tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31117018728490129082012-01-05T08:46:37.513ZREVIEW ARCHIVE AND BOOKSHOPMagonianoreply@blogger.comBlogger2871100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-36035946368395900632011-12-12T21:56:00.003Z2012-01-05T08:46:37.650Z

Mary Roach, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. W. W. Norton, 2005. Gary E. Schwartz and William L Simon, The Truth About Medium: Extraordinary Experiments with the Real Allison DuBois of NVC’s 'Medium' and Other Remarkable Psychics. Hampton Roads, 2005. Mary Roach, an American journalist - whose previous book was Stiff: the curious life of human cadavers - takes a perhaps less than

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-60161429877998956762011-12-12T21:48:00.002Z2011-12-12T21:48:56.556Z

Illobrand von Ludwiger. Best UFO Cases Europe, National Institute for Discovery Science, 1998. This illustrated A4 document presents a number of UFO cases both old and new from Europe, but one cannot say that they are the 'best' cases; most are simply reports of lights in the night. It is possible that some of these may be poorly understood atmospheric phenomena, but my gut feeling is that most

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-37092358000688517402011-12-03T15:05:00.000Z2011-12-03T15:05:55.995Z

David Fontana. Is There an Afterlife? O Books, 2005. In this study, David Fontana analyses what he sees as the evidence for an afterlife from an examination of apparitions, hauntings, poltergeists, mental and physical mediumship, electronic voice phenomena, near death and out of the body experiences and reincarnation claims. This covers a wide field, and there is no doubt that much of the

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-4225575281216557432011-12-03T14:57:00.000Z2011-12-03T14:57:34.720Z

Michael David Hall. UFOs: a Century of Sightings, Galde Press, 1999. This is the first history of ufology and UFO cases by a professional historian since David Jacobs's The UFO Controversy in America a quarter of a century back. As a historian, Hall declines to supply 'explanations' for the cases, and notes the problems with the ETH, though readers will detect in his selection of cases, and

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-23371715241383731962011-12-03T13:47:00.001Z2011-12-03T14:47:47.550Z

Jenny Randles. UFO Crash Landing? Friend or Foe? Blandford, London, 1998. By her own confession Jenny Randles says she is obsessed by the Rendlesham Forest mystery. What were UFOs and aliens doing there during the Christmas of 1980? Has there been a cover-up? What is being covered up? Who is telling the truth? Like most aspects of ufology, a fog of confusion surrounds this case. Randles gives

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-62281538361608397832011-11-18T15:53:00.001Z2011-11-18T15:55:28.786Z

Christine Garwood. Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea. Macmillan, 2007. David Standish. Hollow Earth. De Capo Press, 2006 It is rather surprising that even today some very strange notions about the earth still persist. As Christine Garwood points out in her first chapter, it is a myth that educated people at least, thought the earth was flat until Columbus proved them wrong. Baring a few

Magonianoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-89913862347164161652011-11-08T17:59:00.000Z2011-11-08T17:59:31.643Z

Alex Owen. The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern. University of Chicago Press, 2004. Corinna Treitel. A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. These two books are part of a trend to see the rise of occultism and spiritualism not as a regression to some `primitive' past, but as part of the

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-26883394991237169842011-11-01T17:38:00.002Z2011-11-01T17:45:34.269Z

John Benedict Buescher. The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear: Agitator for the Spirit Land. University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. This is a book which perhaps reverses cliches: not so much a sufficiently advanced technology resembling magic, but a sufficiently advanced magic resembling technology; not so much as what starts out as tragedy ending in farce, as what starts in farce ends in the

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-83898567438774444962011-11-01T17:32:00.000Z2011-11-01T17:32:58.840Z

Karin Hopper Holloway (editor). Alien Abduction Anthology: In Our Own Words. Volume 1. Experiencers ebooks, 2007. Paula Thorneycroft. Eye to the Sky: A Paranormal Odyssey. Ecce Nova, 2006. It is impossible to know whether the first person narratives contained in these books are based on actual experiences, and if so to what extent. Their main interest lies in providing something towards an

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-28522525802071709322011-09-16T20:26:00.000+01:002011-09-16T20:26:12.173+01:00

Diana G. Tumminia. When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying Saucer Group. Oxford University Press, 2005. The flying saucer group concerned is the Unarius Academy of Science, a UFO based new religious movement founded by Ernest and Ruth Norman in the 1950s. Diana Tumminia was a participant observer of this group from 1988 to 2002, during which time its charismatic leader Ruth '

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-6412152438967716092011-09-06T09:26:00.000+01:002011-09-06T09:26:05.377+01:00

William Kalush and Larry Sloman. The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero. Atria Books, 2006. While it is the claim that Houdini was some sort of secret agent which has created the most attention for this book in the mainstream media, the aspect which is most likely to interest Magonia readers is the account of Houdini's battles with the Spiritualists. These show that

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-66536990056126759522011-09-05T11:38:00.001+01:002011-09-05T11:39:01.505+01:00

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer. Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind. Bantam Books, 2007. Elizabeth Mayer, a Freudian psychoanalist employs a dowser to help recover her daughter's stolen harp. The positive results impels her into the world of psychical research, and she soon finds that her colleagues, like any other random group of people at a dinner

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-34465162833221856402011-09-05T10:55:00.000+01:002011-09-05T10:55:02.796+01:00

Phillip H. Wiebe. Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today, Oxford University Press, 1998. While portions of this book of are of a chiefly theological character, there is much in it which should be of interest to Magonia readers. The core of the study deals with 28 cases of modern 'Christic Visions', in which people claim to have had a vision or other chiefly visual

