Readers of The Teeming Brain will find something of more than passing interest in the just-released nonfiction anthology Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness: Liminal Zones, Psychic Science, and the Hidden Dimensions of the Mind. This is indicated not only by the book’s heady subtitle, and not only by fact that it is co-edited by…
Tag: Sleep Paralysis
Initiation by Nightmare: Cosmic Horror and Chapel Perilous
When the first of my sleep paralysis attacks occurred in the early 1990s, I had no idea that it was the onset of a period that I would later come to recognize or characterize as a spontaneous shamanic-type initiation via nightmare.
On transmitting artistic and spiritual vision
Some years ago as I was searching for a way to introduce poetry to the high school writing and literature classes that I was then teaching — not just certain, selected poets and poems but the entire idea and import of poetry itself — I started telling my students that language can have an alchemical…
Top books in my current “to be read” pile
A few days ago SF Signal invited me to participate in one of their Mind Melds, with the topic announced in the form of a question: “What book(s) in your ‘to read’ pile are you most interested in reading? Why?” So I whipped up something and sent it to them, and it was published just…
Penn State announces new sleep paralysis study
During my Darkness Radio interview last week, I mentioned the culture-wide surge of awareness and interest in sleep paralysis that has occurred during the past few decades, and especially in the past four and five years. From being an experience and phenomenon that was essentially forgotten, or rather suppressed from memory, in Western culture at…
Shadow people, sleep paralysis, and discarnate dark entities: My guest spot on Darkness Radio
Four days ago, on October 11, I was the featured guest on Darkness Radio, the popular paranormal radio show originating out of Minneapolis on KTLK and hosted by David Schrader (of the Travel Channel’s Paranormal Challenge and Ghost Adventures). The topic was sleep paralysis, shadow people, and discarnate dark entities — all things I’ve talked…
Podcast of my interview about religion and horror on SPIRITUALLY RAW
My interview on the “Raw Factor” segment of this morning’s Spiritually Raw radio broadcast felt like it went well. Hosts Ajay and April proved to be excellent conversationalists as they talked with me about my central focus as an author (and human being) on the convergence of religious experience with horror fiction and film, and…
What’s so horrific about religion (and religious about horror)?
In an interesting development, I’ve been selected as a potential “spot light guest” on SPIRITUALLY RAW, a (very) fringe-oriented occult/spiritual/conspiracy/New Age radio show with a 60,000+ daily listener base. I’ll be conducting a “pre-interview screening” live on air during a segment called “The Raw Factor” on July 5. Listener votes will determine whether I’m blessed…
The 1960s Redux: In our new age of apocalypse, is the consciousness revolution back on?
For the past few years, I’ve had a mounting sense that the abortive consciousness revolution of the 1960s and early 70s may have come back from the dead, riding on the wave of apocalyptic sentiment that’s been washing over us all since the late 1990s. Sometimes a new datum, or something that I interpret as…
Shadow Visitors: Sleep paralysis and discarnate “dark ones”
A week or so ago I finished reading Louis Proud’s fascinating book Dark Intrusions: An Investigation into the Paranormal Nature of Sleep Paralysis Experiences. Published just last year, it argues that sleep paralysis is actually a cousin to spirit mediumship, in that the experience represents an actual visitation by paranormal entities that live constantly among…