Occult Memoirs

Uschi Troll was born in Vienna in the 1950s. She had her first psychic experience at the age of four; by the time she was 11, she had bewildered and frightened her parents—and herself—with the extent of her powers. Only gradually was she able to accept her unusual gift, as she moved from school to school, from relationship to relationship. When Uschi decided that it was time to tell her story, she told it to Hans Holzer, knowing that he, a world-renowned expert on psychic phenomena, would tell it with insight and truth.

It's Christmas in Los Angeles, 1927, and a bank officer named Perry Parker receives a bizarre ransom note, telling him that one of his twin daughters, Marion, has been kidnapped and that she'll be returned if he follows a series of explicit instructions. Little does Parker know, but his daughter is already dead - strangled and horribly dismembered by a madman who calls himself the "Fox."

This true story, Simply Be at 33, will take you on a journey of self-discovery. Andrea arrives in London at the age of 20 with no knowledge of written or spoken English. Soon, she meets a psychic who reveals that spiritual realms are real. This revelation sheds a ray of light for new beginnings and encourages her to study fashion design as she always dreamed. But there is something more.

For nine years, South Carolina officials struggled to identify “the boy in the woods,” a young man whose body had been discovered just south of Myrtle Beach in a fishing village called Murrells Inlet. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank McGonigle's family searched for him at Grateful Dead concerts and in the face of every long-haired hitchhiker they passed. Consumed by guilt for how they'd treated him, Frank's eight siblings slowly came to understand that—like Jerry Garcia sang—he's gone and nothin's gonna bring him back.

American Spiritualism—a movement that at its peak claimed more than a million followers—was born out of the basic human longing for contact with a loved one lost to death. But Spiritualism's true spark came in 1848 from something no more or less powerful than a bored teenage girl. This is the first authoritative biography of Maggie Fox, the world-famous medium and cofounder of the Spiritualism movement that swept America in the mid-1800s. What started as a prank soon transformed into a movement.

The Seventh Dead is, on the face of it, a memoir of paranormal experiences, particularly surrounding UFO encounters and anomalous phenomena. On a deeper level, it explores the implication—arising out of these phenomena themselves—to burrow through the shadow aspects of the author’s own psychology, approaching that of a more collective or archetypal nature.

In life, spiritual paths are often as unique as we are. Bringing together the voices of four women mystics walking very different spiritual paths, poet Arundhathi Subramaniam reveals the expansive potential of forging an intimate, personal connection with the divine. Sensitive, insightful, and lyrical, Women Who Wear Only Themselves bathes us in the kind of mystery that feels deeply familiar and invites us to connect with whatever sparks our spiritual fire.

In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.

In 1897, a young and untested cavalry lieutenant named Winston Churchill, more than a little keen to see action, got himself attached as a press correspondent to an expeditionary force newly formed to restore order on the North West Frontier of India. His dispatches to the London Daily Telegraph were later expanded into this audiobook.

The dark-eyed woman in the long, black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events.

Sure to capture the imagination of devotees of true crime and the occult, this anthology of 13 true crime stories includes the mysterious slaying of Charles Walton, who was found slashed and pierced to death in an area notorious for its associations with black magic; the murder of Eric Tombe, whose body was located because of a recurring dream in which his mother saw Eric down a well; the terrorizing of Hammersmith, London, in the early 19th century by the nocturnal appearance of a "ghost"; and much more.

Dr. Hans Holzer is perhaps best known as the famed ghost hunter and paranormal investigator associated with the Amityville 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 crime when the then-occupant Ronald DeFeo, Jr., murdered his own parents and four siblings.

Brad and Barry Klinge have been investigating paranormal occurrences for the last 20 years, and in Chasing Ghosts, Texas Style, they divulge some of their most exciting ghost encounters and analyze the science behind their paranormal hunts. Each chapter of this fascinating book focuses on the Klinge brothers' investigations into the creepiest of places and explains how they have been able to capture both audio and video of paranormal occurrences using their high-tech tools and a healthy dose of common sense.

On February 2, 1963, a tanker with 39 men aboard departed Beaumont and never returned. In the mid-spring of 1882, Billy the Kid's friend, foe, and equal escaped Huntsville Penitentiary and vanished. On December 9, 1961, a young boy in Wichita Falls disappeared without a trace. On November 18, 1936, a father and son were swallowed by a Walled Kingdom. On December 23, 1974, three girls went to a Fort Worth mall and were never seen or heard from again. This collection explores 20 baffling disappearances that investigators have studied for decades, to no avail.

Night delivers a litter of eight puppies in a poor neighborhood in Springfield, Tennessee, the week before Melissa Armstrong first meets her. As a volunteer for a local nonprofit, Melissa has experience with strays and plans to rescue Night and her litter within days. But nothing goes as planned. For the next six months, Melissa and a ragtag cast of characters try to trap the mutt with nets, catchpoles, spring traps, cheeseburgers, hot dogs stuffed with Benadryl, and the dog’s crying puppies. They fail so many times that Melissa is on the brink of giving up.

An inspirational and heartrending memoir about Ben Breedlove, whose videos about his near-death experiences and visions of heaven went viral in 2012, written by his sister Ally Breedlove. On Christmas Day 2011, Ben Breedlove's soul went to heaven. But it wasn't his first time there. Ben suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a heart condition that posed a constant risk of sudden death. His condition, a thickening of the heart muscle, worsened over time, leaving him weak and fatigued.

By any measure, Byron Janis has had an extraordinary musical career. His discovery of two long-lost Chopin scores made headlines around the world, and he has been honored many times for his breathtaking performances of some of the most exciting and challenging works in the standard classical piano repertoire. As he retraces this remarkable journey in Chopin and Beyond, he shares something even more extraordinary: the other-worldly experiences that have shaped his life and music in profound ways.

This real-life inspired story begins with our main character C.W. dying in a hospital bed when his Shaman, Anunk, arrives and gets rid of everyone. The Shaman retrieves a thermos and small wooden cup lights an enormous cigar and begins chanting and building a great broom of smoke over the dying C.W.

This audiobook is a reflective journey into the pursuit of the spiritual needs of human beings. It is not based on any religion or ideology, but it has been influenced by many of them. It focuses on the core needs that are found in most spiritual practices and gives an introduction to each need. From love to uncertainty to significance, the listener encounters each fundamental need from a supportive and vulnerable approach.

A catalyst for change can take many forms. For author Erin Burrell, that life-altering moment began with a jarring knock at the door. A solemn detective delivered the news that a loved one had died. The grief and heart-splitting loss sent her groping for answers. In her search, she was drawn toward an unexpected path - towards the metaphysical. After reading several books about psychic mediums, Erin wondered if she too might be able to connect with her deceased loved one.