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-84638895518249450372011-08-18T11:40:00.000+01:002011-08-18T11:40:47.602+01:00

Arthur J Ellison. Science and the Paranormal: Altered States of Reality. Floris Books, 2002. Arthur Ellison, who died shortly after completing this book, was for many years the most dominant figure in (some would say virtually dictator of) the Society for Psychical Research, and given the title, it might occur to a general reader that it will provide the latest scientific evidence on the

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-24105174831263279332011-07-27T15:58:00.001+01:002011-07-27T16:14:56.398+01:00

James R Lewis (ed.) UFOs and Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Myth. ABC CLIO, 2000. Jerome Clark. Extraordinary Encounters: An Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings. ABC CLIO, 2000. These two new encyclopaedias from ABC CLIO chronicle the impact of ufology and ideas of extraterrestrials on the popular imagination. ranging from the metaphysical subculture to B

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-73825513903565175102011-07-20T16:53:00.000+01:002011-07-20T16:53:46.594+01:00

Bill Ellis. Aliens, Ghosts and Cults: Legends We Live. University Press of Mississippi, 2001. In this collection of articles folklorist Bill Ellis explores the borderlands of experience and folklore, and the nature of legends. While sections of the book are clearly of interest only to the folklore specialist, other parts should be of interest to a more general audience. Of particular interest

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-51453064323453196282011-07-20T11:28:00.000+01:002011-07-20T11:28:58.780+01:00

Keith Tutt. The Search for Free Energy: a scientific tale of jealousy, genius and electricity. Simon and Schuster, 2001. Nick Cook. The Hunt for Zero Point. Century, 2001. Lynne McTaggart. The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. HarperCollins, 2001. There is a piece of ancient Brigantian wisdom which says 'tha can't get owt for nowt', but this never stops people trying. Keith

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-23385780888344923872011-07-19T18:18:00.000+01:002011-07-19T18:18:34.444+01:00

Kenneth Ring and Eveylyn Elsaesser Valarino. Lessons From the Light; What We Can Learn From the Near Death Experience. Insight Books, 1998. While this book has many of the appurtenances of an academic work - notes, references, a resource list and index - in reality it is much closer in tone to an evangelical polemic, extolling the wonders of the NDE, or at least the sanitised Ken Ring version,

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-3431320230360420052011-07-19T13:43:00.002+01:002011-07-19T13:46:08.451+01:00

Hilary Evans. From Other Worlds: The Truth About Aliens, Abductions, UFOs and the Paranormal. Carlton, 1998. A beautifully illustrated coffee table book, full of evocative images, most from the Mary Evans Picture Library, with the balanced, sensible text we have come to expect from Hilary Evans. Hilary traces the idea of visitors from all sorts of elsewheres through history, blending imagery

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-9314134505262158832011-07-19T13:29:00.000+01:002011-07-19T13:29:17.723+01:00

Amanda Prouten and Caroline Robertson. Talking Stick Magickal Journal. Issue 1, volume 2. Talking Stick Publications, 1998. Talking Stick magazine has transformed into a substantial large-format paperback book, which it is planned to issue twice a year - an increasing popular format, similar to The Anomalist or Fortean Studies. But why should a magazine which describes itself as "a modern

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-22428828547706575272011-07-19T13:25:00.000+01:002011-07-19T13:25:25.610+01:00

Whitley Strieber, Confirmation. Simon and Schuster 1998. Call me gullible, but there was once a time when it seemed that Whitley Strieber was genuinely trying to make sense of some very peculiar events in his life. His first three books made for interesting reading as Whitley dealt with all the thorny spiritual, psychological and political tangles that the biz could throw his way. In an what

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-79955222615601017412011-07-19T12:19:00.000+01:002011-07-19T12:19:16.921+01:00

Benson Saler, Charles A. Ziegler and Charles B. Moore. UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. This book is essentially a merging of three separate essays, with a concluding chapter and appendixes. The first, by Benson Sater, an anthropologist at Brandeis University explores the Roswell legend in terms of folklore. He argues that there is a

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-35991700705355012182011-07-03T11:28:00.000+01:002011-07-03T11:28:41.238+01:00

David Clarke and Andy Roberts. Phantoms of the Sky. Hale, 1990. Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 40, August 1991. This is in many ways the proverbial 'book I would like to have written'. Clarke and Roberts have, however. far more street credibility, being most definitely not armchair ufologists, and therefore their stout presentation of a combination earthlightspsychosocial approach to

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-25565659205321695502011-06-29T17:32:00.001+01:002011-07-03T11:20:21.574+01:00

Howard Blum. Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials. Simon & Shuster, 1990. 'Last orders, please!' The sombre words rang out across the Railway Tavern, Mortlake. However the scramble to the bar went un-noticed in one corner, where jovial librarian John Rimmer put down his pint of Wadsworth's 6X, rummaged in his briefcase and finally produced a copy of Out There, which he

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-9545458732647647192011-06-29T14:50:00.003+01:002011-06-29T14:54:46.656+01:00

Martin Gardner. Science: Good, Bad and Bogus. Prometheus Books, 1989. James E. Alcock. Science and Supernature: A Critical Appraisal of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books, 1989. Researchers into anomalous phenomena, such as parapsychologists, are quite unlike orthodox scientists. They consider it an achievement if they fail to find explanations for whatever they are investigating. When someone

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-21893032214708361962011-06-28T14:33:00.002+01:002011-06-28T14:36:05.780+01:00

