experiment with psychic tools to get answers, guide your decisions, and enrich your life. For the curious seeker as well as the skilled practitioner, The Everyday Psychic offers techniques, tips, and tools designed to awaken, refresh, and sharpen one’s natural psychic gifts by: Activating Your Psychic Gifts Becoming More Intuitive Remembering Your Dreams Tools and Techniques for Accessing the Subconscious Karen Harrison has helped many thousands of people awaken their psychic selves and improve their daily lives. Now she offers that in this book.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Ian Stevenson was a prominent and internationally-known psychiatrist, researcher, and well-regarded figure in the field of psychical research. Science, the Self, and Survival after Death is the first book devoted to surveying the entirety of his work and the extraordinary scope and variety of his research. He studied universal questions that cut to the core of a person’s identity: What is consciousness? How did we become the unique individuals that we are? Do we survive in some form after death? Stevenson’s writings on the nature of science and the mind-body relationship, as well as his empirical research, demonstrate his strongly held belief that the methods of science can be applied successfully to such humanly vital questions. Featuring a selection of his papers and excerpts from his books, this collection presents the larger context of Stevenson’s work and illustrates the issues and questions that guided him throughout his career. Introduction General Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 1. “Some of My Journeys in Medicine” (1989) Part 1: New Ideas in Science Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 2. “Scientists with Half-Closed Minds” (1958) 3. “What Are the Irreducible Components of the Scientific Enterprise?” (1999) Part 2: The Nature of Human Personality Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 4. “Why Medicine is Not a Science” (1949) 5. Excerpts from “The End of Patient Abuse in Medical Care” (1985) 6. Excerpts from “Psychosomatic Medicine. Part I. What We Know about Illness and the Emotions” (1954) 7. “Bodily Changes Corresponding to Mental Images in the Person Affected” (1997) 8. “Bodily Changes Corresponding to Another Person’s Mental Images” (1997) 9. Excerpts from “Comments on the Psychological Effects of Mescaline and Allied Drugs” (1957) 10. Excerpts from “Can We Describe the Mind?” (1980) Part 3: Psychical Research - Principles and Methods Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 11. “Changing Fashions in the Study of Spontaneous Cases” (1987) 12. Excerpts from “Comments on Paper by Michael Scriven” (1962) 13. “Thoughts on the Decline of Major Paranormal Phenomena” (1990) Part 4: Research on the Question of Survival After Death: Reviews and Representative Case Reports Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 14. “Sources of Evidence Supporting a Belief in Survival” (1969) 15. “Research into the Evidence of Man’s Survival After Death” (1977) a. Apparitions Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 16. Cases 1- 4 from “Six Modern Apparitional Experiences” (1995) b. Deathbed Visions Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 17. Cases 5-6 from “Six Modern Apparitional Experiences” (1995) c. Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 18. “Cardiac Arrest Remembered” (1971) 19. Excerpts from “Comments on ‘The Reality of Death Experiences: A Personal Perspective’” (1980) 20. “The Case of Linda McKnight” (1998) d. Mediumship: Drop-in Communicators Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 21. “A Communicator of the ‘Drop-In’ Type in Iceland: The Case of Gudni Magnusson” (1975) e. Cases of the Reincarnation Type Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 22. Excerpts from “Reincarnation: Field Studies and Theoretical Issues”(1977) 23. “Some New Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. IV: The Case of Ampan Petcherat” (1973) 24. “Three New Cases of the Reincarnation Type in Sri Lanka with Written Records Made before Verification” (1988) f. Cases of the Reincarnation Type with Birthmarks and Birth Defects Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 25. Excerpt from Reincarnation and Biology (1997) 26. “Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds in Deceased Persons” (1993) 27. Case of Hanumant Saxena (1997) g. Cases of Maternal Impressions Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 28. “A New Look at Maternal Impressions: An Analysis of 50 Published Cases and Reports of Two Recent Examples” (1992) 29. “A Case of Severe Birth Defects Possibly Due to Cursing” (1989) h. Cases of the Possession Type Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 30. “A Case of the Possession Type in India with Evidence of Paranormal Knowledge” (1989) i. Xenoglossy Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 31. “A Case of Secondary Personality with Xenoglossy” (1979) Part 5: Implications Introduction (Emily Williams Kelly) 32. Excerpts from “The Explanatory Value of the Idea of Reincarnation” (1977) 33. Excerpts from “Comments on ‘Is Outcome for Schizophrenia Better in Nonindustrial Societies? The Case of Sri Lanka’” (1979) 34. “The Significance of Survival for Our Present Life” (1969) 35. “Assumptions of Religion and Psychiatry” (1955) Conclusion: Toward a Tertium Quid (Emily Williams Kelly) Appendix: Publications of Ian Stevenson

From the publisher’s website: The fascinating history of ghosts and the search to prove they exist. 'Is there anybody out there?' No matter how rationally we order our lives, few of us are completely immune to the suggestion of the uncanny and the fear of the dark. The subject of whether ghosts exist has fascinated some of the finest minds in history and it remains a subject of overwhelming interest today. This is the first comprehensive, authoritative and readable history of the evolution of the ghost in the west, examining, as every good natural history should, the behaviour of the subject in its preferred environment. What did the haunted see? What did they believe? What happened next? Taking us through the famous hauntings that have obsessed the world, from the poltergeist of Cock Lane and the dark events of Borley Rectory right up to the present day, Roger Clarke unfolds a colourful story of charlatans and true believers. His surprising castlist ranges from Samuel Johnson to John Wesley, and from Harry Houdini to Adolf Hitler, and his chapters cover everything from the technology of ghost-hunting to the emergence of the Victorian ghost flash mob. Written as grippingly as the best ghost fiction, A Natural History of Ghosts takes us on a unforgettable hunt through the haunted houses of the last three hundred years. Roger Clarke is a journalist and film critic who has written for the Big Issue, the Observer and Sunday Times. Brought up in a haunted house, he was the youngest person ever to be invited to join the Ghost Society. His stories were published in the Fontana Book of Ghost Stories when he was just fifteen. This is the book he has always wanted to write.

