I’ve always been nostalgic. I long for a connection with times and places I’ve never experienced, and I think my fascination with ghosts and the uncanny is connected to that. As a child, I fell in love with ancient Egypt, with its famously complex religious traditions concerning death and the afterlife. I earned a PhD in Egyptology and spent a lifetime crafting stories about the past, often with a speculative or supernatural twist. For me, ghosts and history are a natural combination.
I’ve been enamored with the history of spiritualism and supernatural flimflam for years, but this book was the first account I read by an insider. Keene’s explanations of how phony mediums operate are fascinating, as are his incisive musings on the nature of belief.
But I found Keene himself the most intriguing aspect of the book. I got the impression of a bright, insightful, and deeply conflicted man—in some ways, as much of an elusive trickster as ever. His descriptions of his antics as a spiritualist charlatan are bombastic and glib, but there’s an underlying poignancy.
I was left with a clearer picture of how the spiritualist con game worked but more questions than answers about Keene and his motives for leaving it behind.
M. Lamar Keene, who came to be known as the "Prince of the Spiritualists," enjoyed the riches and fame that accompany the life of a sought-after medium. He claimed to be clairvoyant and to produce objects out of thin air. He conducted seances in which participants talked with and even touched the dead. Yet every miracle Keene performed was a fraud, a lie, and a trick played on willing, gullible victims. In this powerful and brutally honest book, Keene exposes the secrets of the seance room, including ghostly apparitions, floating trumpets, "spirit sex," and other tricks used by mediums to…
This is the book that started my love affair with spiritualism. Mary Roach’s accessible and often hilarious approach to science writing made a huge impression on me when I first picked it up in my early 20s.
The personal and adventurous nature of her investigations also intrigued me, earning Roach a spot high on my list of people I want to be when I grow up and cementing her place as one of my few auto-buy authors.
The wide, weird array of research she presents in her book—and her open-minded take on it all—left me with a burning desire to learn more (and a tiny, nagging scrap of hope that just maybe there could be such a thing as ghosts).
"What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that-the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.
I read this book not long after reading Spook, and it scratched many of the same philosophical itches for me. I love its dreamlike quality and haunting sense of nostalgia. As far as I know, it's also unlike any other work of fiction in its approach to the question of life after death.
It blends two seemingly unrelated topics—historical disasters (e.g., the Hartford circus fire, the sinking of the Titanic)—and the science of near-death experiences in a striking, unique way. Although it is, in many ways, a deeply sad story, it ultimately feels hopeful. This is one of those novels that left a lasting impact on my psyche.
One of those rare, unforgettable novels that are as chilling as they are insightful, as thought-provoking as they are terrifying, award-winning author Connie Willis's Passage is an astonishing blend of relentless suspense and cutting-edge science unlike anything you've ever read before.
It is the electrifying story of a psychologist who has devoted her life to tracking death. But when she volunteers for a research project that simulates the near-death experience, she will either solve life's greatest mystery -- or fall victim to its greatest terror.
At Mercy General Hospital, Dr. Joanna Lander will soon be paged -- not to save…
This book profoundly appeals to the history nerd in me. It places the American Spiritualist movement in its historical and cultural context, examining everything from the connection between spiritualism and 19th-century technological innovations to the role of gender and sexuality in the séance room.
While it’s easy to dismiss spiritualism as a fringe oddity, McGarry’s book illuminates just how vital it was in shaping American culture and politics as we know them today. The academic language is a little dense in places, but that did not detract from my enjoyment of the meticulous scholarship and the enthralling subject matter.
"Ghosts of Futures Past" guides readers through the uncanny world of nineteenth-century American spiritualism. More than an occult parlor game, this was a new religion, which channeled the voices of the dead, linked present with past, and conjured new worldly and otherworldly futures. Tracing the persistence of magic in an emergent culture of secularism, Molly McGarry brings a once marginalized practice to the center of American cultural history. Spiritualism provided an alchemical combination of science and magic that called into question the very categories of male and female, material and immaterial, self and other, living and dead. Dissolving the boundaries…
I love weird and inexplicable things, and Gef's story is undoubtedly the weirdest tale of a real-life (ostensibly) paranormal phenomenon I have ever encountered.
The more you know about it, the weirder it gets, and Christopher Josiffe’s meticulously researched account really delivers. Gef’s story isn’t exactly about ghosts, per se—it’s not clear where the Extra Special Talking Mongoose came from or what he was supposed to be—but it fits nicely with my interest in the uncanny.
In true Fortean fashion, Josiffe lays out all the evidence for what happened with minimal attempts at interpretation, leaving the reader to puzzle it all out. And the final chapters, which cover similar “hauntings” and potentially relevant folklore, are worth the price of admission alone.
An exhaustive investigation of the case of Gef, a “talking mongoose” or “man-weasel,” who appeared to a family living on the Isle of Man.
“I am the fifth dimension! I am the eighth wonder of the world!”
During the mid-1930s, British and overseas newspapers were full of incredible stories about Gef, a “talking mongoose” or “man-weasel” who had allegedly appeared in the home of the Irvings, a farming family in a remote district of the Isle of Man. The creature was said to speak in several languages, to sing, to steal objects from nearby farms, and to eavesdrop on local…
It’s 1934. Former medium Dashiel Quicke travels the country debunking phony spiritualists while struggling to stay ahead of his ex-business partner and lover, who wants him back at any cost. During a demonstration at a college, Dashiel meets Hermann Goschalk, an Egyptologist who’s convinced he has a genuine haunted artifact in his hands. Certain there is a rational explanation, Dashiel would rather skip town but soon falls for Hermann. He agrees to investigate and learns that something is haunting Hermann’s office.
Faced with a real ghost, Dashiel is terrified, but when the haunting takes a dangerous turn, he must use the tools of the shady trade he left behind to communicate with this otherworldly spirit before his past closes in.
I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.
Killion is born several generations after the establishment of the Cities of Light which now sprinkle each continent of the world, places where God’s spirit produces a tangible presence felt by all who enter. Yet he is raised outside these cities, under the direction of Adar, who teaches his followers that such cities are dangerous, run by cult leaders, kill any who disagree with their teachings, and should be avoided at all costs.
But circumstances cause Killion to enter a City of Light, and this begins his journey of discovery. What he experiences here doesn’t match what he thought he…
What if the knowledge of God's glory covered the earth like the waters cover the sea?
Killion is born several generations after the establishment of the Cities of Light which now sprinkle each continent of the world, places where God’s spirit produces a tangible presence felt by all who enter. Yet he is raised outside these cities, under the direction of Adar, who teaches his followers that such cities are dangerous, run by cult leaders, kill any who disagree with their teachings, and should be avoided at all costs.
But circumstances cause Killion to enter a City of Light, and…