Rupert Sheldrake. The Presence of the Past. HarperCollins, 1988. This is a profoundly old fashioned book on which one must exercise effort to realise that it is written in 1988, This is not so much because of the author's vitalist yearnings, but because of his espousal of a naive form of unilinear progressivism, in which the universe 'evolves' from quarks, through atoms, molecules, unicellular

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-54887358086979473902011-06-12T13:09:00.002+01:002011-06-12T13:10:45.517+01:00

Jeremy Northcote. The Paranormal and the Politics of Truth: A Sociological Account, Imprint Academic, 2007. Why disputes between 'believers' and 'sceptics' in the paranormal and related topics become so heated is the subject of this book, which is clearly based on a PhD thesis, now revamped for public marketing. Northcote interviewed a number of people on both sides of the debate and attended

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-16672188516987667032011-06-05T12:40:00.002+01:002011-06-05T12:43:29.601+01:00

Richard J. McNally. Remembering Trauma, Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2003. Richard McNally, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, studies the evidence for massive repression of traumatic events and finds it lacking. Indeed, victims of real traumas are often painfully unable to forget traumatic memories, and if they have any problems with remembering, it is with

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-23673608396042638512011-05-21T09:08:00.000+01:002011-05-21T09:08:24.180+01:00

Henry Bauer. Beyond Velikovsky. University of Illinois Press, 1984. Henry Bauer, best known for his bibliographies of Loch Ness Monster literature, has written an excellent summary of the Velikovsky affair. I suspect that he started out sympathetic to Velikovsky, outraged by the actions of his more extreme critics, who organised book boycotts, sacked people and attacked Velikovsky without

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-45813954065077454282011-05-08T11:47:00.001+01:002011-05-08T11:47:24.298+01:00

Katherine Ramsland. Ghost: Investigating the Other Side. Thomas Dunne Books / St Martins Press, 2001. John Rackham. Brighton Ghosts: Hove Hauntings: True Ghost Stories from Brighton, Hove and Neighbouring Villages. Latimer Publications, 2001. Most ghost story books published these days are the productions of the heritage history and tend to recount the folklore of past generations. These books,

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-30737346425862478672011-05-04T13:28:00.001+01:002011-05-04T13:29:09.817+01:00

David Wood. Genisis; First Book of Revelations. Baton Press, 1985. Over the last ten years TV programmes and a book by Henry Lincoln and others, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, have dealt with the mystery of Rennes la Chateau, in the South of France, where a Catholic priest named Saunier appears to have made some mysterious archeological discovery in the 1890's which made him rich and enabled

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-75187354912220268082011-05-04T13:18:00.004+01:002011-05-04T13:21:22.854+01:00

David Clarke, and Granville Oldroyd. Spooklights: A British Survey. Privately published by the authors, 1986. David Clarke and Granville Oldroyd are easily the most industrious British researchers into a wide range of fortean reports. As might be expected of them there is a solid concentration on the stories themselves rather than making them conform to their own theories. Most of their sources

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-80040050415195369452011-04-27T10:55:00.003+01:002011-04-30T08:56:53.177+01:00

Simon Danser. Myths of Reality. Alternative Albion, 2005. Myths of Reality is a nice introduction to social constructionist theory. That is, what we take as commonplace knowledge, our reality, is actually shaped by culturally formed myths and assumptions, a position somewhat similar to a situationist world view, but generally academically and without the situ sense of fun. As a way of explaining

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-50171026896039160492011-04-16T17:32:00.002+01:002011-04-16T17:34:40.812+01:00

Jim Moseley and Karl Pflock. Shockingly Close to the Truth: Memoirs of a Grave-robbing Ufologist. Prometheus, 2002. -- Reviewed by John Rimmer. We have been waiting for this book for a long time, ever since it was first hinted at, several years ago, in Moseley's scurrilous eight-page rag, Saucer Smear. One thing we knew, this was not going to be a book for Serious Ufologists. Moseley has a

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-21583447446248065242011-04-16T13:09:00.003+01:002011-04-16T13:10:10.074+01:00

Garrett G. Fagan (editor). Archaeological Fantasies. Routledge, 2006. This collection of papers explores and deplores the growth of fantastic archaeology, much of it associated with the writings of Graham Hancock and his co-writers. The authors examine the nature of archaeological pseudoscience, which to no great surprise much resembles various other kinds of pseudoscience, and present specific

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-18278139499684782702011-04-11T10:51:00.001+01:002011-04-11T10:52:06.250+01:00

Patrick Harpur. Daemonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld. Viking Arkana. 1994. I have seen a daylight disc and craft like zeppelins; a black panther in Northumberland; a wood gnome, and under sleep deprivation the tooth fairy; a half-human, half-zebra entity in the office toilet during mycological flashback; a woman medium's face turn into that of a Chinaman; a bird give its life to

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-81071530753997587312011-04-09T17:10:00.001+01:002011-04-09T17:14:08.795+01:00

Don Ledger and Chris Styles. Dark Object: The World's Only Government Documented UFO Crash. Dell Books, 2001. On 4 October 1967 at about 11 o'clock at night at Shag Harbour in Nova Scotia a number of people, including a group of five teenagers saw (as summarised in INTCAT) "four yellow white lights over Wood's Harbour, forming a pattern comparable to the size of a fair-sized aircraft". The

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-36290907003343861302011-04-08T23:05:00.003+01:002011-04-08T23:10:18.065+01:00

