New Books and Media

Becoming Psychic: Lessons from the Minds of Mediums, Healers, and Psychics, by Jeff Tarrant

Publication Details: Health Communications Inc, ISBN: 9780757324789
Publish Date: November, 2023
Cover of Becoming Psychic

From the publisher's website: Jeff Tarrant was fascinated by the paranormal as a child but then his training as a neuropsychologist turned him into a hardcore skeptic. If something could not be reliably and consistently demonstrated in the laboratory, then it wasn’t real. These rigid ideas were gradually worn away as he repeatedly witnessed and experienced things that simply should not be possible—telekenesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, mediumship, energy healing, and more….This book follows his journey of studying, interviewing, and testing a wide variety of mediums, psychics, and healers as he tries to determine what is going on in their brains when they engage in these supernormal abilities. Readers will get to know these gifted people, exploring what makes them tick and discovering firsthand evidence that this stuff is real.

Further information at the publisher's website: Health Communications Inc

The Art of Ectoplasm: Encounters with Winnipeg’s Ghost Photographs, edited by Serena Keshavjee

Publication Details: University of Manitoba Press, ISBN: 9781772840377
Publish Date: November, 2023
Cover of The Art of Ectoplasm

From the publisher's website: In the wake of the First World War and the 1918–19 pandemic, the world was left grappling with a profound sense of loss. It was against this backdrop that a Winnipeg couple, physician T.G. Hamilton and nurse Lillian Hamilton, began their research, documenting and photographing séances they held in their home laboratory. Their extensive study of the survival of human consciousness after death resulted in a stunning collection of hundreds of photographs, including images of tables flying through the air, mediums in trances, and, most curious of all, ectoplasm—a strange, white substance through which ghosts could apparently manifest.

Further information at the publisher's website: University of Manitoba Press.

The Lady in the Bay Window: A True Story of a Haunted Sheffield Home, by William C. Grave

Publication Details: Independently published, ISBN: 9798862208191
Publish Date: October, 2023
Cover of The Lady in the Bay Window

From the back cover: Welcome to the world of paranormal activity in a residential home. In 'The Lady in the Bay Window,' William C. Grave takes you on a hair-raising journey through 25 true stories of unexplained occurrences in his home. As a sceptic, William never believed in ghosts or the paranormal until he purchased his current residence 18 years ago. Since then, he has experienced a series of chilling events that have left him questioning everything he thought he knew about the world. From sightings of apparitions to strange footsteps and poltergeist activity, William's home has become a hotbed for the supernatural.

The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism, by Brandon Rickabaugh and J. P. Moreland

Publication Details: Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN: 9781394195480
Publish Date: October, 2023
Cover of The Substance of Consciousness

From the publisher's website: A singularly powerful and rigorous argument in favor of modern substance dualism In The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism, two distinguished philosophers deliver a unique and powerful defense of contemporary substance dualism, which makes the claim that the human person is an embodied fundamental, immaterial, and unifying substance. Multidisciplinary in scope, the book explores areas of philosophy, cognitive science, neuroscience, and the sociology of mind-body beliefs.

Further information at the publisher's website: Wiley-Blackwell.

Ted Serios: The Mind’s Eye

Publication Details: Atelier Éditions, ISBN: 9781954957039
Publish Date: October, 2023
Cover of Ted Serios

From the publisher's website: Our thoughts are known to us, and us alone. But for a brief period in the 1960s, Ted Serios (1918–2006) attempted to prove that his inner reality could be documented. Serios demonstrated an ostensibly psychic act termed “thoughtography,” involving the transfer of mental images onto undeveloped Polaroid film. In studies supervised by respected Denver-based psychiatrist Dr. Jule Eisenbud, Serios produced over 1,000 anomalous photographs, a feat that has never been fully dismissed or wholly verified. Existing as an uncomfortable knot in time, the details of the Serios phenomenon can’t be disentangled without questioning the social conditions that produced it in the first place.

Further information at the publisher's website: Atelier Éditions

The Haunting of Borley Rectory: The Story of a Ghost Story, by Sean O'Connor

Publication Details: Simon & Schuster, ISBN: 9781471194795
Publish Date: October, 2023
Cover of The Haunting of Borley Rectory

From the publisher's website: The haunting, sensationally reported in the tabloid press, gripped the nation. It was investigated by Harry Price, a self-made ‘psychic detective’. This was the case that would make Price’s name as the most celebrated ghost-hunter of the age. He recorded the evidence of 200 witnesses to over 2,000 supernatural incidents. This surely confirmed that not only did ghosts exist but, finally, here was proof of life after death. With the tension of a thriller and the uncanny chills of a classic English ghost story, Sean O’Connor brings the story of Borley Rectory to vivid life as an allegory for an age fraught with anxiety, haunted by the shadow of the Great War and terrified of the apocalypse to come.

