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Fortean Books: Suggestions & Recommendations

gncxx said:
...someone called Mrs Joan Church seems to have a lion's share of the anecdotes, maybe she should have written her own book?...

Yes, she's one I had in mind when I made my, 'well, I've always been a bit psychic, you know', comment.

...That's the sort of scary stuff I was hoping for!

I hope you find more. There are certainly a few that have stuck in my mind - I hope they haven't over-weighted my opinion of the book in general.

To my mind nothing much beats a good ghost story, but collections can be very hit and miss affairs. I've found that some of the most interesting stories are in books which are not specifically about the subject. I'm always reminded of Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the Heart - which although ostensibly about his dysfunctional family and infamous brother, contains a couple of quite frightening apparently supernatural incidents.
 
Ooooh! Where to start!

"The Mothman Prophesies" and/or "Our Haunted Planet" by John A. Keel.

Almost anything by D. Scott Rogo.

William R. Corliss is well worth a look; while not writing about ghosts or UFOs, he's well worth searching for as his books are an excellent resource for anomalous phenomena/items/archaeology.

Also, a quick plug for FT's very own "It Happened To Me" series - excellent reading from the pages of FT over the years.
 
The Morning of the Magicians: Secret Societies, Conspiracies, and Vanished Civilizations by Louise Pauwels and Jacques Bergier

Not that I necessarily believe it, but I found Ed and Loraiine Warren's The Demonologists scary reading.

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk
 
"One Hundred Thousand Years of Man's Unknown History" Robert Charroux

Mostly Pseudo-science and plain jive, it still poses some good questions and may contain some mysterious facts. I'm reading it again after about forty years. Good Fortean Fun!
 
Will Storr Versus the Supernatural.

I notice that this book seems to have grown somewhat in stature as time has passed. When I first bought it many online reviews accused it of being overly-sceptical - which is plain wrong; Storr is certainly sceptical about certain events and individuals (notably some of those who make money out of the subject), but by the end of the book I don't think there's any doubt that he's more of a believer than when he started. (Just having a quick look at Amazon this morning it seems that the book has nineteen five star reviews - that's out of nineteen. Okay, nineteen isn't a huge number of reviews, but in my experience once you get above three or four a 100% rating is pretty rare.)

To my mind Will Storr plays the perfect Everyman, swinging between scepticism and belief, depending on the circumstances, the people he's talking to, or the events he's involved in - an attitude which I believe should be familiar to anyone who isn't quite sure but wants to keep an open-mind.

It's also very entertaining and extremely readable.
 
It's now 15 years old, but 'Ufos and Ufology: The First 50 Years' by
Paul Devereux and Peter Brookesmith [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ufos-Ufology-The-First-Years/dp/0816038007] is really an indispensable overview of the phenomena.
 
Does anyone know whether the Janet & Colin Bord books—the first few—are available in any kind of e-book/.pdf format?
 
Was cleaning out the cellar recently and found my copy of Simon Dwyer's Rapid Eye Movement, which rather pleased me as I'd thought i'd Ebayed it while having a bad patch.

It's a sort of 'best of' of the Temple of Psychic Youth's newsletters, definitely cracking stuff if you're a fan of Genesis P-Orridge or Psychic TV, some of the essays and interviews are pretty good by themselves, particularly Dwyer's own "Brazil", on the erosion of civil liberties in 8os England.
 
Spookdaddy said:
Westwood and Simpson's, The Lore of the Land.

I confess that although the content looks good, I'd always been deterred from buying this owing to the title and the cheesy cover of the paperback edition. Having now picked up a beautiful hardback edition, however, I can see that it is a stunningly good book, a genuine classic of the subject—and it's vast to boot.

Apparently it was written as The A to Z of English Folk Tales before the publisher stepped in with a bright idea...

Can anyone who owns both tell me whether this book fully supersedes the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore by Simpson and Round? That's a (physically) much smaller work that I did once examine, but I can't now compare the contents.
 
The Psychology of 'The Sopranos':
Love, Death, Desire and Betrayal in America's Favorite Gangster Family

OK, not actually Fortean, except perhaps for the dreams and a couple of paranormal scenes, but I ordered it from America and it's waiting at the Post Office for me and I'm sooooo excited! :D
 
It's essentially an expanded version of Westwood's Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain, which dates from 1985. I don't have the Oxford Dictionary you menton - there may well be some overlap with that as well. :)

edit: escargot snook in there. So far as I know, Westwood and Simpson have yet to tackle the Sopranos. :shock:
 
theyithian said:
...Can anyone who owns both tell me whether this book fully supersedes Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore by Simpson and Round? It's a much smaller work that I did once examine, but I can't compare the contents.

I'm not sure about that one, but I would recommend Steve Roud's (I think you meant to type Roud, not Round), The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland - which is also quite vast in scope, and quite enthralling. I fancied myself as being pretty familiar with the subject, but there's much more stuff in there than I'd ever even begun to hear of.
 
Spookdaddy said:
theyithian said:
...Can anyone who owns both tell me whether this book fully supersedes Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore by Simpson and Round? It's a much smaller work that I did once examine, but I can't compare the contents.

I'm not sure about that one, but I would recommend Steve Roud's (I think you meant to type Roud, not Round), The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland ...

Since I wrote the above I got hold of a copy of Steve Roud's London Lore, which contains more than a few ghost stories (many I'd never heard before) along with all the other folklore stuff.

On the subject of ghost stories: Anybody read Ghost Stories From the North of England (or any of the original pamphlets it is compiled from) - which was reviewed in the latest FT? I need a fix and wondered if it was worth a punt.
 
