SERIOUS RESEARCH

You may have noticed that I've added Mike Dash's CFI Blog to the list of recommended reading down the side of this page. This is essential reading for all Magonians and Forteans. I would particularly like to draw your attention to his most recent postings about the Marpingen Apparitions. In his introduction he comments:

THE STORY OF ISOBEL GOWDIE

Emma Wilby. The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth Century Scotland. Sussex Academic Press, 2010

One of the insights that our study of contemporary visions and beliefs has brought is that past traditions may not just be based on literary tradition, but instead founded on actual experience, or remembered experience.
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JOURNEY'S END

Chris Impey. How it Ends: From You to the Universe. W. W. Norton, 2010

Just to cheer you up in this time of recession, here is a book on life and death, mainly the latter, from our own death, (which if we suffer from cardiac arrest, will be hastened by an over liberal application of neurone-frazzling oxygen, ice packs are better), through the extinction of species including our own, through the extinction of life on earth, the death of the earth, the sun, the galaxy and the cold, cold decay of the universe.
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NASTY LEGENDS, URBAN RUMOURS

Gillian Bennett. Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease and Death in Contemporary Legend. University Press of Mississipi, 2005

Though some time has elapsed since this book was published, it has only just come to my attention and is sufficiently important to note. In many respects this book marks a sharp contrast to Gillian Bennett's first book Traditions of Belief. which looked at the ghostlore of middle aged women in Greater Manchester, rather gentle and comforting traditions and experiences. This volume, to the contrary, deals with the dark side of contemporary legend.
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ALIENS AMONG US?

Mac Tonnies. The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us. Anomalist Books, 2010.

Before his sad and untimely death last year, Mac Tonnies had been intriguing ufologists with his idea that UFOs were the product of some quasi-human community sharing the planet with us. This book, extracted from his computer files, presents some of these ideas.

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BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

Marie D Jones and Larry Flaxman. The Deja-Vu Enigma: A Journey Through the Anomalies of Mind, Memory and Time. New Page Books, 2010.

If you start reading this review and suddenly think that you have read it all before, then you are having an experience of deja-vu. If you start reading this review and suddenly think that you have read it all before, then you are having an experience of deja-vu. 

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AUTHORS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

Jeffrey Kripal. Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred. The University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Jeffrey Kripal is a professor of philosophy and religious thought at Rice University in Houston Texas, and the author of a book, among others, on the Esalen Institute. Here he is concerned with 'the impossible', the varieties of anomalous personal experience which challenge not just contemporary science's view of the universe, but the whole world of daylight reason and commonsense.

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HIGH STRANGENESS & HIGH HOPES

Philip J. Imbrogno. Files from the Edge: A Paranormal Investigator's Explorations into High Strangeness. Llewellyn, 2010.

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Michael A. G. Michaud. Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears About Encountering Extraterrestrials. Copernicus Books, 2007

High Strangeness is certainly not an understatement, as much of the material in this book consists of the sort of stories you used to hear on the fringes of UFO group meetings, and which most people walk away from, having shut their ears several minutes earlier. Imbrogno is either open-minded enough or credulous enough (you pays your money and takes your choice) to document some of these stories. 
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WITCHCRAFT REVIVAL

David Waldron. The Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival. Carolina Academic Press, 2008

This interesting, if at times academically opaque study, traces the developments in the understanding and social imagery of 'the witch' and witchcraft from 17th century onwards, charting the decline in the intellectual respectability of the idea of witchcraft, the rise of notions of witchcraft beliefs being primitive survivals from a barbaric past, through to the rise of romantic interest in the subject. 

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SECRETS AND ILLUSIONS

      

David V Barrett. The Atlas of Secret Societies: The Truth Behind the Templars, Freemasons and Other Secretive Organisations. Godsfield, 2008

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Monte Cook. The Skeptics Guide to Conspiracies. Adams Media, 2009

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Richard L Gregory. Seeing Through Illusions. Oxford University Press, 2009

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NORTHERN FRIGHTS AND OTHER SITES

Jan-Andrew Henderson. Edinburgh, City of the Dead. Black and White Publishing, 2010.

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Ron Halliday. Edinburgh After Dark. Black and White Publishing, 2010.

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Peter Underwood. Haunted London. Amberley, Rev. Ed., 2010.

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Tony Broughall and Paul Adams. Two Haunted Counties. Limbury Press, 2010.

What is behind the massive explosion of local ghost books over the past few years? My colleague Peter Rogerson, who is a local history librarian, sees it as an offshoot of the growth in local history and genealogy. As the world becomes more open and 'globalised', so people seek to preserve an identity in family and locality.
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THE DEATH OF UFOLOGY (Part 92)

Gradually the 'Make Ufology History' message seems to be getting across, even on the other side of the Atlantic. Veteran (and pretty sensible) Canadian ufologist Chris Rutkowski is beginning to say what we've been saying for years, ufology is on its last legs. I'm taking the extreme liberty of reproducing his piece "The Demise of Ufology" here, but I strongly recommend his blog as a whole for its interesting and rational approach:

http://uforum.blogspot.com/

Here's what he has to say:

THE HAUNTING OF VIETNAM

Mai La Gustafsson. War and Shadows: The Haunting of Vietnam. Cornell University Press, 2009.

This is a book about being haunted by off-campus history, the history which is felt in the blood and bones, and imbibed at the elders feet. The ghosts that haunt Vietnam are not the pale spectres from the sanitised heritage industry reflecting a story book past, nor do they haunt places, so much as people.
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CRASH, BANG, WALLOP!

Kevin D. Randle, Crash: When UFOs Fall From the Sky, New Page Books, NJ, 2010

The more interesting UFO crash stories in this book will be familiar to most UFO enthusiasts. It is not the stories themselves, but Randle's treatment of them, which is of interest to the keen ufologist. Indeed, one would need to be keen to read through this book and and compare Randle's findings with those of other writers and investigators.

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