Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses

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“I have seen such a world where forms and half-made shapes moved and struggled,” Eileen Garrett wrote about the paranormal.

I always loved Eileen Garrett’s descriptions of her abilities, and what it was like for her. The following quote in particular caught my eye because of all that I’ve read recently about the illusion of time:

“I conceive of yesterday, today, and tomorrow as a single curve … time loses reality and the past and present and future are present in one instant … ”

Helix Press has reissued Allan Angoff’s biography, Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses, which I used in my research.

This following quote of hers is interesting because she seems to accept elements from both parapsychological and mainstream ideas about mind:

“If mind exists, (and I believe it to be universal) the shock of separation from the brain must of necessity at such planned deductions, and one can only, within a new ‘vessel’ experience something akin to a dreaming remembrance of things past. … How much is remembered in the new state of consciousness … does the dragon fly remember his form as the chrysalis of yesterday?”

Parapsychology Foundation Lecture Tonight

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I wish I had thought of posting this before, but I’m going to this lecture tonight that is part of the Parapsychology Foundation’s Perspectives Lecture series.

Dr. Lawrence LeShan will be launching his New Book, A New Science of the Paranormal: The Promise of Psychical Research and the PF will be launching the Helix Press Reprint of Allan Angoff’s Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses (which I used in my research of Eileen Garrett).

The details:  

Tonight, June 4th, 7 – 9pm, at Baruch College Newman Conference Center in Room H763 on the 7th Floor at 151 East 25th Street in Manhattan.

New Book by Artist Susan MacWilliam: Remote Viewing


I went to a presentation Susan MacWilliam gave for the Parapsychology Foundation and I was very impressed, I love her work.  I browsed her website one day and the work there was evocative, thoughtful and visually arresting.  From the press release about her new book:

“For over 10 years MacWilliam has been making video and installation works based on cases of the parapsychological, the paranormal and the perceptual.

“She has made works about a range of subjects and individuals including the materialisation medium Helen Duncan, the Belfast table tilting medium Kathleen Goligher and the Dermo Optical perception of Rosa Kuleshova …

“She has worked with such notorieties as Dr William G Roll, Dr Stanley Krippner, Rex Stanford and Madame Yvonne Duplessis. Since 2006 she has worked closely with the Parapsychology Foundation, New York and Eileen and Lisette Coly – daughter and granddaughter of the celebrated and influential Irish medium Eileen J Garrett.

“In 2008 Susan spent a month in Winnipeg where she researched the TG Hamilton Spirit Photograph Collection housed at the University of Manitoba Archives. Susan’s works provide a historical visual record and interpretation of particular cases within the history of parapsychology – her expansive body of work mediates between the worlds of art and psychical research.”

I’m jealous about the month she spent going through the  TG Hamilton Spirit Photograph Collection!

You can purchase her book from Black Dog Publishing or from Amazon.

UPDATE FROM THE PUBLISHER:  We’d be happy to offer your readers a 40% discount on all orders of the book – all they have to do is email jess@blackdogonline.com or call +44 (0) 207-713-5097 quoting “Stacy Horn”.

The Last Witch of Langenburg


I met Duke history professor Tom Robisheaux while I was in Durham last week and I was so impressed I immediately put his book The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village on my “to-read” list.  I just knew it was going to worth reading—the guy worked on it for 15 years. FIFTEEN YEARS.

Sure enough, he got a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly (those are not easy to get).

“Duke historian Robisheaux turns the obscure story of a smalltown German woman convicted of witchcraft into a marvelous window onto a society in crisis. On Shrove Tuesday, 1672, Eva Küstner delivered Shrovetide cakes baked by her mother to her neighbor, Anna Fessler, who was still recuperating from the birth of her child a few weeks earlier. A few days after eating some of the cakes, Anna died a painful death. Almost immediately, the community accused Eva and her mother, Anna Schmeig, of witchcraft. In this fast-paced account, Robisheaux chronicles the roles that various ministers, lawyers and physicians play in the indictment of Anna Schmeig and her immediate family. Robisheaux shows that Schmeigs trial and execution as a witch grew out of a small villages superstitions and its belief in the power of God to transform an evil event into an exemplary one. Drawing on rich records of the trials of Schmeig and her family, Robisheaux finely crafts a vivid glimpse of a time, place and state of mind that, though remote, is all too familiar.”

Seymour Mauskopf


I went down to Durham to give talks about my book for Duke University and for the Rhine Research Center. At the one for the Rhine Research Center I was co-presenting with Sy Mauskopf, a Duke professor and science historian and the author of The Elusive Science: Origins of Experimental Psychic Research (with Michael McVaugh), which I link to on the right.

God those Duke students are lucky, what a treasure he is. You had to be there, but he was just one of those teachers who has the perfect combination of smart, engaging, generous, he is such a good story teller.  Some teachers want to … not sure how to put this, intone.  And others, it’s like they figured out this great thing and can’t wait to tell you.  That’s Sy.  He gave a presentation which put parapsychology in historical context.  Among other things, he talked about Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, and the demarcation between science and pseudo-science, Isaac Newton and alchemy, it was a great talk.  He was awarded the Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award (I’m not surprised).

I just looked up his bio on Duke:  “My research interests in the history of science have been quite varied over the years; they include the history of chemistry and allied sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Crystals and Compounds, 1976), the history of chemical technology, focusing on munitions and explosives and the history of parapsychology and marginal science (The Elusive Science: Origins of Experimental Psychical Research, with Michael R. McVaugh, 1980). I have edited two books reflective of these different interests: The Reception of Unconventional Science (1979) and Chemical Sciences in the Modern World (1993).”

Jealous.  I want to write another historical book about science.  Anyway, if you’re a Duke University student, take his class!

Speaking of Research

I love when reviews mention the research.  Because I really did work hard.  And Rick Kleffel mentioned it twice in his review on The Agony Column on Bookotron.  

“… whether or not you believe in such phenomena [telepathy, poltergeists, etc.] is irrelevant to your ability to enjoy Horn’s book. It’s an exciting, immaculately researched, complicated answer to a question that has no simple answer: “Do you believe?” 

“Readers with an interest in matters Fortean will enjoy the almost novelistic style and Horn’s extensive research. She’s refreshingly without agenda, and offers up lots of fascinating details about the longest and perhaps best study of the “paranormal.” 

Thank you, Rick!  This is the Rhines in Paris.