The most recommended spiritualism books

Like Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena, this 1897 book exposes the various ways that Spiritualist mediums manifest ghosts. Henry Ridgely Evans was a magician and historian who took on the Spiritualist movement, much like Harry Houdini would in the decades that followed. Filled with wondrous stories, secrets, and illustrations, this book is a must for any fan of Spiritualism and/or magic.

Published 1893, Laing considers all kinds of searching questions relating to astronomy, geology, spiritualism, poetry, taxation, finance, and much more. Clearly a possessor of a powerful intelligence, Laing endeavors to make sense of the universe and human life with the limited information he had at his disposal, compared to what we know today. How does the sun burn, he asks? Is it made from coal? A notion he dismisses with rational precision. Later, he considers the arms race from his nineteenth century viewpoint and uncannily predicts a “Great War” that will engulf most of Europe, with “Constantinople” being the likely catalyst of “the blood-rain deluges of the greatest war the world has ever seen”.

I love fictional spiritual books about mediums and tarot cards, and this book has it all.

The lead character is an out-of-work actress who takes a second job at a metaphysical shop, only to find out she is more psychic than the other employees who work there.

It's fun, exciting, and has lots of spooky twists. 

I enjoyed the sassy main character, Pepper, who suddenly acquires the ability to interact with the dead. The first book in a series, her current project, an entertaining mafia don, tasks her to solve his thirty-year-old murder. His persistence made me chuckle at his refusal to leave until Pepper helped him. While struggling with life in general, mainly rich girl turned pauper, she finds herself in sticky situations. Her job as a cemetery tour guide adds its own comedy to the story.

As part of my metaphysical quest, I had several readings through a medium my sister-in-law recommended.

In the second reading, my late husband came through loud and clear, and I was given a recommendation to read Echoes of the Soul. When I read it, it was as if I remembered it, rather than reading it for the first time. I understand this book, too, was a soul signal I set before birth that kept me moving toward my destiny.

My wife and I had the opportunity several years later to attend a seminar Echo Bodine conducted in Atlanta, and Echo was as impressive in person as on the pages of Echoes of the Soul.

This is an outlier book here, the “true” story about a man who led a rather messy life, was killed in an accident, and communicated with his sister from the other side. The core messages are uplifting: we never really die, and no matter the mistakes we make in our life here, we are always loved and on track with our soul’s journey and growth. 

I’d never heard of this 1940s novel, but it was recommended to me because I liked Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners.

Norman Collins’ household of London lodgers shows us everyday life in the 1930s and war - night clubs, offices, parlours, rainy streets and sunny parks, séances, and dances. So many stories of this time are about stereotyped characters speaking lost slang, but this could have been published yesterday.

The moment I finished it, I missed kindly retired clerk Mr. Josser, elderly club hostess Connie, would-be gangster Percy Boon, and Henry Squales, the apparently fake spiritualist medium... or is he?

This is the dirty realist poet, Charles Bukowski's, last novel and is filled with intriguing code and name-dropping of people he knew and was influenced by. As well as being as poetic as hell. Pulp also gives a glimpse of what it might have been like if Bukowski had lived on and ventured fully into crime fiction or pulp noir.

I love the book’s surface-level simplicity to draw you into its world. However, it then subversively lets bigger themes creep in: including surrealism and spiritualism, as the author faces his own death. All this with Bukowski’s deftly poetic touches.

This showed me how semi-autobiographical elements can fuse and influence fiction and vice versa. And, that it doesn't have to be hard to absorb or distract from the story. By acknowledging layers in writing which are there for those who want to peel back and discover them. And when they don’t,… show more.

Mention has often been made of the extent to which Marshall McLuhan was a devout adherent of the Catholic faith. But little has been known about how he viewed the place of religion in the world particularly with reference to the fate of the Catholic Church. This carefully selected collection of McLuhan’s writings on religion provides one with clarifying insights into his views on a broad range of Church-related issues including the nature of conversion, the spiritualism of youth, the impact of technology on liturgy, and Vatican II.  Overall, by revealing that McLuhan viewed faith as a sense, the volume illuminates the connections he made between religion and media.  

This book, written in dual timelines (1800s and present day) gave me a deep insight into spiritualists, their tricks of the trade, and mediums. Some truly have the gift of communicating with the deceased and some don’t. Which ones, and how can you tell? What are the dangers of opening a portal? You’ll have to read the book to find out. The other compelling aspect of this book is the complex and three-dimensional characters. I don’t often re-read a book once I finish, but this one will be one I will go back to again. It’s that good!

I devoured this book because it resonated with many of my spiritual beliefs.

The MC is an evolved being who is the daughter of a goddess, she is reincarnated many times. I loved the higher power and the evolved beings, alongside human evolution as the MC lived through the ages. I am a Spiritualist and I truly believe that we are here on this earth plane to learn and grow.

This book offered a unique perspective on life, and the human psyche. This book left me asking questions about my own life, a deep and meaningful read indeed. 

