Bøger udgivet af August Night Press

This book is about the stranger reaches of extraordinary experience research. In these pages an intrepid cast of writers, investigators and academics explore the complexities of extraordinary experience, and consider why it is that some of the most unusual experiential reports - what we might call 'high strangeness' experiences - come to be neglected, even in what is already a relatively fringe field of inquiry.The aversion to the most unusual forms of extraordinary experience has resulted in a gulf between the kinds of experiences discussed in the academic parapsychological literature and those experiences discussed by Fortean and popular paranormal researchers, who have more frequently been able to discuss a broader range of extraordinary experiential accounts - from UFO encounters to Bigfoot and fairy sightings, and everything in between.Notwithstanding this divide, there are significant themes that run throughout the established academic literature on religious and extraordinary experience, the parapsychological literature, and the canon of popular paranormal research. These similarities suggest that even the most unusual experiences, which are often ignored in academic research, contain elements that connect them to other forms of extraordinary experience that are more broadly accepted, such as certain kinds of spiritual, mystical, religious and other paranormal experiences. This book is an exploration of the possibility that the 'highly strange' might well be a core underlying feature of extraordinary experiences more generally, and that instead of being neglected, 'high strangeness' should be granted greater and renewed scholarly and parapsychological attention.Includes contributions from Jeffrey J. Kripal, Jack Hunter, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, Gregory Shushan, Samantha Lee Treasure, Michael Grosso, Zofia Weaver, Alan Murdie, David Luke, Simon Young, Zelia Edgar, Leonardo Breno Martins, Peter M. Rojcewicz, Barbara A. Fisher, Christopher Diltz, Joshua Cutchin, Anthony Peake, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, Susan Demeter and Renée E. Mazinegiizhigo-kwe Bédard.

Since 1947, the reality of UFOs has been hotly debated by enthusiasts, zealots, debunkers, and scientists. Skeptics insist that people who report UFOs are either mistaken or liars, whereas many true believers are convinced that aliens are visiting Earth and interacting with its inhabitants.Recent years have seen a tonal shift in mainstream media coverage of UFOs following surprise admissions by the US Pentagon that it continues to investigate dramatic sighting reports from its personnel.Canada has had its own UFO projects, too. Science writer Chris Rutkowski has viewed files on these studies, many of which were declassified from higher restrictions. These records demonstrate that many Canadians not only witnessed unusual objects in the sky (and on the ground) but that they overcame their fear of ridicule and possible legal persecution by reporting their remarkable sightings to the Canadian government. What's more, many of the UFO reports were made by military personnel, and many continue to defy conventional explanation.Journey with Rutkowski on a guided tour of the UFO files contained within Library and Archives Canada (LAC), detailing a selection of historical reports that illustrate the kinds of objects witnessed by Canadians between 1947 and 1980, the period covered by LAC's current digitization.These documents offer insight into how the Canadian government went about studying UFOs, how it dealt with witnesses, and what it told the public.

Debra Jordan-Kauble is an "ordinary" woman with a habit of attracting the extraordinary. After reporting a terrifying anomalous experience to Budd Hopkins-pioneering researcher of alien abduction phenomena-Debra's life takes a dramatic turn as she becomes the central figure in Hopkins' best-selling book, Intruders, and in its popular TV adaptation. But while the TV series ended with a clear resolution, Debra's astonishing story continued in real life. In Extraordinary Contact, Debra shares with the reader her close-up and personal experiences with UFOs, poltergeists, the afterlife, Electronic Voice Phenomena, premonitions, synchronicities, and non-human entities. Such phenomena are woven throughout the vivid tapestry of Debra's life-flourishes of the anomalous, offset against an everyday backdrop of factory work, family and friends. Spanning four decades, Extraordinary Contact is a story of resilience and growth in the face of trauma, tragedy and loss, and an intimate, first-person account of what it means to be a lifelong experiencer of "impossible" phenomena.