• AP Magazine

    An alternative way to explore and explain the mysteries of our world. "Published since 1985, online since 2001."

  • 1
Book Reviews Perceptions Magazine, March 2023










Deep Weird:
The Varieties of High Strangeness Experience
Edited by Jack Hunter

August Night Press; an imprint of White Crow Productions Ltd.
2023, Paperback, 420 pages, US $23.99
ISBN: 978-1-78677-224-4
www.augustnightpress.com
www.whitecrowbooks.com

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

This book’s editor, Jack Hunter, a Ph.D. in anthropology, is the author of such previous volumes as Talking with the Spirits, Greening the Paranormal, and Spirits, Gods, and Magic, and is the editor of the journal Paranthropology. He possesses a keen interest in the paranormal and in this latest volume entitled Deep Weird he and his chapter authors make a very significant series of contributions to this complex and controversial subject.

This volume includes a series of exciting and thought-provoking chapters to perk the interest and curiosity of anyone who would like to ponder, explore, and educate themselves about the diverse aspects of a wide variety of things that falls beneath that broad umbrella of what we call the paranormal from promising and scholarly authors and researchers of old school and new school alike. Consider the following chapters: Synchronicity by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette; Superhumanity: An Exercise of Active Imagination by Michael Grosso; Poltergeists and High Strangeness by Alan Murdie; Anything-but-Standard: High Strangeness Entity Encounters by Zelia Edgar; The Extraordinary Encounter Continuum Hypothesis by Peter M. Rojcewicz; Creating Project Hera: Application of Deep Neural Networks and Database Architectures by Albert Rosales’ Humanoid Encounter Datasets by Barbara A. Fisher and Christopher Diltz; “The Projectionist’s Booth”: High Strangeness Viewed through the Lens of Cinema by Joshua Cutchin; An Introduction to the Egregorial by Anthony Peake; Through A Magical Lens: Towards an Experimental Model of Conjuring by Susan Demeter; and more. Complete with biographies, references, and an index.

“In this remarkable volume Dr. Hunter and his chapter authors provide numerous examples of events that at first glance seem to be absurd, bizarre and surreal,” declares Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., co-editor of Varieties of Anomalous Experience, in his blurb to this book. “The result is a collection of anecdotes, vignettes, and descriptions that beg for explanation, especially when Occam’s Razor cannot cut to the quick, when the Gordian Knot cannot be sliced, and when mainstream science can only offer reductionism. Readers may react with skepticism to some of these tales, but they will never be bored as they peruse this extraordinary anthology.” I couldn’t have stated it better myself. Highly recommended.


Thursday, March 28, 2024