Training as a psychologist, I read Leon Festinger’s study “When Prophecy Fails” describing his research study infiltrating a doomsday cult whose believers expected to be rescued by flying saucers from the planet Clarion. Alison Lurie then novelised this scenario in Imaginary Friends. Here we meet a parade of oddballs: psychologists whose everyday normality is deceit, pretending to be delusional themselves, spying on other’s lives: a group of pious, well-meaning souls awaiting extra-terrestrial salvation: a cult leader who receives and relays the group’s alien guidance: the lead researcher who claims to be possessed by the spirit of “Ro of Varna”.

It’s a deft and clever satire that shows the conventions of oddness, and the oddness of conventions.

This is a wild, one-sitting read. At first you might not know where you are, but after a few pages, you’re completely hooked.

It’s creepy and visceral about what it means to be a mother when the world is turning more and more toxic. It might be considered an eco-horror book. This story works on your subconscious, leaving you with a sticky, unsettling feeling.

Also, it’s translated from Spanish. The title of the Spanish version is The Rescue Distance.    

I, like thousands of others, watched some of the paranormal shows on TV.

Since I was learning a lot myself, I could dismiss the ones just in it for the shock effects and ratings. I did enjoy Ghost Whisperer, partly because at about the same time I discovered the show, I discovered Winkowski's book. She was the medium upon whom the show was based and she actually consulted for the show.

Her story truly intrigued me, partly because I learned we could actually help lonesome and troubled ghosts cross into the light. I feel it's the most important gift I have these days. So very many souls wander lonely and confused. Helping them cross over is a very satisfying experience.

This book reminded me of a Doris Stokes book, which as a teen were my favourite books to read.

The story is an autobiography of a celebrity Psychic Medium: Mavit Pittilla. The story is engrossing to me as I am a Spiritualist, I loved learning how she started off her life as an ordinary human being, only to have the gift of clairvoyance thrust upon her. I loved reading how she developed and helped so many other people in the UK, by giving demonstrations, readings, and finally becoming a teacher to others.   

This book is a collection of the author’s memoirs, set in a fictional village in England’s leafy countryside. Each story stands alone and yet they build a picture of a time and place that is now lost.

There is humour and tragedy in these stories. A disastrous dinner party ends up with the guests having to go to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped. An elderly lady who cares more for her animals than she does for herself is discovered to be starving. The mysterious ‘hedging and ditching man’ evades identification although there is a suggestion that this disreputable-looking old tramp is in fact the local squire. A happenstance meeting at the scene of an accident results in a fledgling music group being started up in the village.

All these anecdotes are narrated from the confused, curious, only partly-understanding point of view of a young boy. There is nostalgia… show more.

I was deeply moved by Poor Your Soul, Mira Ptacin’s beautifully-wrought memoir about the grief of losing first her brother, and then her unborn child. So I knew I was in good hands when I opened her engaging, compassionate portrait of the denizens of Camp Etna, the once-famous epicenter of the American Spiritualist movement. Shifting seamlessly between the settlement’s grand history in the late 1800s and its more modest 21st-century existence, Ptacin profiles psychics and mediums of all stripes, and reports on her own experiences of the paranormal with humor, intelligence, and grace. 

One of the first authors within the personal development space to write about how the manifestation of success ties in with quantum laws, I found this book both interesting and enlightening in many ways. The author’s approach to personal growth is essentially spiritual, and he draws much of his teaching from Buddhist principles.

In addition to explaining how these spiritual principles affect our daily lives, he also provides practical steps to assist the reader in moving forward towards their personal and professional goals. Personally, I have this book on audio and I sometimes listen to it in the car on a long journey. Like taking a hot bath on a cold day, hearing Deepak’s soothing voice reading this ground-breaking book just feels like it is doing you good.

Isabel Dalhousie is a moral philosopher by profession. She edits a journal on the subject. One of the most intriguing aspects of this series is that she’s always weighing the moral shoulds and shouldn’ts of her circumstances and her cases. What is her obligation to act? To speak? To pursue? Insatiably curious, her habit makes these books ripe with meaning. Set in a charming Edinburgh, between her bassoon-playing friend Jamie, her no-nonsense, Spiritualist housekeeper, Grace, and her slightly wild, deli-owning niece, Cat, Isabel has her hands and her mind full navigating what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s in-between. Her constant self-scrutiny is part of what caused me to be as transparent as I am about the metaphysics in my own books.

We all know that the way to enlightenment is through meditation. 

As a psychologist I also know that meditation has the healing power of self-regulation, thought reconstruction, and relaxation. But for the always-in-motion, production, or contemplation people like me, it can be so hard!

This meditation book, though dated, works for me because it focuses your meditation on thoughts or concepts rather than asking you to clear your mind. It was originally written in 1953 by a theologian, so it does not sound like the speech of today or offer inclusive language. 

It also anchors its focus on religious teachings, but it has concepts that are applicable to all. I have been able to find peace by sitting with the wisdom shared in this book.