1897 AND ALL THAT

J. Allen Danelek. The Great Airship of 1897. Adventures Unlimited Press, 2009.

The 1897 airship is a vital part of the UFO story, and is used to reinforce a number of contrasting narratives. For the psychosocial ufologist it is a classic example of the spread of a rumour, fuelled by misleading and spurious newspaper reports. 

🔽

ENIGMATIC ESP

Diane Hennacy Powell. The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. Walker and Company, 2009.

Powell is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, with a training in neuroscience, and is therefor better able than many to be aware of the various problems integrating "ESP" into modern neuroscience based views of consciousness. We would expect someone with her background to examine the problem in a scientific fashion.
🔻

DARK AND DARKER

Dark Lore. Volume IV, edited by Greg Taylor. Daily Grail Publishing, 2009.

There are some good things in this issue which should be of interest to Magonia readers. For new material, the prize goes to 'The Newhallville Terror' by Theo Paijmans, which looks at some previously forgotten Spring Heel Jack type stories from the USA.
🔻

SCIENCE FICTION SECRETS

Nick Redfern. Science Fiction Secrets: From Government Files and the Paranormal. Anomalist Books, 2009.

With 25 chapters covering a wide range, this is a rather difficult book to get a handle on. Some of the topics discuss government, mainly the US FBI‘s, interest in a variety of outré topics. A couple of examples of this suggest that they spent sizeable amounts of their taxpayers dollars following up things such as the allegations of the probably schizophrenic science fiction writer Philip K Dick about a Neo-Nazi plot to infiltrate science fiction, or a crank letter to Carl Sagan.

🔽

EMILY BRONTE AND FANTASY PRONENESS

Mike Dash has kindly sent me a link to an article he has recently posted on the Charles Fort Institute website, at http://blogs.forteana.org/node/98 . It is a fascinating article and raises many interesting questions about the perception of reality, and the nature of creativity.

Peter Rogerson first raised the issue of fantasy-proneness as a factor in UFO and other anaomalous experiences in a 'Northern Echoes' column published in Magonia 23 in 1986 (read it at: http://magonia.haaan.com/2009/fpp/ ), a piece which Mike references in his article.

Both articles are well-worth reading.

GHOSTLY ROUND-UP

        
  
Matt Hicks and Terry Setterington. Paranormal Stoke on Trent. The History Press, 2009.

---

Ian Addicote. Haunted Pubs of the South West. Amberley, 2009.

---

Roger Guttridge. Paranormal Dorset. Amberley, 2009.

The usual mixture of memorates, folklore and fakelore that we have come to expect with this series. Unlike some of the other works in the series, this does have some modern ghost stories, most notably from the North Staffordshire Hospital. Hospitals seem to be one of the major places where people report all sorts of anomalous experiences, perhaps because they are the places where, at least in modern times, life begins and ends. They are also places where people are often under great stress and staff especially can be operating in conditions of great fatigue and sleep loss.
🔻

THE REAL OCCULT HISTORY OF AMERICA

Mitch Horowitz. Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped our Nation. Bantam Books, 2009.

No, despite the title and front cover, this isn't another Dan Brown style book extolling how the Masons founded America with the help of the Illuminati and Soroptimists, instead it is sympathetic but never credulous account of the role of 'occultist' and other dissident religions in American history from the revolution down to the early 1960s. 

🔽

ANOMALOUS EXPERIENCES

Matthew D. Smith. (editor) Anomalous Experiences: Essays from Parapsychological and Psychological Perspectives. McFarland and Company, 2009.

These papers, classed into two sections, parapsychological approaches and psychological approaches, are based on those presented to a one-day conference at Liverpool Hope University in June 2005. There are several papers which should be of interest to Magonia readers.
🔽

CONSPIRACY CORNER

               

Richard Roeper. Debunked! Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends and Evil Plots of the 21st Century. Chicago Review Press, 2008.

---

Kathryn S Olmsted. Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy; World War One to 9/11. Oxford University Press, 2009.

---

Mark Fenster. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. 2nd edition. University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Conspiracy theories continue to multiply, from the novels of Dan Brown, and beliefs that the X-Factor is rigged, down to the belief that the attack on the twin towers was the work of George Bush in alliance with the Israelis and the Illuminati.
🔻