Throughout history, people have been intrigued with spirits, angels, or devas as sources of wisdom and guidance. They are not only interesting as those who possess an insight into events and circumstances, but also as proof of life after death. In this clear and useful reference guide, Bjorling presents a listing of the literature on the various ways in which people of different cultures have consulted spirits—through shamans and oracles, magic, mediums, Voodoo, and psychics. Each chapter contains a general introduction to the respective topic as well as a listing of pertinent books, articles, and dissertations. His survey also includes early spirit contacts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Although humanity has always been somewhat inclined to the supernatural it is not until the last couple hundred of years that we have taken a keen interest in it and trying to understand the science and philosophy behind it. This work attempts to bring together different areas of study with the supernatural from psychic phenomena, ghosts and also religious occurrences to give readers a good basis to start their own studies on. Although basic it its general understandings, the belief of today's culture had to have started from works such as this.

You’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts Fantasy is the USA’s primary product. From the Pilgrim Fathers onward America has been a place where renegades and freaks came in search of freedom to create their own realities with little objectively regulated truth standing in their way. The freedom to invent and believe whatever the hell you like is, in some ways, an unwritten constitutional right. But, this do-your-own-thing freedom also is the driving credo of America's current transformation where the difference between opinion and fact is rapidly crumbling. So how did we get to this weird pseudo-reality, where science and objective facts are dismissed in favour of opinions and wild speculation, or indeed, fantasies? The post truth, fake news, free-for-all mentality isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. If you want to understand Trump's America, how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you have to go back to the very beginning and take a dizzying road trip across five centuries of crackpot delusion and make-believe from Salem to Scientology. Fantasyland is a journey that connects the dots between crazed franchises of true believers – a rich freak show tapestry from Mormons to Flat-Earthers and satanic panic, new age quacks to anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists of every stripe, creationists to climate change deniers, UFO-obsessives to gun-toting libertarians, showmen hucksters from P T Barnum to Trump himself, all topped off with a dangerous dose of anti-government paranoia and pseudoscience. Along the way, New York Times bestselling author Kurt Andersen has created a unique and raucous history of America and a new paradigm for understanding our post-factual world.