An investigative reporter looks into 13 tales of mysterious, creepy, and unexplained events in the Buckeye State, including:• The giant, spark-emitting Loveland Frog• The bloodthirsty Melon Heads of Kirtland• The lumber-wielding Werewolf of Defiance• The Mothman of the Ohio River• The UFO that inspired "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"• and more!

    Some of the stories are legendary, some have taken place in our own lifetime. Is it absolutely certain that Joan of Arc died at the stake? Did the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe, murder the "Cigar Girl"? Was Tchaikovsky a murder victim? Did Union soldiers kill John Wilkes Booth in 1865, or did he die 38 years later in a lodging house in Baltimore? Was martial arts superstar Bruce Lee murdered? Did Atlantis really exist? These mysteries and many more are explored in this entertaining read.

    But magic - the idea that we have a connection with the universe - has developed a bad reputation.It has been with us for millennia - from the curses and charms of ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish magic, to the shamanistic traditions of Eurasia, indigenous America and Africa, and even quantum physics today. Even today seventy-five per cent of the Western world holds some belief in magic, whether snapping wishbones, buying lottery tickets or giving names to inanimate objects.Drawing on his decades of research, with incredible breadth and authority, Professor Chris Gosden provides a timely history of human thought and the role it has played in shaping civilization, and how we might use magic to rethink our understanding of the world.

    Bracketed by the catastrophes of the Great War and the Wall Street Crash, the 1920s was a time of fear and hedonism. The decade glittered with seduction: jazz, flappers, wild all-night parties, the birth of Hollywood, and a glamorous gangster-led crime scene forced to flourish under prohibition. It was punctuated by terrifying events—the political show trials of Sacco and Vanzetti; the huge march down Washington DC's Pennsylvania Avenue by the Ku Klux Klan—and produced a glittering array of artists, musicians and film stars, from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Bessie Smith to Charlie Chaplin.Here, Lucy Moore interweaves the most compelling stories of the people and events that characterized the decade to produce a gripping account of an often-overlooked period. In doing so, she demonstrates that the jazz age was far more than just 'between wars'; it was an epoch of passion and change—an age, she observes, that was not unlike our own. The world she evokes is one of effortless allure and terrifying drama: a world that was desperate to escape itself.

    Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.

    In this essay, Jung applies his analytical skills to the UFO phenomenon. Rather than assuming that the modern prevalence of UFO sightings are due to extraterrestrial craft, Jung reserves judgment on their origin & connects UFOs with archetypal imagery, concluding that they have become a "living myth." This essay is intriguing in its methodology & implications as to the nature of UFOs & their relation to the human psyche.

    Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world.   By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

    . . and may still be here today.We are not alone.And we never have been.For years we've been taught that human progress has been a long, slow climb from the primordial ooze to hunter-gathers to empires. But that's only part of the story says Jim Marrs. The author who has investigated the recent financial crisis, the JFK assassination, secret societies, the national socialist takeover of America, and other events now takes on his biggest subject-the history of mankind-offering mind-blowing information that will radically alter the way we think about the world and our place in it.Our Occulted History overturns conventional knowledge and beliefs, presenting compelling evidence that the earth once hosted prehistoric civilizations using technologies that very well may have surpassed our own-societies that may have originated with non-humans. Sounds unbelievable? So was the concept that the earth was round-and that it revolved around the sun-to our predecessors just a few hundred years ago.Marrs sifts through the historical, scientific, and cultural record, showing how numerous ancient texts and tablets tell of visitors from the stars colonizing the Earth. From the flying vimanas of the Hindu Vedic literature and the flying shields reported by the Romans to the mysterious airships of the 1800s and the UFOs of today, he argues that someone other than us is still present on this planet. But are these visitors simply observers-or do they play a much more active and controlling role? Jim Marrs raises this shocking question and more in the provocative and persuasive Our Occulted History.The truth is out there . . . and in here.

