From the publisher’s website: Did Steve Jobs have a vision of the afterlife on his death-bed? Does quantum physics suggest that our mind might survive the physical death of our body? How do some near-death experiencers 'see' outside of their bodies at a time when they are supposed to be dead?

In Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife, author Greg Taylor covers all these questions and more. From Victorian séance rooms through to modern scientific laboratories, Taylor surveys the fascinating history of research into the survival of human consciousness, and returns with a stunning conclusion: that maybe we should stop worrying so much about death, because there probably is an afterlife.

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.

From the publisher’s website: Sink into the depths … The great oceans of the world have long been considered alien environments said to harbour strange creatures and unfathomable mysteries. This new book from full-time monster hunter Neil Arnold examines the maritime-rich heritage surrounding the coastline of Britain and the mysterious activity said to take place there. Shadows on the Sea explores eerie stories of phantom ships upon frothing waves, sailor’s stories, fishermen’s tales and impossible monsters said to hide within the inky depths, not forgetting weird tales of USOs – unidentified submarine-type objects – and other mysterious lights witnessed out at sea. Compiling hundreds of stories and many eyewitness accounts, from the spine-chilling to the utterly bizarre, this volume is an exploration of the unknown that takes the reader on a voyage through strange tales and roaring seas.

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.

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.

From the publisher’s website: Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions shows how the present is troubled by the past and by the future, using the idea of haunting to explore psychoanalytically how identities, beliefs, intimacies and hatreds are transmitted across generations and between people. It deals with the secrets that we inherit, the 'pull' of the past, and the way emotions, thoughts and impulses enter into us from others as a kind of immaterial yet real communication. This book demonstrates how past oppressions return, demanding acknowledgement and reparation, and explores how recognition and forgiveness can arise from this. Rooted in psychoanalysis, postcolonial and psychosocial studies, Frosh addresses the question of what passes through and between human subjects and how these things structure social and psychopolitical life.

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.

From the publisher’s website: Haunted Lambeth is a collection of real-life stories of apparitions and poltergeists from all across the London borough of Lambeth. Included are the ghost stories of Lambeth Palace, the terrifying tradition of the ‘Tomb of the Tradescants’, a ghost at The Old Vic Theatre, the dream house that haunted the entertainer Roy Hudd, supernatural echoes of Waterloo’s Necropolis Railway, the ghosts of Ruth Ellis and others at Streatham’s Caesar’s Nightclub. These stories have been collected and researched over many years, and come from a variety of sources including original newspaper articles, books and, as often as possible, personal communication with people directly involved.

From the publisher’s website:

Fortune Telling (The Houdini Hearings)

A must for any Houdini fan! This amazing book contains page after page of colourful first-person testimony from Houdini, sparring with the world of spiritualists as well as sometimes-sceptical congressmen during the 1920s fortune-telling hearings in Washington D.C.  Absolutely fascinating...a new light on Houdini!

Handcuff Secrets

Houdini reveals secrets of his lockpicking, handcuff escapes, straitjacket techniques, and more! An unbelievable treasure-trove of Houdini's methods and  Houdini's stories of his imitators.  Dozens of illustrations.

(Handcuff Secrets is also available as part of the CD set Houdini Unbound: The Houdini Research Collection from the Miracle Factory.)

See www.miraclefactory.net for further details of both titles.

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.