New Books and Media

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. 

From the publisher's website: Why do people love ghost stories, even when they don’t believe (or say they don’t believe) in ghosts? Is it simply the adrenaline rush that comes from being terrified by a great storyteller? Or is it that such tales give form to our own inner demons?

‘Looking  back  over  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  of  serious  therapeutic  work,’ writes Stephen Johnson, ‘I’m  struck  by  how  often,  in  trying  to  explain  my  own  terrifying  mental  states  to  psychotherapists,  I’ve  resorted  to  images or turns of phrase in some of my own favourite ghost stories.’

With contributions from Alexander Pushkin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Tove Jansson, Penelope Lively, Flann O’Brien and more, this uniquely curated anthology brings together some of the most chilling – and enigmatic – stories from around the world. 

These guidance notes are intended to provide helpful information and practical guidance to all those who use equipment to support their investigations. They are also intended to help the investigator to obtain the maximum usefulness from their equipment and from the data they collect whilst using it.

Available through the SPR Book Store.

From the back cover: One in ten people claim to have encountered a ghost, yet science refuses to acknowledge their existence. However, it turns out that ghosts are by no means the only, or most mysterious of apparitions. Now, an author with a background in science has sought to uncover the parameters of this bewildering field. In this, he has adopted three principals: 1. to first seek a mundane explanation 2. not accept anything until it has been confirmed by further data, and 3. not to discard any item, but to file it away in case something similar appears later. In this manner, he documents the little known phenomenon of apparitions which can be shown to result from the mind of a third party. From there he moves to apparitions of the living, then to standard ghosts and hauntings, before delving into far more profound phenomena: elves and fairies, plus a variety of even weirder apparitions, some of which are truly terrifying, and others benevolent. These remarkable phenomena are all fully documented, and by the time you finish this book, you will find it hard to reject the conclusion that there exists a whole parallel world of immaterial entities, which is only on rare occasions perceptible to our senses.

Review by Peter A. McCue.

From the author's website: Most of us are fascinated by reports of ghosts and spirits, even if we do not believe them. This spinechilling collection of first-hand accounts are likely to unsettle even hardened sceptics. 

Who or what is responsible for the mysterious sounds in a train station’s signal box? A cave explorer has a potentially life-threatening encounter with an underwater ghost. An engineer watches the spirit of a former worker walk straight through two machines and then vanish through a factory wall. 

Further information at the author's website: Andy Owens. 

From the back cover: Houdini’s crusade against fraudulent mediums brought him into conflict with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and the spokesman for Spiritualism. And it pitted him against a rogues-gallery of rascals. Among them were Pierre Keeler, who produced ghostly messages on slates; George Valiantine and his shenanigans in the dark; the escape artist Nino; and the Reverend Mrs. Josie K. Stewart, pastor of the Independent Church of Truth and a master of sleight-of-hand. But his prime antagonist was Margery the Medium. “It is your wits against mine,” she told him. Was Margery a fraud? Did she despise Houdini—or admire him for his astuteness and manliness? And was Walter, her late brother, responsible for Houdini’s death? In this compelling history, the full truth about Spiritualism is at last revealed—by none other than Sherlock Holmes himself!

Review by Sarah Chumacero.