New Books and Media

From the back cover: Eileen Jeanette Lyttle (Garrett) was born in Co. Meath, Ireland in 1892 as Emily Jane Savage. She was a renowned psychic and trance medium, having first trained at the British College of Psychic Science. From 1930 she gained international notoriety from what became known as the ‘R101 airship séance’ following her trance communication with the spirit of the captain of a crashed British airship. In 1940 she moved to New York and some years later founded the Parapsychology Foundation. Not all the facts of Garrett’s official life story add up.

From the publisher's website: Artists and writers very often predict future events in their work. Skeptics dismiss these anomalies, but what if they hold the key to the creative imagination? In this mind-bending book, the 40,000-year history of art is reconsidered as a literally prophetic enterprise. From Ice Age cave paintings to the novels of Virginia Woolf and Philip K. Dick, the films of Werner Herzog and David Lynch, and even the songs of The Beatles, Wargo makes a case for the inherently time-defying nature of inspiration. Creators often channel their own futures—and the future of their culture—in their art. It is an entirely new way of thinking about one of humanity’s oldest questions: Where do new ideas come from?

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

Review by Fred Andersson.

In this short, mind-expanding book, veteran investigative journalist Michael Schmicker takes you on his personal journey in search of a hard-science backed argument for an afterlife. Spoiler alert: He found one. With accessible summaries of contemporary scientific thinking and entertaining illustrations, Schmicker walks readers through a hidden, afterlife hypothesis in quantum physics that–to his great surprise and delight–is both grounded in scientific evidence and astonishingly optimistic: Our consciousness survives death because, contrary to what Newtonian science assumed, consciousness isn't made of matter—it's not a product of the physical brain.

From the author's website: In these pages of exploration, Dr. Davis K. Brimberg takes the reader through the fascinating world of parapsychology and the paranormal. Grounded by serious academic research from major institutions and Nobel laureates, Dr. Brimberg translates the scholarship of the field into readable, page-turning prose for the general audience. By weaving in heartfelt personal anecdotes as teaching examples, Dr. Brimberg paints a moving picture of how the paranormal touches us all.

Further information at the author's website: Davis K Brimberg

Review by Gregory M. Westlake

From the back cover: Dive deep into one of the UK's most chilling and debated paranormal phenomena with "Enfield Poltergeist Revisited." This gripping account by seasoned paranormal investigator Lee Brickley offers a fresh perspective on the mysterious events that haunted the Hodgson family in 1977. With meticulous research and riveting narrative, Brickley brings new life to the story that has captivated millions.

In an ordinary London suburb, an extraordinary series of events unfolded that would challenge the boundaries of reality and provoke a national sensation. Lee Brickley, leveraging years of investigative expertise, revisits the unsettling occurrences at 284 Green Street, where furniture moved on its own, chilling voices filled the air, and reality seemed to warp before the eyes of the witnesses.

Review by Melvyn Willin.

From the publisher's website: What if the British Museum isn’t a carefully ordered cross section of history but is in instead a palatial trophy cabinet of colonial loot – swarming with volatile and errant spirits? When artist and writer Noah Angell first heard murmurs of ghostly sightings at the British Museum he had to find out more. What started as a trickle soon became a deluge as staff old and new – from overnight security to respected curators – brought him testimonies of their supernatural encounters. It became clear that the source of the disturbances was related to the Museum’s contents – unquiet objects, holy plunder, and restless human remains protesting their enforced stay within the colonial collection’s cabinets and deep underground vaults. According to those who have worked there, the institution is heaving with profound spectral disorder. Ghosts of the British Museum fuses storytelling, folklore and history, digs deep into our imperial past and unmasks the world’s oldest national museum as a site of ongoing conflict, where restless objects are held against their will. It now appears that the objects are fighting back. 

Further information at the publisher's website: Monoray.

From the back cover: The summer of 1960 saw the Spiritualist world rocked by scandal, arguably the greatest to hit the movement. This author calls the scandal "Rifflegate." The editor of the Psychic Observer, America's leading psychic newspaper, and a paranormal investigator filmed six blatantly fraudulent seancés in infrared. Dressed as spirits, conspirators moved in and out of the seancés, unaware that their fraud and identities were about to be exposed on the front page of the Psychic Observer.

From the publisher's website: Ghostly encounters, alien abduction, reincarnation, talking to the dead, UFO sightings, inexplicable coincidences, out-of-body and near-death experiences. Are these legitimate phenomena? If not, how should we go about understanding them? In this fascinating book, Chris French investigates paranormal claims to discover what lurks behind this “weird shit.” French provides authoritative, evidence-based explanations for a wide range of superficially mysterious phenomena, and then goes further to draw out lessons with wider applications to many other aspects of modern society where critical thinking is urgently needed.

Using academic, comprehensive, logical, and, at times, mathematical approaches, The Science of Weird Shit convincingly debunks ESP, communicating with the dead, and alien abduction claims, among other phenomena. All the while, however, French maintains that our belief in such phenomena is neither ridiculous nor trivial; if anything, such claims can tell us a great deal about the human mind if we pay them the attention they are due. Filled with light-bulb moments and a healthy dose of levity, The Science of Weird Shit is a clever, memorable, and gratifying read you won't soon forget.

Further information at the publisher's website: The MIT Press.

Review by Nemo C. Mörck.

From the publisher's website: Explores the extraordinary states of expanded consciousness that arise during comas, both positive and negative Examining the beautiful and disturbing experiences of those who have survived comas, Alan and Beverley Pearce explore the mysterious levels of consciousness this near-death experience unlocks. They also share proven alternatives to medically-induced coma that are safer for treating critically ill patients and kinder for the patients and their families.

Further information at the publisher's website: Park Street Press.

From the publisher's website: Originally published in 1977 Phantom Ladies is an alphabetical, county-by-county guide to hauntings across Great Britain and the first book to concentrate exclusively upon female ghosts. Compiled by veteran ghost hunter Andrew Green (1927-2004) it is now updated for the 21st century by Alan Murdie, Chairman of the Ghost Club.

Further information at the publisher's website: Arima Publishing.

From the back cover: There are potentially hundreds of people who have experienced bizarre events of Telephone Calls from the Dead, and much like ghosts, and any other parapsychological phenomena, they appear to be highly common. Once all explanations have been considered, psychological and physical, are we genuinely faced with the reality of contact with the dead and evidence for survival? This question has been asked before, and was investigated back in 1979, in a book entitled Phone Calls from the Dead, written by D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless. For many years, this subject has remained dormant, until now.

From the publisher's website: William James (1842–1910) was a leading figure in Western psychology, philosophy, and psychical research. While there is an inextricable relationship between the various strands of James’s work, his psychical research has been unfairly neglected in favor of classics such as The Principles of Psychology and The Varieties of Religious Experience. Read in light of one another, however, James’s “mainstream” writings can be seen as efforts to make philosophical, metaphysical, and psychological sense of his psychical research.

Mind Dust and White Crows bridges the illusory divide, placing James’s widely accepted works on mystical experience, theories of the soul, immortality, and metaphysics alongside his key writings on mediumship, telepathy, possession and other areas of psychical research. The result is a more integrated picture of James’s spiritually-minded writings, transcending the disciplinary stigmas so often imposed on them. Interestingly, some of James’s ideas seem to align with current interpretations of the soul and extended consciousness as derived from quantum physics.

This volume includes many rare articles, including material that has not been previously published in book form. Andreas Sommer’s introduction – written especially for this volume – highlights the importance of James’s work to the history and development of psychical research.

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