In the first edition of the Bancroft Prize-winning Entertaining Satan, John Putnam Demos presented an entirely new perspective on American witchcraft. By investigating the surviving historical documents of over a hundred actual witchcraft cases, he vividly recreated the world of New England during the witchcraft trials and brought to light fascinating information on the role of witchcraft in early American culture. Now Demos has revisited his original work and updated it to illustrate why these early Americans' strange views on witchcraft still matter to us today. He provides a new preface that puts forth a broader overview of witchcraft and looks at its place around the world--from ancient times right up to the present.

In the first edition of the Bancroft Prize-winning Entertaining Satan, John Putnam Demos presented an entirely new perspective on American witchcraft. By investigating the surviving historical documents of over a hundred actual witchcraft cases, he vividly recreated the world of New England during the witchcraft trials and brought to light fascinating information on the role of witchcraft in early American culture. Now Demos has revisited his original work and updated it to illustrate why these early Americans' strange views on witchcraft still matter to us today. He provides a new preface that puts forth a broader overview of witchcraft and looks at its place around the world--from ancient times right up to the present.

Entertaining Demons Unawares is the true story of one man's plunge into the deepest depths of the occult. Tucked within his story is another story -- that of a family's weekly Saturday night "live" communication with their dead father.Ben Alexander shares his testimony and involvement with the Miller family séances from table tipping to automatic writing to trance mediumship to the highest level of psychic phenomena known as materialization. After narrowing escaping these spiritualist activities, Ben has spent the remainder of his life investigating the occult and occult practices.With sixty years of experience and study of Spiritualism behind him, Ben knows what he is talking about and is an expert in this field of study. Among contemporary notables who advocate Spiritualism are the writers of the Ghostbuster movie. Dan Aykroyd's father, Peter, reveals in his book, A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Séances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters, that the inspiration behind this mega-million movie came from experiences engrained in generations of the Aykroyd family -- many similar to Ben's experiences.Sadly, the ghostbuster phenomena is the dream of millions of Spiritualists who are unaware of the demons they are inviting into their lives. Millions of others, including Christians, are in contact with the supposed dead on a daily basis. Most people see this film as comedy. Scratch beneath the surface and you will discover it is about a very serious and soul-destroying topic: demon possession.In these pages Ben exposes, through personal experience and God's Word, the real person and power behind Satan's psychics.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, hailed in The Washington Post as "a work of enormous imagination and enterprise" and in The New York Times as "an important, original book," Southern Honor revolutionized our understanding of the antebellum South, revealing how Southern men adopted an ancient honor code that shaped their society from top to bottom. Using legal documents, letters, diaries, and newspaper columns, Wyatt-Brown offers fascinating examples to illuminate the dynamics of Southern life throughout the antebellum period. He describes how Southern whites, living chiefly in small, rural, agrarian surroundings, in which everyone knew everyone else, established the local hierarchy of kinfolk and neighbors according to their individual and familial reputation. By claiming honor and dreading shame, they controlled their slaves, ruled their households, established the social rankings of themselves, kinfolk, and neighbors, and responded ferociously against perceived threats. The shamed and shameless sometimes suffered grievously for defying community norms. Wyatt-Brown further explains how a Southern elite refined the ethic. Learning, gentlemanly behavior, and deliberate rather than reckless resort to arms softened the cruder form, which the author calls "primal honor." In either case, honor required men to demonstrate their prowess and engage in fierce defense of individual, family, community, and regional reputation by duel, physical encounter, or war. Subordination of African-Americans was uppermost in this Southern ethic. Any threat, whether from the slaves themselves or from outside agitation, had to be met forcefully. Slavery was the root cause of the Civil War, but, according to Wyatt-Brown, honor pulled the trigger. Featuring a new introduction by the author, this anniversary edition of a classic work offers readers a compelling view of Southern culture before the Civil War.

Near the turn of the 21st century, a satanic cult begins to perform experimental rituals in the Ohio woods. These rituals become more and more disturbing and eventually lead to the ultimate evil - human sacrifice. A string of sacrifices eventually open a portal within the hollow that leads directly to hell… But is this all just an urban legend? Now, twenty years later, the last surviving victim of the cult has returned, and something immensely evil has arrived along with her. It’s an entity known only as the Shadow Man.

Alas, poor Satan. He's not happy. No one seems to like or understand him; people have got him all wrong. And his relationship with God is a hostile one. Unloved and misunderstood, he's come back to Earth in search of a psychotherapist; he's prepared- if cured- to deliver the all-important Great Answer. In Jeremy Leven's wildly original comic novel, we follow the Prince of Darkness through his seven amazing therapy sessions. And we watch him grow increasingly well adjusted while his therapist, the unfortunate Dr. Kassler, descends deeper and deeper into hell.

A cultural history of witch-hunting from the ancient world through the McCarthy era traces the factors that contribute to outbreaks of cultural paranoia and how people were able to accept hysteria-based beliefs about unlikely supernatural powers and occult activities. 35,000 first printing.