Richard H. Hall. The UFO Evidence: Volume II, A Thirty Year Report. The Scarecrow Press, 2000. This massive 670-plus page tome is likely to become the Bible for true-believing ufologists. Its Biblical status lies not only in its proportions, or in its vast collection of UFO reports, but in its intentions. Just as religious folk in past times assembled collections of saintly miracles or divine

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-43948640539970151862011-04-05T12:01:00.000+01:002011-04-05T12:01:42.343+01:00

Jacobs, David M. (editor). UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge. University Press of Kansas, 2000. A presentation of various aspects of the UFO and abduction saga to the academic community, by a number of people prominent in the field. Contributors include Jacobs, Hopkins, Mack, Jerry Clark, Thomas Bullard, Don Donderi, Ron Westrum, Stuart Appelle, Michael Swords and

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-86210016316988086662011-04-05T11:52:00.000+01:002011-04-05T11:52:57.861+01:00

Douglas Curran. In Advance of the Landing: folk concepts of outer space. 2nd edition. Abbeville Press, 2001. The publication of a new edition of the one of ufology's long out-of-print and impossible to find classics is to be welcomed. Canadian photographer Douglas Curran spent much of the late 70's and early 80's driving around the North American continent looking for outer-space based folk art

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-65876529333930496872011-04-01T23:05:00.005+01:002011-04-01T23:13:08.611+01:00

Dark Lore Volume 2, 2008 -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson Dark Lore, published by Daily Grail website dhttp:/www.dailygrail.com/ is a sort of cross between The Anomalist and Strange Attractor, with something of old Fortean Studies added in. This second edition has a wide range of articles, and like most anthologies is a mixture of the good, and the, ahem, not so good. I would single out in this

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-22831974950403444262011-04-01T22:55:00.000+01:002011-04-01T22:55:56.741+01:00

Jenny Hazelgrove. Spiritualism and British Society Between the Wars. Manchester University Press, 2000. This is not a work of psychical research and readers will not find here a judgement as to whether the claims made by Spiritualists were 'real', nor is it a full history of psychical research and Spiritualism between the wars. Rather it is a study of the relationship between Spiritualism and

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-16625003628404447922011-03-31T14:26:00.000+01:002011-03-31T14:26:39.692+01:00

Martyn Jolly. Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography. British Library, 2006. Until very recently, the spirit photographs shown here would have been regarded by all except the most credulous as nothing but an obvious and cynical fraud, battening on the bereaved. Now, it appears, historians of photography are increasingly viewing them as works of art, and as social documents.

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-90953406983418327662011-03-31T14:17:00.001+01:002011-03-31T14:18:09.133+01:00

Nick Redfern and Andy Roberts. Strange Secrets: Real Government Files of the Unknown, Paraview Pocket Books, 2003. This collection of Fortean stories from the government files of the United Kingdom and the United States contains some interesting items and historical footnotes, such as the linkage of strange marks on the ground with the UFO mythos as far back as 1952, and some official

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-55788043372029716632011-03-30T20:57:00.001+01:002011-03-30T20:58:44.951+01:00

Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp. Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah. Paraview Pocket Books, 2005. The story of this book can be summarised very briefly: a new family takes over a spooky old farm in the middle of nowhere, where they claim that all sorts of Fortean and paranormal events have taken place. You know, giant invulnerable wolves,

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-38290528544182010512011-03-28T14:27:00.001+01:002011-03-28T14:43:30.465+01:00

Phillip H. Wiebe. Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today, Oxford University Press, 1998. While portions of this book of are of a chiefly theological character, there is much in it which should be of interest to Magonia readers. The core of the study deals with 28 cases of modern "Christic visions", in which people claim to have had a vision or other chiefly visual

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-14394016659409949942011-03-28T13:58:00.005+01:002011-03-28T14:16:11.326+01:00

Richard Belzer. UFOs, JFK and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have to be Crazy to Believe. Ballantine Books, 1999. Al Hidell, and Joan D'Arc (compilers). The Conspiracy Reader: From the Deaths of JFK and John Lennon to Government Sponsored Alien Cover-ups. Citadel Press, 1999. David Southwell, and Sean Twist. Conspiracy Theories. Carlton Books, 1999. Robert Anton Wilson, and Miriam Joan Hill.

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-51656707799302569862011-03-28T13:43:00.002+01:002011-04-01T22:59:59.391+01:00

Erich von Däniken. The Return of the Gods: Evidence of Extraterrestrial Visitations. Element Books, Shaftesbury, Dorset, 1997. It is apparently quite easy to prove that the Earth was visited by extraterrestrials (ETs) in ancient times. Just study the Bible and other religious writings and pick out the passages which might suggest, if taken literally, accounts of flying machines or strange people

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-30183193594454846172011-03-28T12:01:00.000+01:002011-03-28T12:01:19.895+01:00

Walter Gratzer. The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self Deception and Human Frailty. Oxford University Press, 2001. In this study of pathological science, Professor Gratzer looks at some of the old favorites: N-rays, Lysenko, eugenics, Nazi race science, Aryan Physics, canibalistic worms and cold fusion, as well as a small number of less well known examples such as mitogenic radiation. The

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-9393600303427226512011-03-24T15:53:00.001Z2011-03-24T15:58:57.282Z

Desmond Bragg and Paul Joslin. Science Meets the UFO Enigma. Kroshka Books, 2000. This is a curious book, it is published by an academic publisher, and looks the part: no dust jacket, austere covers and the like. The contents have a superficial academic look, but are in fact something quite different; A warning might be given by the absence of any biographies or academic backgrounds for the

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-19600312919637592182011-03-15T13:36:00.000Z2011-03-15T13:36:14.592Z