Damien Broderick on:
Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century
and
Extrasensory Perception: Support, Skepticism, and Science

The Real Science Behind Paranormal Phenomena

MANY PEOPLE ACCEPT AS TRUE, or at least partially true, numerous assertions that seem laughable or absurd to critics. A Harris poll a few years back reported that only 47 percent of adult Americans accepted the reality of evolution: more than half the population still denies the basic lynchpin of scientific biology. Meanwhile, 42 percent accept the reality of ghosts, 29 percent put their faith in astrology, and a quarter of the population think they’ll be reincarnated in another body. Others think they’ll go to heaven or perhaps suffer eternal punishment in hell.

What of the paranormal? Popular acceptance of telepathy (fetching knowledge directly from somebody else’s mind), remote viewing (detecting data from afar), precognition (accurately foretelling the future), and psychokinesis (moving stuff by wishing it) has been clocked at 41 percent and above.

It turns out that paranormal believers are right to accept the reality of at least some anomalous phenomena. This review examines two formidable books presenting evidence and preliminary theory for psi (the catch-all term for such apparent impossibilities). One comes in two hefty volumes, while the other is a monstrous paperback.

The evidence is impressive. I say this with some confidence, even in the face of the claptrap often associated with claims of the paranormal and the dull or cunning shysters who try to sell bogus “psychic readings” or inflated “remote viewing courses.” There’s substantial evidence — both anecdotal and laboratorial — for some paranormal phenomena, but it takes scientific savvy to sort out the trustworthy from the vast piles of dross.

¤

Although the professional organization of academically qualified psi specialists has been an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1969, its discipline remains the target of shrugs and eye-rolling from most scientists. For example, a cadre of devoted uberskeptics ensures that this attitude of caustic dismissal penetrates Wikipedia, where the first sentence of the entry on psi research begins: “Parapsychology is a pseudoscience.” The two tomes under review, and others recent and forthcoming, might help illuminate the legitimate work being accomplished by various psi investigators. ...

https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/the-real-science-behind-paranormal-phenomena
 
I'm just about to start reading this and thought some of you guys might think it looks as interesting as I thought it did! I love the cover art too.

Penetration, The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy by Ingo Swann

9781544063997-us.jpg
 
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Have just started reading Aliens Ghosts and Vanishings by Stella Tarakson published by Random House 2016.
I'm not sure if it's meant to be a teens book although it wasn't in that section, but it is very simply laid out.
However it has a few Australian ones I hadn't heard of so far, in particular that people have seen a creature like the Loch Ness monster in the Hawkesbury River where I'm going in March with Probus.
 
Vincent Gaddis' 1965 book, Invisible Horizons is quite good. It is about true sea mysteries. There are a few compilations of FATE articles as well, one of which I expect to get tomorrow. Rupert Furneaux also wrote a few books of ancient mysteries.
 
Vincent Gaddis' 1965 book, Invisible Horizons is quite good. It is about true sea mysteries. There are a few compilations of FATE articles as well, one of which I expect to get tomorrow. Rupert Furneaux also wrote a few books of ancient mysteries.
This book just arrived today, and I was much surprised to find out that it was sold by a bookshop in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire in Wales!! Since I live in northern Oklahoma, I don't get too much mail from the UK.

Just thought some of you might be interested.

It is The World's Strangest Mysteries by Rupert Furneaux.
 
Unexplained Facts: Enigmas and Curiosities by Gould arrived today. It has stories of the Martian canals, Old Parr, and Abraham Thornton, among others. I am getting quite a few books I had previously. Another order has shipped and, I am on the verge of ordering a couple of other books.
 
Hello. With Christmas fast approaching I wonder if anyone has any suggestions for good Fortean books. I have most of John Keel's works, Passport to Magonia, a few Bigfoot titles and some Nick Redfern (whose style I'm not a fan of) and some Jonathan Downes.
Last year I received Hunt for the Skinwalker and Gef! , both of which I love.
I'm not really interested in hauntings/ghosts per se. Any ideas would be most welcome.
 
I suggest you take a look at these threads and a few of my own:

Borderlands By Mike Dash.

Hystories by Elaine Showalter.

The Devils Party by Colin Wilson.

Flat Earth by Christine Garwood.

A Brief History of Secret Societies by David V. Barrett.

Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti by Loren Coleman.

The Land That Never Was by David Sinclar.

Ghost Colonies by Ed Wright.

The Master Plan by Heather Pringle. Great book on some Fortean aspects of the SS as well as a lot of downright nasty stuff. The Ahnenerbe was involved in some crimes against humanity with medical experiments on prisoners.


https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/ahnenerbe.5588/#post-1773843

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...nyone-give-me-a-list-of-books-featured.63412/

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/suggestions-for-a-good-read.13479/

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/fortean-books.19925/
 
Jon Ronson books:

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004)

Them: Adventures with Extremists (2001)

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011)
 
@Yithian Thanks. I've read them all. Turns out that everybody I worked with in my last job was a psychopath. It's a wonder I escaped with my life.
 
I recommend the Harry Potter Books Series of Books, it about this boy, see, and he only discovers... he's a wizard! And then, he goes to a school, but, one for wizards! The books are totally mental, how can someone imagine something like this? Mark my words, these books are going to take off, I would love to see them as a film! And then some more films that are vaguely related many years afterwards. And play too, definitely a play. A theme park wouldn't go amiss either.
 
I recommend the Harry Potter Books Series of Books, it about this boy, see, and he only discovers... he's a wizard! And then, he goes to a school, but, one for wizards! The books are totally mental, how can someone imagine something like this? Mark my words, these books are going to take off, I would love to see them as a film! And then some more films that are vaguely related many years afterwards. And play too, definitely a play. A theme park wouldn't go amiss either.
And don't forget the tacky merchandise.
 
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