New Books and Media

From the publisher’s website: This book, written by an internationally renowned researcher in the field, provides a thorough and systematic review of empirical investigations into the bases of belief in paranormal phenomena.

Following a discussion of the concept of paranormality, four main theoretical approaches to the nature of paranormal belief are examined. Some researchers have suggested that such beliefs are most prevalent among people on the margins of society. Another view is that paranormal belief is simply one facet of a broader worldview, a view that is characterised by a highly subjective and esoteric outlook on humanity, life, and the world at large. Other commentators have sought to depict the paranormal believer as essentially illogical, irrational, credulous, uncritical, and foolish. In addition, a few writers propose that paranormal beliefs are best understood as serving significant psychodynamic needs. The empirical foundations and shortcomings of each of these approaches are rigorously documented in turn. By way of a conclusion, the underlying issue of definition is revisited and a new, more comprehensive theory is advanced to model the psychological development of scientifically unsubstantiated beliefs. Opening with a foreword from the highly respected researchers in paranormal belief Dr Caroline Watt and Professor Richard Wiseman, this book will be of particular interest to professional researchers and serious students of the subject, as well as to clinical psychologists and counsellors. 

Dr Harvey J Irwin has an international reputation in research on the psychology of paranormal beliefs and parapsychological experiences. His other publications include over a hundred papers in academic journals and three books, including the highly praised and widely used text An Introduction to Parapsychology. Dr Irwin was a member of the School of Psychology in the University of New England, Australia for over 30 years, teaching a variety of courses from parapsychology to psychopathology, and serving as Head of School for some years. Since his recent formal retirement from academia he has remained active in research and remains an Honorary Research Fellow in his former university. In 2002 the Parapsychological Association accorded Dr Irwin its Outstanding Research Contribution Award in recognition of his empirical and theoretical work in parapsychology over 25 years.

From the publisher’s website: In this classic book on destructive hauntings, Colin Wilson, renowned authority on the paranormal, examines the evidence and develops a definitive theory of the poltergeist phenomenon. Countless true-life cases of poltergeist infestations have been recorded since the days of ancient Greece and Rome to the present. But what are poltergeists? Where do they come from? And why do they appear in our world?
 
From the case of a black-robed monk that terrorized a family for years, to the investigation of a talking mongoose, to true stories of gnomes, sorcerers, witches, and demons, this guide explores a bone-chilling gallery of the mysterious entities known as poltergeists.

From the publisher’s website: From shadowy figures, strange mists and apparitions to angels and demons, "Ghost Caught on Film 2" is a compendium of extraordinary phenomena caught on film. Jim Eaton has spent over ten years studying thousands of ghost photographs and here he presents a collection of the most intriguing in seven enigmatic chapters. This title includes a gallery of explainable photographic effects that are commonly mistaken for pictures of ghosts. The best selection of ghost photos yet published is accompanied by illuminating commentary - whether you are a sceptic or a believer, you can't help but be drawn into the unknown.

From the publisher’s website: In its day, spiritualism brought hundreds of thousands of Americans to séance tables and trance lectures. It has alternately been ridiculed as the apogee of fatuous credulity and hailed as a feminist movement. Its tricks have been exposed, its charlatans unmasked, and its heroes' names lost to posterity. In its day, however, its leaders were household names and politicians worried about capturing the Spiritualist vote. Cathy Gutierrez places Spiritualism in the context of the 19th-century American Renaissance. Although this epithet usually signifies the sudden blossoming of American letters, Gutierrez points to its original meaning: a cultural imagination enraptured with the past and the classics in particular, accompanied by a cultural efflorescence. Spiritualism, she contends, was the religious articulation of the American Renaissance, and the ramifications of looking backward for advice about the present were far-reaching. The Spiritualist movement, says Gutierrez, was a 'renaissance of the Renaissance,' a culture in love with history as much as it trumpeted progress and futurity, and an expression of what constituted religious hope among burgeoning technology and colonialism. Rejecting Christian ideas about salvation, Spiritualists embraced Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas. Humans were shot through with the divine, rather than seen as helpless and inexorably corrupt sinners in the hands of a transcendent, angry God. Gutierrez's study of this fascinating and important movement is organized thematically. She analyzes Spiritualist conceptions of memory, marriage, medicine, and minds, explores such phenomena as machines for contacting the dead, spirit-photography, the idea of eternal spiritual affinity (which implied the necessity for marriage reform), the connection between health and spirituality, and mesmerism.