Ken Hollings. Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century - 1947-1959. Strange Attractor Press, 2008 £11.99. Ken Hollings traces the parallel developments among ufology, space science,science fiction (including movies all the way down from B to Z-minus), general popular culture, the growth of suburbia and psychedelics, the coming of the Beat Generation, psychoanalysis, hypnotic

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-57535756441732013632011-03-15T13:25:00.000Z2011-03-15T13:25:36.910Z

Sigrid Schmalzer. The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth Century China. University of Chicago Press, 2008. The main interest to Magonia readers in this book is likely to be the impressive chapter on the yeren, the Chinese wild man and its cultural significance in late Maoist and post-Maoist China, that of human beings stripped of the accoutrements of

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-26296961372065199872011-03-15T13:22:00.002Z2011-04-19T11:17:12.513+01:00

William R. Newman. Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution. University of Chicago Press, 2006. The Whig view of history asserts that the work of Robert Boyle, widely regarded as the founder of modern chemistry, marked a decisive shift away from traditional alchemy and was largely inspired by the new mechanical philosophy of Isaac Newton. In this

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-37607692398744599772011-03-12T12:24:00.004Z2011-03-12T12:29:22.396Z

Kevin D. Randle. A History of UFO Crashes. Avon, 1995. Kevin D. Randle. Roswell UFO Crash Update: exposing the military cover-up of the century. Global Communication, 1995. In addition to Roswell, in these books Randle examines four other crash-retrieval cases (Kingman, 1953; Ubatuba, 1957; Las Vegas, 1962, and Kecksburg. 1965) in detail and provides a long catalogue of other cases, many of them

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-86584428227208832512011-03-12T12:18:00.000Z2011-03-12T12:18:02.457Z

Goss, Michael and Behe, George. Lost at Sea: Ghost Ships and Other Mysteries. Prometheus Books, 1994. -- Reviewed by John Harney, from Magonia 53, August 1995. Vanishing ships always generate a great deal of speculation. As there are no survivors it is often difficult to refute the wilder theories. In discussing the disappearance of the Blue Anchor Line steamer Waratah off the coast of South

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-92166554021285788572011-02-14T10:43:00.001Z2011-02-14T10:45:46.174Z

Peter Hough and Jenny Randles. Looking for the Aliens, A Psychological, Imaginative and Scientific Investigation. Blandford, 1992. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 43, July 1992.Since Galileo and Newton disenchanted the universe, the sensitive have felt a terror of the infinite solitude of the lifeless spheres: from Pascal to a physicist on a recent TV documentary who described her

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-81626729081157525782011-02-14T10:25:00.002Z2011-02-14T10:31:44.234Z

Jacques Vallée. Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception. Souvenir Press, 1992. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 43, July 1992.On this leg of his whistle-stop return to the UFO field, Vallee stops at the station marked Paranoia Gulch, USA: that quaint township inhabited by the likes of Bill Cooper, John Lear and others who shall be nameless. The problem with Paranoia Gulch is

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-2950532971625002352011-02-13T09:00:00.001Z2011-02-13T09:02:16.913Z

Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson. The Lore of the Land: A Guide to England's Legends from Spring Heeled Jack to the Witches of Warboys. Penguin Books, 2005.This huge 900+ page coffee table book is bound to become the standard source book for English legends for many years to come. It is an (old) county-by-county guide to legendary stories, tales of ghosts, boggarts, witches, fairies, folk

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-91237347831267514892011-02-09T11:26:00.002Z2011-02-09T11:30:43.899Z

Kathryn A. Edwards and Susie Speakman Sutch. (editors and translators) Leonarde's Ghost: Popular Piety and 'The Appearance of a Spirit' in 1628. Truman State University Press, 2008.This translation of a 17th century French manuscript tells a story which shows how anomalous personal experiences are mediated through the culture of the times, locale and prevailing ideology. It was originally written

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-37123845225214446122011-02-06T12:20:00.006Z2011-02-09T11:01:51.442Z

Nick Redfern. Man-Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot. CFZ Press, 2007.Ken Gerhard. Big Bird! Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters. CFZ Press, 2007.In a book of old Staffordshire folklore by Charlotte Burne there is a record of a story from January 1879, of a man crossing the bridge across the Birmingham-Liverpool canal was terrified when a "strange black creature with great white eyes"

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-37431366711378605522011-02-06T12:09:00.004Z2011-02-06T12:17:57.247Z

Michael Brooks. 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of our Times. Profile Books, 2009. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia BlogPeople in the Fortean field often talk about 'anomalies', and link the topics they are discussing with the notion of the scientific anomalies that lead to paradigm change, a theme championed by the historian of science Thomas

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-58494396379473971972011-02-04T22:03:00.003Z2011-02-04T22:13:11.253Z

Janet and Colin Bord. Bigfoot Casebook Updated: Sightings and Encounters From 1818 to 2004. Foreword by Loren Coleman. Pine Winds Press, 2006. Sali Sheppard-Wolford. Valley of the Skookum: Four Years of Encounters with Bigfoot. Foreword by Autumn Williams. Pine Winds Press, 2006. In his foreword to this updated reissues of the Bord's Bigfoot Casebook, Loren Coleman places the book in the context

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-55320996298658525132011-02-04T12:41:00.002Z2011-02-04T21:52:09.736Z

Timothy Good. Alien Liaison, The Ultimate Secret. London, Random Century Ltd, 1991. -- Reviewed by John Harney, from Magonia 42, March 1992.Rumours about crashed saucers and their extraterrestrial pilots being held by the US government have been current since the late 1940s and they are still very persistent. Some may thus wonder whether there might be some substance behind these improbable yarns

