Many people claim to be psychic. Palm readers and astrologers claim that they look into the future to help solve personal problems. Mediums claim to help individuals communicate with deceased friends and relatives. Faith healers and psychic surgeons claim to diagnose and cure illness. Psychic detectives offer advice to the police to help solve crime. Alleged psychics have been used to attract followers to religious organizations and as consultants by large businesses.

Palmists, astrologists, and readers of tarot cards or crystal balls claim to help solve personal problems. Mediums claim to aid communication with deceased friends and relatives. Faith healers and psychic surgeons claim to cure physical illness. Psychic detectives offer advice to law enforcement agencies in hope of solving crimes. Other claimants operate in religious organizations using their alleged ability to help attract new followers or maintain the loyalty of present ones. Is all of this just innocent fun, real help, or can psychics actually harm individuals with their claims? Deception & Self-Deception outlines many of the techniques that can be used to fake psychic ability and describes ways in which these can be countered during an investigation. Richard Wiseman examines the general principles of deception and how these principles may be used to deceive. He also gives an account of the reliability of testimony related to the performance of alleged psychics and seances.

Every week thousands of people in Europe and the USA consult psychic practitioners. Communication is crucial to the performance of psychic powers in a range of settings. Psychic practitioners use language to demonstrate their powers, whether they are reporting the words of their spirit contacts or interpreting the spread of Tarot cards. Their clients also accept or reject this information through talk. This book presents the first sustained study of the verbal interaction between the various kinds of psychic practitioners and their clients. Using conversation analysis, Robin Wooffitt examines the structure of the interaction, focusing on the ways in which psychic practitioners and their clients establish the authenticity of the claimed paranormal powers. Adopting a neutral standpoint towards the status of the claims of psychic practitioners, the book raises important issues about the role of social science in understanding the activities of psychic practitioners and other kinds of parapsychological phenomena. This highly original study will appeal to students and scholars of discourse studies, and to sociologists interested in conversation analysis. It is written in a style accessible to non-specialists, and will also interest parapsychologists and social scientists studying psychic phenomena and the paranormal.

Author Nancy du Tertre, “the Skeptical PsychicTM,” takes you on a journey to find the answer to these questions and more in Psychic Intuition. She became psychic in mid-life after years of intensive study and training, and is now a believer that everyone has the potential to tap into their intuition and understand the world at a deeper level. Psychic Intuition bridges the gap between skeptics who can analyze but don’t experience psychic phenomena, and believers who have the experiences but lack the ability to analyze. This book explains, for the first time, how psychic ability works in the brain.

This is a thoroughly updated and revised edition of our highly acclaimed university textbook on the science of parapsychology. The objective of this book is to provide an introductory survey of parapsychologists' efforts to explore the authenticity and bases of anomalous, apparently paranormal phenomena. It outlines the origins of parapsychological research and critically reviews investigations of extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, poltergeist phenomena, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and the evaluation of parapsychology as a scientific enterprise. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Laboratory tests of extrasensory perception have been going on for over 50 years, attracting international interest within the scientific community. Some scientists believe that these studies are well-conducted, and that positive results obtained support the existence of ESP. In contrast, critics have argued that there are serious methodological errors in such experiemnts and that their results should be ignored.

Throughout history, people have reported seeing ghosts. But a Victorian ghost is in many respects a very different phenomenon from a ghost in Classical Greece, or in medieval Europe. Finucane surveys reports of ghosts from ancient Greece, the early Christian era, the Reformation, the Victorian age, and through the twentieth century. He asks such questions as: How have the physical aspects claimed for ghosts varied from age to age? What differences are there in the functions and intentions ascribed to ghosts? How have the changes in more general beliefsin religion and science, in particularinfluenced the perception of ghosts? Drawing on primary sources from all periods and cultures, Finucane addresses this topic in its full breadth.R.C. Finucane (Rochester, MI) is chairperson of the Department of History at Oakland University.. . . highly recommended. Magonia (UK). . . a useful book for those readers interested in the history of the supernatural . . . Extrapolation