From the publisher’s website: What does science have to say about life after death? Until recently, very little. But now there are answers, and this book lays them out. Literally every person alive today will be better off if they know them. An exhaustive study by the University of Virginia Medical School clearly indicates consciousness continues after death in at least some cases, if not all. Research by others, however, shows that not knowing what to expect when death arrives, or being in denial about our demise, can lead to situations none of us would choose, or wish upon a loved one. This is reason enough to read this book and to make those close to you aware of what you learn.

But there are other benefits to reading it as well. Research by the Windbridge Institute strongly indicates it may be possible for living loved ones to get in touch with deceased loved ones. This book tells how, which will surely be good news for those who wonder about or have questions for close friends and family on the other side. Readers will learn death is a transition and not necessarily something to fear, provided we prepare for it mentally as well as understand and anticipate the stages our disembodied consciousness is likely to pass through. Those with an interest in science will be fascinated by the new discoveries and the theories postulated to explain them. Those interested in religion and spirituality will have some beliefs confirmed while others may be challenged. Whatever the case, this book could at last provide common ground for science and religion to occupy.

From the publisher’s website: This new book is a series of essays related and responding to the PEAR laboratory publication, “Sensors, Filters, and the Source of Reality." This anthology presents an assortment of perspectives on how consciousness creates its experiential reality through an array of subjective “filters” by which “we endeavor to infer, either intuitively or analytically, composite functional models of our world and of ourselves.” Taken together, the individual contributions serve as an array of lenses that amplify the seminal essay.

From the publisher’s website: How the ghost stories of pagan times reveal the seamless union existing between the world of the living and the afterlife.

• Demonstrates how Medieval Christianity transformed the more corporeal ghost encountered in pagan cultures with the disembodied form known today

• Explains how the returning dead were once viewed as either troublemakers or guarantors of the social order

The impermeable border the modern world sees existing between the world of the living and the afterlife was not visible to our ancestors. The dead could--and did--cross back and forth at will. The pagan mind had no fear of death, but some of the dead were definitely to be dreaded: those who failed to go peacefully into the afterlife but remained on this side in order to right a wrong that had befallen them personally or to ensure that the law promoted by the ancestors was being respected. But these dead individuals were a far cry from the amorphous ectoplasm that is featured in modern ghost stories. These earlier visitors from beyond the grave--known as revenants--slept, ate, and fought like men, even when, like Klaufi of the Svarfdaela Saga, they carried their heads in their arms.

Revenants were part of the ancestor worship prevalent in the pagan world and still practiced in indigenous cultures such as the Fang and Kota of equatorial Africa, among others. The Church, eager to supplant this familial faith with its own, engineered the transformation of the corporeal revenant into the disembodied ghost of modern times, which could then be easily discounted as a figment of the imagination or the work of the devil. The sanctified grounds of the church cemetery replaced the burial mounds on the family farm, where the ancestors remained as an integral part of the living community. This exile to the formal graveyard, ironically enough, has contributed to the great loss of the sacred that characterizes the modern world.

This book has been reviewed by John Newton in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Vol 75(3).

Stuart Cumberland (1857 – 1922) astonished Europe with his pioneer performances in mindreading, drawing acclaim and fame with miracles like finding hidden objects through supposed psychic power.  A skilful writer, Cumberland (born Charles Garner) wrote several books on his life in mentalism and the techniques of phony mediums and psychics.

Our Stuart Cumberland: The Victorian Mind Reader CD brings you all of his rare mindreading publications, as well as several Cumberland-penned articles on mentalism and spiritualism, plus bonus books recounting his travels around the world.

With the help of mentalism historian Barry Wiley, we’ve also collected for you articles on his career from the Victorian press; his rare Cumberland News souvenir newspaper; and a complete Cumberland bibliography.

The CD includes over 2000 pages of material, all in convenient PDF format on CD with an index included for easy access.

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher’s website: Immortal Longings: FWH Myers and the Victorian search for life after death is the first full-length biography of Frederic W.H. Myers, leading figure in the Society for Psychical Research and friend and associate of Browning, Gladstone, Ruskin, Tennyson, Swinburne, Henry James, Prince Leopold and other influential Victorians. The book offers a fascinating insight into a key period in the development of Victorian thought.

