nthposition online magazine

< 1 2 3 4 >
Displaying results 11 through 20 out of 36

Victor Hugo's conversations with the spirit world...

review by Tom Ruffles

...included chats with abstractions, talking animals, extraterrestrials, entire countries, the Finger of Death... oh, and Shakespeare.

Laboratories of faith

review by Tom Ruffles

A fascinating look at how marginal ideas and the mainstream intersected in 19th century France.

Photography and spirit

review by Tom Ruffles

A welcome survey of 19th and early 20th century spirit photography focuses the contemporary debates about religion, science and art.

Conan Doyle

review by Tom Ruffles

A warts and all portrait of the man who invented Sherlock Holmes

Technologies of magic

review by Tom Ruffles

The notion of 'magic' is a slippery one and can encourage waffle when it is not pinned down sufficiently...

Karaoke evensong

by Xun Zhou

[ july 07 ]

British church-goers have a form of 'ecclesiastical karaoke' in their churches, singing along to the tunes of self-defined 'digital hymnals'.

Ghost hunters

review by Tom Ruffles

Pulitzer prize-winner Deborah Blum's history of investigating life after death is a rattling good read... with some very puzzling lacunae.

Phantasmagoria

review by Tom Ruffles

A fascinating history of projected ghoulies and ghosties

General Semantics and the Chicken Suit Murders - The hypnotic realities of Dr Ronald Dante and Dr Michael Dean

by John-Ivan Palmer

[ march 05 ]

“When I asked the fugitive hypnotist about the time he tried to kill Michael Dean, he said, echoing the title of Lana Turner’s book, ‘there’s his truth, my truth, the real truth, and the mythological truth.’”

Hostile break-up, sinister reunion: Mesmerism & the Boob

by John-Ivan Palmer

[ march 04 ]

"The first recorded Code of broadcast standards was created by King Louis XVI. What happens, the Commissioners asked, to "sensitive women" who go into a screaming mesmeric convulsion which terminates in 'the sweetest emotion'?"