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-40267728946199851002011-01-23T14:45:00.002Z2011-01-23T14:48:39.666Z

Gregory L Reece. UFO Religion: Inside UFO Cults and Culture. I B Tauris, 2007. -- Reviewed by Peter RogersonThe title of this book may be a little misleading, for this is not yet another scholarly study of the classic UFO religions such as Aetherius or the Raelians, though these do get a mention. Rather it is an impressionistic journey though the realm of ufolore, from primitive sightings to

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-13661307335973198292011-01-15T19:15:00.004Z2011-01-15T19:27:45.690Z

J. Allen Danelek. UFOs, the Great Debate: An Objective Look at Extraterrestrials, Government Cover-ups and the Prospect of First Contact. Llewellyn Publications, 2008. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, transferred from Magonia Review of Books, 15/1/11For about three quarters of this book, it looked as though, while rather naive in places, it wasn't going to be at all bad. Danelek decides not to

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-10831368169427875382011-01-06T18:47:00.001Z2011-01-06T18:50:17.342Z

Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark. Cryptozoology A-Z, Simon and Schuster, 1999.Paul Harrison. The Encyclopedia of the Loch Ness Monster, Robert Hale, 1999.W. Haden Blackman. The Field Guide to North American Monsters, Three Rivers Press, 1998.These three encyclopedias reflect differing approaches to cryptozoology. The Coleman/Clark is by far the most scholarly, following Jerry Clark's similar

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-67686176689873684112011-01-06T18:24:00.004Z2011-01-06T18:32:30.541Z

Richard Hall. Uninvited Guests: A Documentary History of UFO Sightings, Alien Encounters and Coverups. Aurora Press, 1988. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 35, January 1990.This is an example of the better type of UFO book of say 20-25 years ago, The early chapters examine various examples of UFO behaviour - vehicle stoppages, lightbeams, humanoids; and in subsequent chapters rival

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-30692676873521695342010-12-16T21:27:00.005Z2011-01-02T18:14:51.079Z

Daniel Pick. Svengali's Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture, Yale University, 2000.A very fine commentary on the legend of Svengali. People still use the word as an all-purpose synonym for people who have artful control over the minds of others. Most of us no longer know the story, for there has been no good dramatisation in decades. It is thus eye-opening to be reminded just how

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-62022569914019844582010-12-02T09:54:00.003Z2010-12-02T09:58:56.047Z

Lloyd Pye. The Starchild Skull: Genetic Enigma or Human-Alien Hybrid? Bell Lap Books, 2007. - Reviewed by Peter RogersonThis unusual skull surfaced in 1998 in the hands of a couple of members of MUFON, with a most dubious provenance which we shall come to later. It then passed into the hands of Lloyd Pye, who turns out to be a dedicated Sitchinist. First its original owners, then Pye and his

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-52958706272319326312010-11-28T23:28:00.004Z2010-11-28T23:52:25.212Z

James Randi. The Mask of Nostradamus, Prometheus, 1993. -- Reviewed by Roger SandellJames Randi's enlightening exposés of Uri Geller and other paranormalists were based not solely on his own stage experiences; however he is not a historian, and his sceptical study of Nostradamus is poorly organised, and not very informative.Much of it consists of a biography of Nostradamus with historical

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-78000244923751241782010-11-26T11:21:00.004Z2010-11-26T11:34:01.115Z

Jorge Conesa Sevilla, Wrestling With Ghosts: A Personal and Scientific Account of Sleep Paralysis. Xlibris Corporation, 2004. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, first published in Magonia Supplement 53, November 2004.This is the first book-length treatment of sleep paralysis (sometimes called aware sleep paralysis or awareness of sleep paralysis - ASP) since David Hufford’s The Terror that Comes in

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-62877786135564251852010-11-26T10:29:00.004Z2010-11-26T10:44:12.658Z

William Alschuler. The Science of UFOs, A Byron Preiss Book. 2001 -- Reviewed by Martin Kottmeyer. From Magonia Supplement 43, November 2002There are reasons to both like and hate this book. On the happy side there is a reasonably good discussion of the problems of interstellar travel and how they impact on the idea that extraterrestrials are visiting us. There are a few good pages on the ways

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-35660229803976411812010-10-13T12:34:00.004+01:002010-10-13T12:54:14.672+01:00

Marina Benjamin. Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond. Chatto and Windus, 2003.If there be such things as precognitions, then this elegy to the space age published weeks before the Columbia disaster must be one. Marina Benjamin grew up a wannabe astronaut obsessed with rocket dreams, a harvester of all the collectable trivia of the age. Today the age of the

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-77567252657128233112010-10-08T12:00:00.003+01:002010-10-08T12:12:24.575+01:00

Nicholas Redfern. A Covert Agenda, Simon and Schuster, 1997. -- Reviewed by John Harney, first published in Magonia 62, February 1998.In the prologue to this book the author states: "Through the use of both official documentation and witness testimony, it is my hope that what you are about to read will conclusively prove that since the late 1940s, British Governments have been acutely aware that

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-8659284838586296452010-10-06T11:38:00.002+01:002011-02-19T11:54:02.333Z

Martin Gardner. Weird Water and Fuzzy Logic: More Notes of a Fringe Watcher. Prometheus, 1996. Joe Nickell. Adventures in Paranormal Investigation. University Press of Kentucky, 2007.More opinionated, and sometimes irascible essays and book reviews from Martin Gardener, always worth reading and often amusing, but you begin to wonder if it doesn't get boring being always right, and knowing that