Among many things it covers:

1. Extraordinary Phenomena Myers investigated extraordinary phenomena, much of which is still reported today: out of body experiences and astral projection, near death experiences, poltergeists, gurus like Madame Blavatsky claiming strange powers, mediums both private and public, and haunted houses (for example, the giant warrior haunting a chateau near Heidelberg, the Cheltenham Ghost that was seen by a considerable number of people, and the odd doings at Ballechin House in Scotland which caused a scandal in the press.

2. Life After Death Investigations Myers believed he had virtually proved life after death by a) the link he thought established between hundreds of apparitions and living or dead human beings b) the messages that the outstanding mediums Mrs Piper and Mrs Thompson gave him from his first great love Annie and his intimate friend and co-worker Edmund Gurney which contained information the medium could not know and was delivered in a way highly characteristic of the personality concerned.

3. Automatic Writing Some researchers have claimed that he has returned after death and proved his continued existence through the automatic writings of a number of mediums in England, America, India. These writings continued for thirty years.

4. Romance & Suicide There is also love, tragedy and jealousy in Myers' life. His first great love Annie, a married woman, committed suicide and Myers' wife, a rather possessive person, tried to prevent any detail about this being made public after his death, even though the relationship was platonic. This inhibited the work of researchers who were trying to verify the 'post-mortem' communications from Myers, since, for many years, they could not check the facts.

5. Credibility Myers researches led him to forming a view about human personality and psychology which Aldous Huxley has said is much richer than Freud's

From the publisher’s website: This is the story of James Leininger, who – a little more than two weeks after his second birthday – began having blood-curdling nightmares that just would not stop. When James began screaming out recurring phrases like, "Plane on fire! Little man can't get out!" the Leiningers finally admitted that they truly had to take notice.

When details of planes and war tragedies no two-year-old boy could know continued-- even in stark daylight-- Bruce and Andrea Leininger began to realize that this was an incredible situation. Soul Survivor is the story of how the Leiningers pieced together what their son was communicating and eventually discovered that he was reliving the past life of World War II fighter pilot James Huston. As Bruce Leininger struggled to understand what was happening to his son, he also uncovered details of James Huston's life-- and death-- as a pilot that will fascinate military buffs everywhere.

In Soul Survivor, we are taken for a gripping ride as the Leiningers' belief system is shaken to the core, and both of these families come to know a little boy who, against all odds and even in the face of true skeptics, harbors the soul of this man who died long ago.

Review by Zofia Weaver.

From the publisher’s website: Experts from around the world share the history and current state of near-death experience (NDE) knowledge. They explore controversies in the field, offer stories from their research, and express their hopes for the future of investigation into this fascinating phenomenon.

As modern medical techniques for resuscitation advance, NDEs are more frequently reported. These include more than the popular notions of moving through a tunnel or seeing a light. They also include people, once revived, knowing things their knowledge of which can't currently be explained. As The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation makes clear, great controversy exists in the medical and psychological fields concerning NDEs. Are they caused by physiological changes in the brain, or are they biological reactions to oxygen loss or impending death? Are they a product of changing states of consciousness? Or are they caused by something else altogether? All of these ideas and more are discussed in this unique and comprehensive volume.

Customer review: At last, a long awaited study of the controversial subject of reincarnation and its bedfellow karma. Hitherto, books on the subject have generally supported reincarnation as a reality. James Webster's new book challenges most eloquently alleged cases of reincarnation which to some offers part explanation of the purpose of life. 

The author quotes cases of spirit overshadowing, spirit attachment, false memories and the frailty of hypnotic regression which can be confused with evidence of reincarnation or past lives. Sometimes these manifestations are of a third person in the Spirit World projecting thoughts of their past life through the aura of the unwilling subject in the present. 

Webster also quotes from the research of numerous intellectuals from the fields of philosophy, psychiatry and science along with contributions from the pioneers of spiritualism and psychical research, past and present. Most interesting are accounts of the work of Dr. Carl Wickland, an American psychiatrist whose work in spirit attachment is becoming recognised in modern psychiatry. Dr. Wickland helped patients who had been mentally disturbed by confused thoughts of being reincarnated or holding attachments of persons in spirit attempting to reincarnate. This milestone book is a must read and represents a definitive reference for students of spiritualism and philosophy.