New Books and Media

From the publisher's website: Renowned esoteric writer Gary Lachman has been recording his own precognitive dreams for forty years. In this unique and intriguing book, Lachman recounts the discovery that he dreams 'ahead of time', and argues convincingly that this extraordinary ability is, in fact, shared by all of us.

Dreaming Ahead of Time is a personal exploration of precognition, synchronicity and coincidence drawing on the work of thinkers including J.W. Dunne, J.B. Priestly and C.G. Jung. Lachman's description and analysis of his own experience introduces readers to the uncanny power of our dreaming minds, and reveals the illusion of our careful distinctions between past, present and future.

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

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: "Join Brandon Alvis and Mustafa Gatollari, stars of the hit A&E television show Ghost Hunters, as they reveal the real story behind six of their most compelling and terrifying investigations. Within these pages, you will discover the shocking secrets of the Grey Lady at Indianapolis's Athenaeum, a self-manifested haunting at Ohio's Madison Seminary, and the guilt-ridden entity at the Worley Hotel in Pampa, Texas. You will discover the critical historical details of each location as well as the full story of the investigations, exploring important events that have never been previously revealed. The authors also include their groundbreaking classification system for ghosts and hauntings that is transforming the field of paranormal studies into a true scientific discipline."

Review by Ashley Knibb.

This book is a study of how people collaboratively interpret events or experiences as having paranormal features, or as evidence of spiritual agency. The authors study recordings of paranormal research groups as they conduct real life investigations into allegedly haunted spaces and the analyses describe how, through their talk and embodied actions, participants collaboratively negotiate the paranormal status of the events they experience. By drawing on the study of the social organisation in everyday interaction, they show how paranormal interpretations may be proposed, contested and negotiated through conversational and embodied practices of the group. 

The book contributes to the sociology of anomalous experience, and explores its relevance  to other social science topics such as dark tourism, participation in religious spaces and practices, and the attribution of agency. This book will therefore be of interest to academics and postgraduate researchers of language and social interaction; discourse and communication, cultural studies; social psychology, sociology of religious experience; parapsychology, communication and psychotherapy.

Further information about the book here: Springer. 

From the publisher's website: Exploring the paranormal through musical phenomena, this encyclopedia covers a range of anomalies, from musical mediumship to locations throughout the world where music has been heard with no obvious source. Other manifestations, such as the abilities of musical savants and the anesthetic use of music during surgical procedures, are included with a focus on paraphysical aspects. Entries describe examples from earliest history up to the present—interpretation is left to the reader. Broader themes and concepts are discussed in appendices, with additional references provided for further study.

Further information on the publisher's website: McFarland.

From the back cover: Have you ever read about a telepathic experience and wondered if it was true? Or heard about a fulfilled premonition and wondered if your future already exists? This unique book explores these questions through a rigorous re-examination of many cases of claimed telepathic, clairvoyant, and precognitive experiences, known collectively as Extrasensory Perception (ESP). The author finds non-ESP explanations for some famous cases, including three that are unlikely to have happened at all. However, there are many other cases where there seems to be no alternative but to accept ESP as a working hypothesis.

What conclusions will you reach about the fascinating cases re-examined in this book? Did Mark Twain foresee in a dream the body of his brother in a metal coffin six weeks before his brother died? What about the Chaffin Will case where a jury accepted post-mortem communication as legal evidence of a second Will? Did the deceased C.S. Lewis visit Canon Philips as an apparition? How is it possible that a stolen harp was found through map dowsing from 1800 miles away? Every case examined is full of unexpected twists and turns.

From the back cover: Does consciousness continue after death? For 150 years, scientists, doctors, and other highly qualified investigators have carefully collected evidence in hopes of answering this question. In this award-winning essay, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette analyzes the best of that evidence to date.

Starting with third-person phenomena such as after-death apparitions, mediumship, and telephone calls from the dead and moving on to first-person phenomena like near-death experiences, memories of previous lives, and memories of the period between lives, Rawlette lays out the vast landscape of evidence for life beyond the grave. She argues that extensive cross-validation between first- and third-person evidence cripples the strongest skeptical arguments brought against each type considered alone. Ultimately, she concludes that the survival of consciousness is the best explanation for the evidence taken as a whole and considers what implications this has for our understanding of the world we live in, even while we are still on this side of death.

From the publisher's website: The astonishing story of Henry Coombe-Tennant (1913–89), who served in the British Army in World War II, escaping from a POW camp, joining Special Forces and aiding the French Resistance, before working for the British Secret Service in Baghdad and ending his days as a Benedictine monk!

Review by Trevor Hamilton. 

From the back cover: When strange things happen to people, or when they experience bad luck, they may come to believe that they've been cursed. In this well-researched and well-referenced book, Dr Peter McCue looks at curses or alleged curses from an evidential and parapsychological perspective. He also examines what appear to be strange coincidences. He presents a wide array of cases, and asks how strange coincidences arise and how curses might work.

From the back cover: A sailor, a pilot, a film director, a plumber, a mother, a teenage girl - all heard a mysterious voice. At a critical moment in their lives, they received distinct instructions or a serious warning. In every case the spiritual message was totally unexpected. The impact on the person involved is seen to be profound and life-changing. In different countries, at different points in history, these are the stories of lives being saved and journeys made to discover how "the voice" is possible.

Review by Ciaran Farrell.

From the publisher's website: There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally ‘believe’ or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries – yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older…

The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?

From the back cover: Be it a frightening childhood encounter, an unexplainable occurrence, or simply a fascination with all things strange and mysterious, the end result is the same; a lifelong obsession with the unseen world of the paranormal. This obsession leads some to spend long, cold nights in abandoned buildings in search of ghosts, while others dedicate their lives and careers to trudging through dense forests on a quest for monsters. And some pick up a film camera in hopes of documenting the existence of both for a viewing audience.

Paranormal investigators and authors Jason Hewlett and Peter Renn have collected the stories and adventures of more than twenty dedicated ghost hunters, cryptozoologists, and filmmakers in this Investigators’ Archive. With it comes a collection of frightening encounters across England, the United States, and Canada, as told by Ciaran O’Keeffe, Paul Bradford, Ken Gerhard and more. Hewlett, Renn and their colleagues also provide insight into investigative techniques and technology, a new, first-person account of the Exorcism of Cindy Sauer, and potential explanations for why hauntings occur. All backed up by eyewitness accounts and historical research. 

Review by Ashley Knibb.

From the publisher's website: More than fifteen years after the famous South Shields Poltergeist case of 2006, and its well-received book, The South Shields Poltergeist: One Families Fight Against an Invisible Intruder Darren W. Ritson brings you Poltergeist Parallels and Contagion, a fascinating revised and updated study of the poltergeist enigma.

After researching other equally bewildering cases – post South Shields – a number of serious thought-provoking hypotheses regarding the aspect of the poltergeist called ‘contagion’ have now been raised. Poltergeist contagion has been seldom discussed or studied by psychical researchers, despite many well documented historic cases making mention of it – that is, until now. During the South Shields case and its subsequent years, Darren W. Ritson and his co-investigator Michael J. Hallowell were also subjected to acts of poltergeist ‘contagion’. Also noted, were astonishing similarities between cases they had investigated.

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