I found an advertisement somewhere online for Rue Morgue Magazine’s Monstro Bizarro collection, “An Essential Manual of Mysterious Monsters”. Maybe it was via the editor, Lyle Blackburn. I pay attention […]
Category: Books
An inconsistent history of paranormal in America – Book Review
Supernatural America: A Cultural History by L.R. Samuel (2011) Supernatural America is one of a few books that aim to take the reader on a tour of the country’s paranormal […]
The Bigfoot Book: Speculation and supernatural but no skepticism
Nick Redfern’s latest, The Bigfoot Book, has a sound premise and great potential. It’s all about stuff you may never have heard about or saw relating to the Bigfoot phenomena. […]
Book review: Margery and Houdini story reveals gaps, not answers
A review of The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World by David Jaher This is a story of Spiritualism in America in the early […]
Dreaming of DNA: Review of Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the last Neanderthal
Originally published in the UK as The Nature of the Beast, Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the Last Neanderthal: A geneticist’s search for modern apemen is highly enjoyable and reveals a bunch of […]
The State of the Science: Parapsychology (Book Review)
In October of last year I wrote a blog post about a review of a new parapsychology compendium. Finally, I’ve gotten to read the entire book referenced for myself, cover […]
A Guide to Ghost Hunting Guidebooks: NO MORE! Please!
This might come as a shock to the millions of ghost enthusiasts out there: The scientific consensus is that ghosts are NOT spirits, remnants of the dead, recordings of energy, or […]
Book Review: Dawkins’ Brief Candle
Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science by Richard Dawkins My rating: 4 of 5 stars I feel this book helped me understand Dawkins considerably more than I […]
The stupidiocy of Ancient Aliens for kids (Book Review)
There are few good skeptical books for kids. But there are a shit-ton of terrible books promoting mystery and pseudoscientific nonsense aimed at kids or those getting started exploring a paranormal […]
Media as ‘medium’: Review of Paranormal Media and the good and bad of ghost hunting
It’s not news that the paranormal is mainstream, which is ironic since we commonly understand the paranormal to be events that are NOT normal yet the discussion about it is […]
Miscellaneous book review quickies Fall 2015
The Paranormal by Kenneth PartridgeMy rating: 1 of 5 stars Mostly poor choice of selections for this collection. It’s a book marketed to university libraries as a “resource” but not […]
Houdini. Skeptic. (Book Review)
Harry Houdini needs no introduction, but there are several facts that people do not know about this consummate skeptic. That makes this book a must for everyone interested in psychics […]
Cryptozoology and Myth, Part 2: Lake Monster Tropes
This is the second in a series of posts examining cryptids (“hidden” animals said to exist based on local testimony), namely lake monsters, in terms of the folklore, tradition, and […]
Cryptozoology and Myth, Part 1: The Illusion of Facticity in Unknown Animal Reports
What can we make of folklore tales that cryptozoologists use to support claims that an unknown animal has been historically reported and remains to be identified? Cryptid researchers say that […]
Is the snowflake to blame for the avalanche? (Book review)
Jon Ronson is someone with whom you could sit down and just start up a conversation like you have known him for years. In fact that happened to me a […]
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see – Book review
Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News by A. Brad Schwartz, 2015 “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” – […]
Stone-throwing wall-thumpers: Review of Australian Poltergeists
Paul Cropper sent me a copy of his new book with co-author Tony Healy, Australian Poltergeist: The Stone-throwing Spook of Humpty Doo and Many Other Cases. He must have known […]
Storm and the devil: Book review
I like reading historical books when the narrative flows and the information is new and intriguing. I really liked A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience […]
I know, not just believe, this book is nonsense: Book Review
Sometimes publishers and authors send me stuff. I’m not sure why they think I’ll suddenly be open to unscientific, fringe ideas about how the world works and overthrow what we […]
A Paranormal National disaster: Book review
I had such high hopes for Paranormal Nation: Why America Needs Ghosts, UFOs and Bigfoot, by Marc E. Fitch (2013). I found it in an academic library, it was hefty, […]