From the publisher’s website: Hallucination was always the ghost story’s elephant in the room. Even before the vogue for psychical research and spiritualism began to influence writers at the end of the nineteenth century, tales of horror and the supernatural, of ghosts and demons, had been haunted by the possibility of some grand deception by the senses. But what is certainly true is that, during the nineteenth century, hallucination took on a new force and significance not just in ghost stories and horror fiction, but in other forms of writing. Authors began to encourage their readers to assess whether the ghostly had its origins in some supernatural phenomenon from beyond the grave, or from some deception within our own minds. This wide-ranging book explores the many factors which contributed to this rise in the interest in hallucination and visionary experience, during the nineteenth century and beyond. Through a series of close and often unusual readings of numerous writers including Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, and Arthur Machen, this original study explores what happened when hallucination appeared in fiction, and – even more importantly – why it happened at all.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Hallucinations, for most people, imply madness. But there are many different types of non-psychotic hallucination caused by various illnesses or injuries, by intoxication – even, for many people, by falling sleep. From the elementary geometrical shapes that we see when we rub our eyes to the complex swirls and blind spots and zigzags of a visual migraine, hallucination takes many forms. At a higher level, hallucinations associated with the altered states of consciousness that may come with sensory deprivation or certain brain disorders can lead to religious epiphanies or conversions. Drawing on a wealth of clinical examples from his own patients as well as historical and literary descriptions, Oliver Sacks investigates the fundamental differences and similarities of these many sorts of hallucinations, what they say about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: This book is written for the general reader and for the health care and other support services for Near Death Experiencers. When I read that some experiencers felt driven to discover what their mission was, I immediately knew that I was going to be helping them to discover their purpose in life. I developed a course for NDErs, on finding the soul’s mission in life. I understood that they thought differently since the NDE, and I kept this in mind when designing the course. I gave the first course to volunteer participants who had had NDEs. Course participants were delighted to find their missions and discover how to carry them out. They urged me to get the course out into the field of support systems for NDErs. This book includes the full course. See www.ndemission.com for further information.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: his collection of chilling ghost stories tells of apparitions, manifestations and strange happenings in Neath's streets, cemeteries and alehouses. From tales of ghostly Arthurian Knights slumbering peacefully under a mountain to mysterious lights in the night skies, the author has collected these stories over a period of forty years, and many have never previously been published. Some of the spirits contained within are helpful and kindly, such as the mysterious fisherman who rescued a drowning man off Morfa Beach, whilst others are malicious and destructive, like the poltergeist that terrified a mother and a young son in their own home. Other tales are almost unbearably sad, including the apparition of a young woman who hanged herself after being jilted by her lover.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: A thoughtful biography of one of the most polarizing pioneers of alternative spirituality, the occult-mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Pioneer. Visionary. Provocateur. Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky — mystic, occult writer, child of Russian aristocrats, spiritual seeker who travelled five continents, and founder (with Henry Steel Olcott) of the Theosophical Society — is still being hailed as an icon and scorned as a fraud more than 120 years after her death. But despite perennial interest in her life, writings, and philosophy, no single biography has examined the controversy and legacy of this influential thinker who helped define modern alternative spirituality — until now. Gary Lachman, the acclaimed spiritual biographer behind volumes such as Rudolf Steiner and Jung the Mystic, brings us an in-depth look at Blavatsky, objectively exploring her unique and singular contributions toward introducing Eastern and esoteric spiritual ideas to the West during the nineteenth century, as well as the controversies that continue to colour the discussions of her life and work.

From the publisher’s website: Discover your true purpose in this life, by exploring your past life in this do-it-yourself guide to past life regression. Award-winning hypnotherapist Dr. Georgina Cannon shows how we can consciously influence our future by better understanding our past in Return Again. Cannon offers a practical and accessible approach that anyone can use to discover: Body and soul agreements Planes of existence Levels of understanding Karma Soul Mates--you may have more than one! Past lives and your "interlife"--where you meet those with whom you have a soul contract to plan your next life Cannon offers a step-by-step process with simple explanations and pragmatic exercises that readers can use to answer questions about their past and current lives. Return Again is an easy-to-use tool that anyone can use to live life to the fullest. Dr. Georgina Cannon is an award-winning author, corporate speaker, international facilitator, and practicing consulting hypnotist who brilliantly and skillfully uncovers the powers of the subconscious mind-body connection. She is the founding director of the Ontario Hypnosis Centre, Canada's leading hypnosis training facility and clinic. She has produced numerous self-hypnosis CDs, DVDs, and videos and is a regular contributor to the Shirley MacLaine website. Dr. Cannon has appeared on REMFM, Talk Radio Europe, CBC-TV, REMFM/Talk Radio Europe, Slice TV and Vision TV, and has been featured in the Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: This book divides into two parts. The first is a personal narrative of the impact of the death of the author’s son Ralph on him and his family and his efforts to see if there was any evidence for his continued existence (generated largely through visits to mediums) that a thinking person could take seriously. The second is an attempt to evaluate that evidence objectively (based on an extensive survey of current and past scientific research in the UK and the USA). The title reflects the inevitable tension between emotion and intellect in such an enquiry. Trevor Hamilton retired from his post in higher education at the end of 2006 to write full time. He has degrees from Oxford, London and Sussex Universities. He is the author of a well-received biography of F.W.H. Myers, one of the founding figures of the Society for Psychical Research.

Review by Tom Ruffles