The daughter of a man about to leave on a trip wakes up crying during the night. She has just had a nightmare that his plane will crash. The father flies without incident to Spain, but the next day, the plane he has taken to Spain crashes and burns outside Malaga on its return trip to New York. Was the dream a premonition? Many people experience similar phenomena, ranging from extra-sensory perceptions all the way to near-death experiences on operating tables. Are these events evidence of the paranormal, or are they mere coincidences or hallucinations? How should we regard such claims of supernatural experiences?

Lives of the Psychics, a journey through the terrain of psychic phenomena, tries to answer these questions through interviews with practicing psychics, a survey of the heroic attempts of researchers to test psychic abilities in controlled experiments, and an exploration of out-of-body, near-death, and mystical experiences. Fred M. Frohock brings together a wide variety of psychic claims and examines them with a rich set of materials—interviews, critical anecdotes, history, multiple theories of the paranormal—that allows him to use whatever tools are necessary to illuminate beliefs in the supernatural. He relates real-life events to scientific studies, so the reader is a party not only to fantastic experiences and first-hand stories of the paranormal but also to the rationales for these experiences proposed by scientists. There is no more rewarding guide to the limits and powers of science in explaining psychic phenomena.

To a field filled with uncertainty and suspicion, Frohock brings a discerning eye, a critical sensibility, and a fundamental sense of curiosity about the role of mysticism in science. Even skeptics will be intrigued.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Victorians were seeking rational explanations for the world in which they lived. The radical ideas of Charles Darwin had shaken traditional religious beliefs. Sigmund Freud was developing his innovative models of the conscious and unconscious mind. And anthropologist James George Frazer was subjecting magic, myth, and ritual to systematic inquiry. Why, then, in this quintessentially modern moment, did late-Victorian and Edwardian men and women become absorbed by metaphysical quests, heterodox spiritual encounters, and occult experimentation?

In answering this question for the first time, The Place of Enchantment breaks new ground in its consideration of the role of occultism in British culture prior to World War I. Rescuing occultism from its status as an "irrational indulgence" and situating it at the center of British intellectual life, Owen argues that an involvement with the occult was a leitmotif of the intellectual avant-garde. Carefully placing a serious engagement with esotericism squarely alongside revolutionary understandings of rationality and consciousness, Owen demonstrates how a newly psychologized magic operated in conjunction with the developing patterns of modern life. She details such fascinating examples of occult practice as the sex magic of Aleister Crowley, the pharmacological experimentation of W. B. Yeats, and complex forms of astral clairvoyance as taught in secret and hierarchical magical societies like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Through a remarkable blend of theoretical discussion and intellectual history, Owen has produced a work that moves far beyond a consideration of occultists and their world. Bearing directly on our understanding of modernity, her conclusions will force us to rethink the place of the irrational in modern culture.

What happens to consciousness during the act of dying? The most compelling answers come from people who almost die and later recall events that occurred while lifesaving resuscitation, emergency care, or surgery was performed. These events are now called near-death experiences (NDEs). As medical and surgical skills improve, innovative procedures can bring back patients who have traveled farther on the path to death than at any other time in history. Physicians and healthcare professionals must learn how to appropriately treat patients who report an NDE. It is estimated that more than 10 million people in the United States have experienced an NDE. Hagan and the contributors to this volume engage in evidence-based research on near-death experiences and include physicians who themselves have undergone a near-death experience. This book establishes a new paradigm for NDEs.

From the experience of dying to awakening to tunnels, bright lights, unfamiliar realms, life reviews, and different levels of consciousness, Leon Rhodes takes the reader on a great adventure into the unknown. An officer in the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), Rhodes recounts the stories of near-death experiences (NDEs) that people have shared with him over the years. The profound changes in their lives after their discoveries are chronicled as a source of inspiration.

In addition, the fascinating parallels between NDEs and the spiritual world, described over two hundred years ago by Emanuel Swedenborg, provide many insights into the transition from this life to the next world. Rhodes' unique Swedenborgian perspective broadens the discussion over the significance of the near-death phenomenon.