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-89436691603732850342010-10-06T11:19:00.000+01:002010-10-06T11:19:20.538+01:00

Edward J. Larson. Summer of the Gods: the Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. Harvard UP, 1998. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, first published on-line March 1999 This is a study of the famous 1925 trial of John Scopes for violating Tennessee's statute against the teaching of evolution in schools, which pitted two heroes of the American left, Clarence Darrow

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-88692556319229640862010-10-06T11:08:00.000+01:002010-10-06T11:08:59.571+01:00

Natalie Osborne-Thomason. The Ghost-Hunting Casebook, Blandford, 1999. A collection of modern ghost-lore memorates, by a researcher with the Ghost Club Society. While the author is clearly a believer, more sceptically minded readers can still find this book of interest as a source of folklore and a record of the sort of beliefs which grew up around anomalous personal experiences. We can see an

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-71235236507123637852010-10-03T11:38:00.004+01:002010-10-06T09:00:08.312+01:00

Kathryn A Edwards and Susie Speakman Sutch. (editors and translators) Leonarde’s Ghost: Popular Piety and the Appearance of a Spirit in 1628. Truman State University Press, 2008 This translation of a 17th century French manuscript tells a story which shows how anomalous personal experiences are mediated through the culture of the times, locale and prevailing ideology. It was originally written

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-66935988504030642252010-09-18T14:07:00.004+01:002010-10-03T11:42:03.838+01:00

David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton (eds.) Cults, Religion and Violence. Cambridge University Press, 2002. This collection of essays centres around the fate of four modern 'New Religious Movements': the Branch Davidians, the Solar Temple, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven's Gate. These are organisations which found themselves in escalating conflict with the wider world, which led to what Bromley calls

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-8360972515508647042010-09-07T12:36:00.006+01:002010-10-03T11:43:23.734+01:00

William Alschuler. The Science of UFOs, Byron Preiss Book, 2001 -- Reviewed by Martin Kottmeyer, from Magonia Supplement 43, November 2002 There are reasons to both like and hate this book. On the happy side there is a reasonably good discussion of the problems of interstellar travel and how they impact on the idea that extraterrestrials are visiting us. There are a few good pages on the ways

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-78829000444420244552010-09-03T17:58:00.005+01:002010-10-02T14:14:18.721+01:00

Noretta Koertge (ed.) A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodern Myths About Science. Oxford University Press, 2000. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 81, May 2003 The essays in this volume address a variety of critical approaches to science which have got labelled together as 'postmodernist'. One strand of this is the so called 'strong programme' of the sociology of science, developed

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-1991957894913790992010-09-03T17:50:00.006+01:002010-10-02T14:14:40.408+01:00

P. G. Maxwell-Stuart. Satan's Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth Century Scotland. Tuekwell Press, 2001. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 81, May 2003 In this revisionist account of Scottish witchcraft, Maxwell Stuart challenges the view that the 'evidences' of witchcraft accusations were fantasies produced by torture. Instead he argues that witchcraft accusations were based

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-48974919422312343702010-09-01T11:28:00.004+01:002010-10-06T14:30:05.495+01:00

Dean Radin. Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Paraview Pocket Books, 2006. Sally Rhine Feather and Michael Schmicker. The Gift: ESP, The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People. St Martin's, 2006. These books are evidence of perhaps a growing interest in ESP and suchlike topics, perhaps driven by some recent TV exposure. Radin's book reports on some recent

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-12039857296448237342010-08-18T13:39:00.004+01:002011-03-31T14:22:06.023+01:00

Merrily Harpur. Mystery Big Cats. Heart of Albion, 2006. - Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 92, June 2006 This is the first in depth look at British mystery cats for years, and in it Merrily Harpur examines a wide variety of narratives of mystery cats and examines the various theories which have been suggested to explain them. In doing so she points out the many problems and

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-8517201850866598382010-08-13T18:22:00.004+01:002010-10-02T13:54:08.874+01:00

Jerome Clark. The UFO Encyclopedia 2nd Edition: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, Omnigraphics, Detroit, 1998. -- Reviewed by John Harney, from Magonia 65, November 1998. Of the 273 entries in this work, all but twelve were written by Jerome Clark. It is thus necessary for any serious student of UFO reports and ufology to take account of the influence of Clark's personal views on the content and

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-73086313621176183982010-08-13T10:22:00.005+01:002011-01-03T11:44:29.667Z

Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex and the Crisis of Faith, University Press, 2002.Hilary Evans. Seeing Ghosts: Experiences of the Paranormal. John Murray. 2002.Walter Stephens asks an interesting question: why did early modern demonologists get obsessed with the idea of demons having sex with witches? Why were they determined to prove that witches really did physically travel to

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-15498909139217989922010-07-29T12:18:00.006+01:002010-10-02T14:00:00.774+01:00

Allan Hendry, The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating and Reporting UFO Sightings. Doubleday, 1979. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 2, Winter 1979/80. The scope of this book is belied by its title, which suggests another of those tedious 'how to investigate' UFO manuals compiled by people who think that bureaucracies don't produce enough paperwork already. This is a

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-18014993319475833302010-07-29T11:38:00.008+01:002011-01-06T18:23:33.311Z

Ann Druffel and D Scott Rogo. The Tujunga Canyon Contacts. Prentice Hall, 1980. (Repr. Anomalist Books 2008) -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from MUFOB new series 7, 1981.'Not for the nervous!' should be the warning on this book about a series of alleged abductions, bedroom visitors and other unpleasant experiences occuring over a 26-year period from 1953 to 1979 to a group of gay women in the San

