Varla Ventura, fan favorite on Huffington Post’s Weird News, frequent guest on Coast to Coast, and bestselling author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces a new Weiser Books Collection of forgotten crypto-classics. Magical Creatures is a hair-raising herd of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s affectionate and unerring eye for the fantastic. Pioneering paranormal investigator and adventurer E. Katherine Bates traveled the world coducitng psychic investigations. Join her in Early America, for her Victorian adventures with the Other Side.

Séances, clairvoyance, and telepathy captivated public imagination in the United States from the 1850s well into the twentieth century. Though skeptics dismissed these experiences as delusions, a new kind of investigator emerged to seek the science behind such phenomena. With new technologies like the telegraph collapsing the boundaries of time and space, an explanation seemed within reach. As Americans took up psychical experiments in their homes, the boundaries of the mind began to waver. Common Phantoms brings these experiments back to life while modeling a new approach to the history of psychology and the mind sciences. Drawing on previously untapped archives of participant-reported data, Alicia Puglionesi recounts how an eclectic group of investigators tried to capture the most elusive dimensions of human consciousness. A vast though flawed experiment in democratic science, psychical research gave participants valuable tools with which to study their experiences on their own terms. Academic psychology would ultimately disown this effort as both a scientific failure and a remnant of magical thinking, but its challenge to the limits of science, the mind, and the soul still reverberates today.

Do you have psychic potential? Do you possess gifts that you fail to recognize? Can you really learn to develop and use these abilities? The answer to all three questions is yes. You were born psychic. You may not have a crystal ball, but you can learn how to recognize your innate ability and apply it practically to your everyday life. Through her work as the only psychic to ever work with FBI, Noreen Renier has helped lead law enforcement authorities, crime victims, and distressed families to answers. That experience, combined with her no-nonsense approach that includes helpful exercises and meditations, will help you understand and develop your unique skills without any hocus-pocus. This book takes the mystery and doubt out of psychic phenomena so you can develop and use these abilities to enrich your everyday life.

The only psychic ever to lecture at the FBI Academy, Noreen Renier has assisted law-enforcement officials all over the world, working on more than 400 criminal cases. From the discovery and development of her unique talents to becoming a respected figure in the police community, this is the true account of Noreen Renier's remarkable life and career. Included here are the stories of:Her prediction of the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.The client who was a professional mercenary.The police officer suspected of being a rapist and murderer.Her involvement in the Laci Peterson murder (she told the police where to find the body)A Mind for Murder has all the elements of true crime, memoir, and psychic mystery.

"Based on extensive research and their own unique personal experiences, the authors reveal that a significant number of Americans hold these beliefs, and that for better or worse, we undoubtedly live in a paranormal America. Readers will join the authors as they participate in psychic and palm readings, and have their auras photographed, join a Bigfoot hunt, follow a group of celebrity ghost hunters as they investigate claims of a haunted classroom, and visit a support group for alien abductees."--Provided by publisher.

Dr. Hans Holzer, PhD. was one of the early American writers to play a prominent role in the spread of contemporary Witchcraft, Wicca and Paganism during the late 1960's and early 70's. A prolific writer of over 145 books, mainly on associated Occult, Paranormal and Supernatural subjects, his early books on Witchcraft, namely: The Truth about Witchcraft (1969), The New Pagans: An Inside Report On the Mystery Cults of Today (1972) and Inside Witchcraft (1980) were written when few other books on witchcraft were available. As such he did much to boost and pave the way for many future contemporary writers to follow him. Holzer is perhaps best known as the famed Ghost-hunter and Paranormal-investigator associated with the "Amityville House" horror investigations, which later became the subject of several popular horror films. In January 1977, Holzer working with the well-known trance medium Ethel Johnson-Meyers, entered 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. In 1974 this had been the place of a horrific murder, when the then occupant "Ronald DeFeo Jr" murdered his own parents and four siblings. After entering the premises, Meyers allegedly made contact the spirit of an old American Indian Chief, who revealed that the site had once been a sacred Indian burial ground. During his investigation Holzer discovered bullet holes created during the 1974 murders and took some photos, these when developed showed some rather unusual anomalies, for mysterious halos seemed to hover above them. Holzer believed that Ronald Defeo Jr. may have been possessed by the old American Indian chief, and that unscrupulous property developers had built the house on a sacred Indian burial site, a claim that the Amityville Historical Society strenuously tried to discredit. Later while filming the documentary, Holzer managed to get a representative from the property development company to reveal that the property at 112 Ocean Ave. had indeed been built on a sacred burial ground. Hans Holzer was born in Vienna, Austria on the 26th January 1920. He claimed his interest in all things supernatural developed from childhood stories about ghosts and fairies recited to him by his uncle Henry. After completing his early education, Holzer went on to study Archaeology, Ancient History and Numismatics at the University of Vienna, but with Germany threatening war on his boarders, he left Austria in 1938 and settled in New York. In New York he entered Columbia University were for the next three years he studied Japanese and Journalism. His main interest at the time was in musical theatre, for which he wrote a short-lived revue called "Safari", and the book and music for "Hotel Excelsior", a minor musical about a group of young Americans in Paris, which opened for a brief time in Provincetown, Mass. He also wrote theatre reviews for The London Sporting Review. To complete his education Holzer then studied at the London College of Applied Science from where he received a Masters degree in Comparative Religion and a Doctorate degree in Philosophy. A year later he was offered a Professorship at the New York Institute of Technology were he specialized in teaching Biblical Archaeology and Parapsychology, he was also a guest lecturer at many other Colleges and Universities. It was during his tenure at the Institute of Technology that Holzer began his life long pre-occupation and investigations into Haunted Houses. Working with Eileen Garrett, a famous medium and psychic investigator, he received a grant from the Institute to research and investigate Haunted Houses all across the eastern United States. The result of their investigations led to the publication of his first best selling book Ghost Hunter published in 1963. Psychic Investigator is the book following on to Ghost Hunter.

This is the story of the world's first recognised psychic, Daniel Dunglas Home, and the Victorians who deified and despised him. Originally published: London: Little, Brown, 2005.