The Ghost Studies


Book Description

“A genuine attempt by someone who is a trained clinical therapist and parapsychologist to scientifically evaluate reported experiences of the paranormal.” —Magonia Review You’ve just laid down for the night when suddenly doors slam and the curtains shift. The lights begin to flicker and a white mist forms in front of you. You shut your eyes and keep muttering, “ghosts aren’t real.” But then you open your eyes and realize that “harmless” mist has shifted into the form of a man, staring intensely at you, as he floats above your bed. What causes ghostly experiences? Are ghosts real? Why do certain people report numerous ghostly encounters and others none? For centuries these questions have intrigued, puzzled, and bedeviled science, skeptics, and even believers. Based on cutting-edge research and new theories, The Ghost Studies provides insight into some of life’s greatest mysteries. This fascinating book is far more than a compilation of ghost stories. The Ghost Studies provides scientific explanations for paranormal occurrences, including: New and exciting scientific theories that explain apparitions, hauntings, and communications from the dead. The latest research on the role of energy and electricity in hauntings. The role that emotions, bioenergetics, and the environment play in supernatural phenomena. New research into why some individuals are more prone to ghostly encounters. “I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to expand their knowledge of the paranormal . . . This book is well written and opens the doors for countless areas of study and discussion and it is one that you will find yourself going back to again and again.” —Association of Paranormal Study




Paranormal Perspectives: One Big Box of 'Paranormal Tricks'?


Book Description

In his latest book, One Big Box of 'Paranormal Tricks'? From Ghosts to Poltergeists to the Theory of Just One Paranormal Power, John Fraser reflects on his motivations for involvement in paranormal research from an early age, recalling his experiences to date, the people who have influenced him, and the conclusions he's come to. Whilst Fraser refers to events in his life, this book is not a memoir or 'life story' in any conventional sense. It's presented as a meditation on what the paranormal might mean for us in our universal quest to give our lives meaning. One Big Box of 'Paranormal Tricks'? takes more of a zen-&-the-art-of-spending-a-night-in-a-haunted-house approach than an autobiographical one.




Exploring the Paranormal


Book Description

This important anthology brings together the work of leading authorities on paranormal belief and experience. Includes chapters on mind-expanding drugs, near-death experiences, mysticism and meditation.




Psychological Perspectives on Reality, Consciousness and Paranormal Experience


Book Description

This book explores various explanatory frameworks for paranormal encounters. It opens with the story of an inexplicable human figure seen crossing a secluded hotel corridor, interpreted as a ghost by the sole witness. The subsequent chapters explore the three most important historical perspectives accounting for this and other types of paranormal experience. Each perspective is examined from first principles, with specific reference to what happened in the corridor, how it happened, why it happened, and who might be responsible. The first perspective considers the experience to be legitimate – to be something real – and various possibilities are presented that are grounded in the paranormal and parapsychological literature, among which a “ghost” is one putative explanation. In turn, the second perspective treats the experience as being wholly illegitimate. With reference to psychological theory, the ghost sighting is a product of erroneous consciousness. The third perspective is different yet again, and considers the sighting to be authentic, but argues that explaining the ghost requires a radical departure from conventional models of reality and consciousness. By contrasting these three paths, the book provides a valuable resource for readers interested in the philosophical and psychological origins of explanations for paranormal experiences, from the 19th century to the present. It will appeal to general readers in addition to students and scholars of parapsychology, anomalistic psychology, and consciousness studies.




Paranormal Perspectives: A Jungian Understanding of Transcendent Experiences


Book Description

This is a book for those who want to know secret things, for anyone with a steadfast desire to awaken, for seekers. The book moves through time from right after World War II, when the author was born, to the present. While traveling through the decades with her, you will have a front-row seat at nineteen different - sometimes harrowing but always wondrous - experiences, which took a lifetime but in the end helped the author understand the nature of reality, why we're born, where we come from, and where we're going.




The Paranormal Equation


Book Description

Most of us think science is incapable of explaining supernatural phenomena. This would include everything from ghosts and communication with the dead to extrasensory perception (ESP), precognition, and telekinesis. Scientists are generally highly skeptical of the existence of such phenomena because of the lack of the rigorous documentation that science requires. Nevertheless, many great scientists have believed—and do believe—in the supernatural. The Paranormal Equation presents an argument for the existence of supernatural phenomena based on the mathematics and science discovered during the last century. It also explains why supernatural phenomena must exist if the universe satisfies certain conditions—conditions which are accepted by many working scientists. The Paranormal Equation explores such questions as: How can we distinguish between the truly unknown and the supernatural? How have scientists attempted to study the supernatural? What are the rational reasons for believing in the supernatural? Which hypotheses about the universe mandate the existence of supernatural phenomena? Anyone interested in how science is beginning to understand and even explain the seemingly unexplainable will want to read this fascinating new title.




Scientific Perspectives on Pseudoscience and the Paranormal


Book Description

For courses in Introductory Psychology, Critical Thinking and Scientific Reasoning. This topically organized text integrates naturally with the flow of all introductory psychology courses presenting the differences between science and pseudoscience in a fun and interesting way. Timothy Lawson uses original sources to address the numerous pseudoscientific claims that students are exposed to through the media, the Internet and pop psychology books.




Science in the New Age


Book Description

Hess examines the arguments of people who accept the paranormal as part of a spiritual quest, parapsychologists who are seeking scientific explanations for a narrow range of paranormal phenomena, and skeptics who pooh-pooh the very notion. He finds that, despite their disagreements, they are forging a shared culture. Written for the nonspecialist. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal


Book Description

The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal contains over 90 articles by more than 50 experts on topics including the strictly paranormal (psychokinesis, channeling, levitation, astrology, phrenology, palmistry); the historical (mediums, psychic research, alchemy, Houdini); the philosophical (miracles, survival of death, reincarnation); and work on investigatory photography, statistics, the media and the Bermuda Triangle. In his foreword, Carl Sagan says, "I wish [this book] were on the shelves of every newspaper editorial desk and every television newsroom, to encourage more skeptical backbone in reporting . . . . [I]n school libraries so that children would have some counterbalance to the many paranormal and mystical claims in our society."




Hauntings and Poltergeists


Book Description

Few people can claim the distinction of experiencing first-hand such occurrences as hauntings and the presence of poltergeists, but countless numbers of people are fascinated by these unexplainable events. Written by the world's most knowledgeable authorities in this field, the essays in this work promote a better understanding of the manifestations of and various reasons for hauntings and poltergeist phenomena. The experts come from such backgrounds as anthropology, history, philosophy, psychiatry, and sociology, and provide sober yet highly readable in-depth discussions of numerous ideas and rationalizations for hauntings and poltergeists, from a critical and scientific perspective. Divided into three major sections--sociocultural, physical and physiological, and psychological perspectives--this work provides an overview of each perspective and also addresses the general psychology of belief in the paranormal and how that belief relates to experiences with ghosts and poltergeists.