    What is needed is a new story and Alan Steinfeld’s Making Contact is part of that story.” —Deepak Chopra, Author, Total MeditationHow can we prepare for an event that is literally beyond anything humanity has ever faced? Making Contact presents multiple perspectives on what no longer can be denied: UFOs and their occupants are visiting our world. The book answers questions which remain in the wake of the recent Pentagon’s disclosures as to who and why these beings are here. The volume contains original writings by the leading experts of the phenomena such as: Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles reporter, Whitley Strieber best-selling author of Communion, Professor John E. Mack, former head of the Harvard Medical school of psychiatry and an alien abduction investigator, Darryl Anka internationally known for his communication with the extraterrestrial Bashar, Nick Pope, former UK Ministry of Defense UFO investigator, Grant Cameron expert on American presidents and UFOs, Drs. J.J. and Desiree Hurtak, globalists and founders of the worldwide organization, The Academy for Future Science, Caroline Cory, director of Superhuman and ET: Contact, Mary Rodwell, author of the New Human about star-seed children, Henrietta Weekes, actress and writer, expressing the poetic aspects of making contact. Alan Steinfeld, contributes and curates the collection with 30 years of experience with the subject. The Foreword by George Noory of Coast to Coast AM kicks off the volume with his veteran overview of the need to wake up to the “new realities of extraterrestrial existence.”At this critical juncture in the government’s official acknowledgement of the reality of UFOs/UAPs, scientists, politicians and mainstream news outlets have no idea what to make of these startling revelations or the outpouring of sightings and “contact” experiences currently being reported on a global scale. The book stands as the most comprehensive clarification to date on the intent and intelligence behind the phenomena. The variety of viewpoints expressed in the volume provide a solid foundation for the “preparation” of the greatest challenge to ever face humankind.Making Contact stands as the essential handbook for embracing the most exalted moment in history: Meeting the cosmic others.

    In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large.  In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.”   But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments.   More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives.Praise for God   “Breathtaking in its scope and controversial in its claims, God: A Human History shows how humans from time immemorial have made God in their own image, and argues that they should now stop. Writing with all the verve and brilliance we have come to expect from his pen, Reza Aslan has once more produced a book that will prompt reflection and shatter assumptions.”—Bart D. Ehrman, author of How Jesus Became God   “Reza Aslan offers so much to relish in his excellent ‘human history’ of God. In tracing the commonalities that unite religions, Aslan makes truly challenging arguments that believers in many traditions will want to mull over, and to explore further. This rewarding book is very ambitious in its scope, and it is thoroughly grounded in an impressive body of reading and research.”—Philip Jenkins, author of Crucible of Faith

    Even historians of religion, whose work naturally attends to events beyond the realm of empirical science, have shown scant interest in the subject. But the history of psychical phenomena, Kripal contends, is an untapped source of insight into the sacred. By tracing that history thru the last two centuries of Western thought we can see its potential centrality to the critical study of religion. Kripal grounds his study in the work of four major figures in the history of paranormal research: psychical researcher Frederic Myers; writer Charles Fort; astronomer, computer scientist & ufologist Jacques Vallee; & philosopher & sociologist Bertrand Mheust. Thru incisive analyses of these thinkers, Kripal ushers readers into a beguiling world somewhere between fact, fiction & fraud. The cultural history of telepathy, teleportation & UFOs; a ghostly love story; the occult dimensions of sf; cold war psychic espionage; galactic colonialism; & the intimate relationship between consciousness & culture all come together in Authors of the Impossible, a look at how the paranormal bridges the sacred & the scientific.

    

    With humor and insight, Melissa Mohr takes readers on a journey to discover how "swearing" has come to include both testifying with your hand on the Bible and calling someone a *#$&!* when they cut you off on the highway. She explores obscenities in ancient Rome and unearths the history of religious oaths in the Middle Ages, when swearing (or not swearing) an oath was often a matter of life and death. Holy Sh*t also explains the advancement of civility and corresponding censorship of language in the 18th century, considers the rise of racial slurs after World War II, examines the physiological effects of swearing and answers a question that preoccupies the FCC, the US Senate, and anyone who has recently overheard little kids at a playground: are we swearing more now than people did in the past?A gem of lexicography and cultural history, Holy Sh*t is a serious exploration of obscenity.

    In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early-modern stake.   This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft. Hutton, a renowned expert on ancient, medieval, and modern paganism and witchcraft beliefs, combines Anglo-American and continental scholarly approaches to examine attitudes on witchcraft and the treatment of suspected witches across the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, and North and South America, and from ancient pagan times to current interpretations. His fresh anthropological and ethnographical approach focuses on cultural inheritance and change while considering shamanism, folk religion, the range of witch trials, and how the fear of witchcraft might be eradicated.

    B.E.K.S. Are they a diabolical threat or the stuff of urban legend."Just let us in, this won't take long."Strange children are appearing around the world.Attired in old fashioned clothing, their skin is pale and their mannerisms awkward.Their most startling trait however, is their solid black eyes.They are knocking on doors and rapping on windows. Their voices are monotone and demanding and they have one simple request:They want to come in.