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-85143997479548029522010-07-27T11:52:00.004+01:002010-10-02T14:01:31.090+01:00

Richard Freeman. Dragons: More than a Myth? CFZ Press, 2005. One of the disputes which ripples through both the Fortean and folklore communities is whether beliefs in anomalies and strange things are handed on through cultural transmission or through actual experiences, whether objective or subjective. You might think that stories of dragons are pretty good examples of the former. OK, perhaps

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-42695297787284189222010-07-26T17:05:00.003+01:002010-10-02T14:01:59.429+01:00

Nick Redfern. On the Trail of the Saucer Spies: UFOs and Government Surveillance. Anomalist Books, 2006. Ufologists used to love to think that they were so important that the governments of the world spent vast sums of their taxpayers money spying on them. Nick Redfern here claims that to an extent they were right; some were being spied on, but not for the reason the ufologists thought, rather

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-52647919948615661922010-07-14T22:04:00.004+01:002011-01-03T11:29:43.316Z

Peter Lamont. The First Psychic: The Peculiar Mystery of a Notorious Victorian Wizard. Little Brown, 2005.The 'notorious wizard' in Lamont's book is Daniel Home the medium. Lamont here tries for a balanced biography, avoiding what he sees as the one-sided presentations of earlier biographers. These have either been by spiritualists presenting Home as a heroic figure possessing marvellous powers,

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-82761089724186835032010-07-13T16:49:00.006+01:002011-01-03T11:31:57.544Z

David Clarke. Supernatural Peak District. Robert Hale, 2000.Katy Jordan. The Haunted Landscape: Folklore, Ghosts and Legends of Wiltshire. Ex Libris Press, 2000.Recent Internet discussions about the role of experience and tradition in the dissemination of supernatural narratives, makes these two studies of folklore at the opposite ends of England, timely. Folklorist, historian, journalist and

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-10838676078928433412010-07-12T17:22:00.004+01:002010-10-02T14:01:03.748+01:00

Lyndal Roper. Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany. Yale University Press, 2004. Something very strange was happening to teenager Regina Groninger. At night a strange figure would come to her, with a head as black and round as a cannonball, on which there was no face at all, its arms thin and withered and surmounted by pointed claws, and with the feet of a goat. She said that it "

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-538904068968334262010-07-10T10:30:00.003+01:002010-10-02T14:04:45.543+01:00

Archie E Roy. The Eager Dead: a Study in Haunting. Book Guild Publishing, 2008. As far back as the Spring of 1972, in my article 'The Mythology of UFO events and interpretations' (now on Magonia’s new website, see below) I noted W. H. Salter’s claim that the famous or infamous SPR cross-correspondences referred to 'the other side' working towards the creation of a new race of superchildren by

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-27802772844315015632010-07-09T22:15:00.006+01:002011-01-03T11:33:31.868Z

Kendrick Frazier (ed.) Encounters with the Paranormal: Science,Knowledge and Belief. Prometheus, 1998.Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Intellectual Impostures: Post-Modern Philosophers' Abuse of Science. Profile Books, 1998.Kendrick Frazier presents a wide selection of articles which have appeared in Sceptical Inquirer in the 1990's. These include some important studies of false memory, aware

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-72792789391025407242010-07-09T19:38:00.006+01:002010-10-02T14:07:17.114+01:00

Wolfgang Behringer. The Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night. University Press of Virginia. 1998. One evening, about week before Shrove Tuesday in 1578, two herdsmen of the village of Obertsdorf in the Bavarian Alps, Chonrad Stoeckhlin and Jacob Walch, were drinking in the inn when their conversation turned to matters of life after death. They entered a compact

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-5843197547338149762010-07-06T15:18:00.005+01:002010-10-06T11:50:54.135+01:00

Jenny Randles. Something in the Air, Robert Hale, London, 1998. This book is a plea for aircraft encounters with UFOs to be taken more seriously. To this end Jenny Randles appeals to her readers to avoid the extremes of dismissing such reports as nonsense, or attributing them to the activities of ETs in their flying saucers. Some reports of aerial encounters with UFOs cannot be attributed to

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-78994461073234342762010-07-06T11:56:00.005+01:002010-10-06T11:55:51.818+01:00

Jean La Fontaine, Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England. Cambridge University Press, 1998. -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 64, August 1998. This is the long awaited detailed study by Professor La Fontaine of her research into the satanic abuse scare, and it is an important contribution to the range of topics discussed in Magonia. Professor La Fontaine

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-56271216928182149602010-07-05T18:25:00.008+01:002011-01-03T11:34:41.951Z

Charles Fort, New Lands, revised by X. John Brown Publishing, 1996.Let's start off by congratulating the Fortean Times crew on producing the definitive revised and corrected edition of this classic, but be honest, have you ever read Charles Fort? I mean really read him; starting at page one and going right through to the end? Of course not, he's unreadable. Try this: "Vaunt and inflation and

Magonianoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111701872849012908.post-69345539063697384262010-07-02T09:41:00.004+01:002011-01-03T11:35:11.123Z

Robert Sheaffer. The UFO Verdict. Prometheus Books, Buffalo, 1981. Reviewed by John Harney, from Magonia 8, 1982. Sheaffer is one of a small band of UFO sceptics who are following in the footsteps of the late Dr Menzel. He sees ufology as an irrational anti-scientific movement which can be defeated only by investigating UFO reports and showing them to have normal explanations. He expresses the

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