Further information at the publisher's website: Simon & Schuster.

Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches (rev. Ed.), by Malcolm Gaskill

Publication Details: Penguin, ISBN: 9781802061994
Publish Date: October, 2023
Cover of Hellish Nell

From the publisher's website: One of the last criminal trials using the 1735 Witchcraft Act was, improbably, in London in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a middle-aged Scotswoman. This is her extraordinary story. Helen Duncan - known since childhood as 'Hellish Nell', for her uncontainable nature - was one of the most popular mediums of the twentieth century, holding seances around the country where she was believed to manifest the spirits of the dead.

Further information at the publisher's website: Penguin

Troubled by Faith: Insanity and the Supernatural in the Age of the Asylum, by Owen Davies

Publication Details: Oxford University Press, ISBN: 9780198873006
Publish Date: September, 2023
Cover of Troubled by Faith

From the publisher's website: The early nineteenth century witnessed the birth of psychiatry, a new medical science that fundamentally changed how mental illness was labelled and understood. Troubled by Faith explores how psychiatrists not only thought they were agents of modernity but that they could also explain the occult mysteries of the past. They bristled with confidence that, in an era of unprecedented change, unlocking the secrets of the mind was essential to an ordered and progressive society. And a progressive society was one that did not believe in witches, ghosts, and fairies, and did not exhibit excited religious emotions and divine communications. 

Further information at the publisher's website: Oxford University Press.

They Flew: A History of the Impossible, by Carlos M. N. Eire

Publication Details: Yale University Press, ISBN: 9780300259803
Publish Date: September, 2023
Cover of They Flew

From the publisher's website: Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era—tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft—even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal. In this book, Carlos M. N. Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals. Eire observes how levitating saints and flying witches were as essential a component of early modern life as the religious turmoil of the age, and as much a part of history as Newton’s scientific discoveries. Relying on an array of firsthand accounts, and focusing on exceptionally impossible cases involving levitation, bilocation, witchcraft, and demonic possession, Eire challenges established assumptions about the redrawing of boundaries between the natural and supernatural that marked the transition to modernity.

Further information at the publisher's website: Yale University Press,

Review by Daniel Bourke.

UK Haunted Hospitality: Volume 1: Pubs and Clubs, by Paul Lee

Publication Details: Independently published, ISBN: 9798861752886
Publish Date: September, 2023
Cover of UK Haunted Hospitality

From the back cover: The United Kingdom is claimed to have the highest population of ghosts in the world, a fair proportion of which "inhabit" its hostelries. Presented in this volume are over 800 spectrally afflicted alehouses and drinking dens. Within this book are details of these locations, hailing from nearly every region in the UK; while many public houses and clubs have a definite paucity of details, the owners and staff of some others are quite garrulous, even proud, when discussing their otherworldly guests.

The Ghosts of King's Lynn and West Norfolk (2nd Ed.), by Paul Lee

Publication Details: Independently published, ISBN: 9798861606974
Publish Date: September, 2023
Cover of The Ghosts of King's Lynn and West Norfolk

From the back cover: West Norfolk provides a rich bounty of hitherto unknown ghost stories. While many of the more famous hauntings, such as Sandringham, Castle Rising and the various tales from King's Lyn are rightfully famous, there is an abundance of other tales. 

The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts, by Delyth Badder and Mark Norman

Publication Details: University of Wales Press, ISBN: 9781915279507
Publish Date: September, 2023
Cover of The Folklore of Wales

From the publisher's website: Wales is a land with a vast wealth of ghost stories, including fantastical animals, flickering death omens and unseen things that go bump in the night. Whether these tales are based on true events, or are the creations of active imaginations, is known only to those who have experienced them – but what is certain is that their power to delight and scare us remains undimmed to this day.

In The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts, renowned folklorists Delyth Badder and Mark Norman present an intriguing and comprehensive selection of ghostly accounts, illuminating key themes running through them, and giving insights into the history and culture of Wales’s varied regions and communities.

With original Welsh texts, many translated into English for the first time, the authors present a wide panorama of stories and first-hand accounts that will be new to even the most seasoned folklore reader. Ranging from the distant past right up to the present day, this collection shines a spotlight on the unique qualities of folkloric ghost beliefs in Wales.

Further information at the publisher's website: University of Wales Press,