Ooh, Spooky

A Basic Guide to the Occult for Law Enforcement Agencies

Alfred Armstrong — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:18:18 +0100

Ms Herold's little handbook strives to alert police officers to the menace of the occult, though as it largely consists of statements of the obvious, it suggests that the guardians of the law must be even more stupid than is popularly thought.

For example, we learn that the signs of involvement in occult practices include:

a systematic use of symbols
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The Mysteries of Sound and Number

Alfred Armstrong — Sun, 25 May 2008 18:03:01 +0100

Hell and The Infernal Comedy

Alfred Armstrong — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:52:55 +0100

The author, John Armstrong Chaloner (born Chanler), known as Archie to his friends, made frequent appearances in the American press of the early 20th century. A member of the wealthy Astor family, he was married to another favourite of the gossip columns, the writer Amélie Rives. Chaloner was noted for his eccentricity and was for a while imprisoned as a lunatic; some recent commentators have suggested that he suffered from bipolar disorder.

Ghostology

Alfred Armstrong — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:09:59 +0100

What if all spiritualist mediums are genuine, and the phenomena of the seance are real? Could not these be studied, and a science of ghosts thereby arrived at? Such is the central idea of Danmar's unusual self-published volume of 1924.

What, Danmar asks, are ghosts made of? Future studies would surely shine light on the question:

An Astral Bridegroom

Alfred Armstrong — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:27:41 +0000

If you are looking for a thrilling mystery with a supernatural twist: this is not it. On the other hand, should you like your fiction to be dull, turgid, and weighed down with metaphysical drivel, An Astral Bridegroom may be the very thing.

Cyclomancy: The Secret of Psychic Power Control

Alfred Armstrong — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:59:45 +0000

Power. Deep down, isn't that what we all want? Power over others, power to induce them to do our bidding, power to get what we want when we want it. Even better, psychic power, so one can control people with the mind, without resistance or resentment. (Just what I want for my birthday, in case you were wondering.) That is the promise of this book.

Ultra: A Story of Pre-Natal Influence

Alfred Armstrong — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:59:44 +0000

Ultra, Laura Shellabarger Hunt's remarkable only published work, is intended to convey a message. As she tells us in a preferatory address:

There are many “truths” dropped herein between these covers that you will not find while absorbing the story. Go back and pick them up, “for there shall be nothing hidden that shall not be uncovered.”
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You Have Lived Before!

Alfred Armstrong — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:59:44 +0000

“Gervée Baronte” is (ignoring the accent) an anagram of “be ever rot agen”: an observation as significant as anything in this book of hers, which purports to describe the previous lives of a number of famous people, and a few utterly obscure ones.

Subjective Concepts of Humans

Alfred Armstrong — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:59:44 +0000

The Source of Spiritistic Manifestations

John J Donnelly, International Press, 1922

In this crazy book written, as we'll see, to prove that its author was not crazy, Donnelly proposes an explanation of spiritualist and allied phenomena that is - as far as I know - wholly unique and original. His unprecedented idea is that every time we meet someone, we create a kind of phantom clone of them:

The Clairvoyant Theory of Perception

Alfred Armstrong — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:59:44 +0000

When I was young there was a comic strip called 'The Numskulls', about some little men who lived inside a man's head and worked his body for him. The Numskulls were a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of one of the most naive theories of the mind, the 'Homunculus theory', which collapses under a cursory scrutiny. The author of this volume, Captain M. M. Moncrieff, has contrived an equally silly theory for one aspect of the mind's operation, that of visual perception, which he contends is not achieved through the agency of the eyes, but instead - as its title suggests - by clairvoyancy.