Psi Text Resources Thread

Cat Ward has a blog post about a "classic" but unusual 19th-century case, known as the Wilmot Case, in which a man on board ship dreamed that his wife visited him, his fellow passenger apparently witnessed her visit while awake, and the wife, also apparently while awake, had what we would now call an out-of-body experience of the visit, and was later able to describe the cabin to her husband:
https://www.catintheshadows.com/blog/wha...he-wilmots

The original published account of the case, in a paper by Eleanor Sidgwick in the SPR Proceedings for 1891-2, can be read here (starting at page 41 of the printed volume/page 69 of the PDF):
http://www.iapsop.com/archive/materials/...1891-2.pdf

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - a short biopic of Ingo Swann by Maryanne Bilham, entitled "A Life Gone Wild", is to be shown* at the fifth annual Philip K. Dick Sci-Fi Film Festival. There is a short interview with her here:
https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item...m-festival

* I now see this news item is nearly two years old!

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - Michael Prescott recommends a recent book by Richard Reichbart, entitled "The Paranormal Surrounds Us: Psychic Phenomena in Literature, Culture and Psychoanalysis":
https://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich...-book.html

Here's the publisher's blurb from Amazon:
Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, E.M. Forster and Ingmar Bergman all made the paranormal essential to their depiction of humanity. Freud recognized telepathy as an everyday phenomenon. Observations on parapsychological aspects of psychoanalysis also include the findings of the Mesmerists, Jung, Ferenczi and Eisenbud.
Many academicians attribute such psychic discoveries to "poetic license" rather than to accurate understanding of our parapsychological capacities. The author--a practicing psychoanalyst and parapsychologist, and a lawyer familiar with Navajo culture--argues for a fresh appraisal of psi phenomena and their integration into psychoanalytic theory and clinical work, literary studies and anthropology.

White Crow Books is due to publish "Talking about Psychical Research: Thoughts on Life, Death and the Nature of Reality" by Mary Rose Barrington next month. Their website has some thoughts from the author in response to the question "What is the point of psychical research?":
http://whitecrowbooks.com/books/sample/t...ature_of_r

The SPR has a detailed and positive review of Mary Rose Barrington's book, by Ted Dixon, concluding:
I completely agree with all that is said about the book in the blurbs by Barrington’s fellow SPR Council members. I would highly recommend it to all thoughtful people with an interest in psychical research and the conclusions we may be able to draw from it.
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/talkin...-mary-rose

The blurbs can be read here on the publisher's website:
http://whitecrowbooks.com/books/page/tal...ature_of_r

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - Michael Prescott recommends a recent book by Richard Reichbart, entitled "The Paranormal Surrounds Us: Psychic Phenomena in Literature, Culture and Psychoanalysis":
https://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich...-book.html

Here's the publisher's blurb from Amazon:
Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, E.M. Forster and Ingmar Bergman all made the paranormal essential to their depiction of humanity. Freud recognized telepathy as an everyday phenomenon. Observations on parapsychological aspects of psychoanalysis also include the findings of the Mesmerists, Jung, Ferenczi and Eisenbud.
Many academicians attribute such psychic discoveries to "poetic license" rather than to accurate understanding of our parapsychological capacities. The author--a practicing psychoanalyst and parapsychologist, and a lawyer familiar with Navajo culture--argues for a fresh appraisal of psi phenomena and their integration into psychoanalytic theory and clinical work, literary studies and anthropology.

Prescott has followed up his recommendation by doing a Question and Answer session with the author:
https://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich...hbart.html

Three British academics, David Groome, Michael Eysenck and Robin Law, have written a short book entitled "The Psychology of the Paranormal":
https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology...1138307889

It's part of a series called "The Psychology of Everything" - "a series of books which debunk the popular myths and pseudo-science surrounding some of life’s biggest questions." These are described as textbooks. As it doesn't appear to have notes, a bibliography or an index, I assume it's meant to be a school textbook.

ESP is in there, as the first of the topics covered, but the tenor of the preview on Google Books suggests it's written with the familiar assumption that paranormal beliefs are all mistaken anyway, and that the only interest to psychologists is in working out why people believe in things that obviously don't exist:
https://books.google.com/books?id=iJ6RDwAAQBAJ

This book is reviewed by Nemo C. Morck for the SPR. He dosn't find much educational value in it:
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/psycho...-robin-law

This book is reviewed by Nemo C. Morck for the SPR. He dosn't find much educational value in it:
https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/psycho...-robin-law

I must say, a far more robust defense of parapsychology, or at least the possibility of psi phenomena, could have been managed than that. This review is more of a slightly scolding summary.

Courtesy of the Anomalist - here's another blog I hadn't seen before, entitled "Malcolm's Musings: Anomalies":
https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/

The newest post tells the story of an auditory premonition about a shipwreck in 1899 - though one apparently not published until more than 50 years later:
https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2...ersey.html

Massimo Biondi, the recipient of the Parapsychological Association's 2019 Outstanding Contribution Award, is a prolific blogger. His blog, at https://psireport.wordpress.com/, is in Italian, but Google Translate produces a mostly comprehensible translation. I've added a link to the list of blogs in the wiki.

In contrast to that, Andreas Sommer has a blog post about a forthcoming book from Richard Noakes of the University of Essex, entitled "Physics and Psychics: The Occult and the Sciences in Modern Britain," due to be published by Cambridge University Press in October:
http://www.forbiddenhistories.com/notice...-psychics/

"Modern" here refers to the 19th century, so apparently we're talking about the kind of physicists who were involved in founding the Society for Psychical Research.

Sommer comments:
"If Richard’s previous work on the hidden history of the physical sciences is any indication, his book promises to set new standards for future historians working on similar topics."

Here's a short written interview with the author, on the website PopMatters:
https://www.popmatters.com/physics-and-p...belltitem4

To correct an error in my previous post, Dr Noakes is at the University of Exeter, not Essex.