Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

  (New Milford, CT: Visionary Living Publishing, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-942157-54-0 Having just read and reviewed Karl Petry’s first book, Absent Witness , and learning that he is very much the “real deal,” I immediately noticed the title of his second book— Somewhere the Dead Are Singing— and felt instantly compelled to read it. It was during the Mothman Festival in 2019, after cohosting a memorial event for Rosemary Ellen Guiley after her passing several months earlier, that I first experienced the accuracy of Petry’s title. While walking near the igloos in the fabled Point Pleasant TNT Area with a dozen colleagues—many of whom had been close with Rosemary—my PSB11 spirit box (Ro’s personal choice) spontaneously switched on. I placed my voice-activated digital recorder over the speaker as a communication began to emerge. Back in the hotel a few hours later, I played the tape and distinctly heard a mix of ethereal and a single human voice singing: “We’re here with you.” The four...

   (Visionary Living Publishing, 2016). ISBN: 978-1-942157-04-5 A quick disclaimer to start. As many of you know, I am married to a talented psychic medium, and we have been an investigative team in the field of the paranormal for nearly a decade. My daughter is also a gifted psychic medium, and I have worked with and met several others over the years. The publisher of this book is also the publisher of a book that my wife and I wrote, Watch Out for the Hallway: Our Two-Year Investigation of the Most Haunted Library in North Carolina . That said, I believe that my experience with psychic mediums and with this publisher, whom I know to be highly respected and honest, makes me more—rather than less—qualified to give an equally honest review of this book. The first item of note about Absent Witness is that it goes into more detail about the author’s childhood/family life than many books by psychics. Having spent a good bit of time in Newark and Kearny, New Jersey, in my yo...

   (Visionary Living Publishing, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-94217-56-4 A few disclaimers to start. My wife Tonya and I have investigated some of the locations discussed in this book. The author also references some of our findings as they pertain to the Greene County Historical Society and Museum, which we have investigated with him on several occasions. We are listed in the Acknowledgments and one of our books is listed in the Further Reading section. That said, we have been visiting and investigating southwestern Pennsylvania for more than a decade—well before we were introduced to Kevin Paul by his coauthor on the first book in this series, the now deceased Rosemary Ellen Guiley. We have friends who own considerable acreage in the area, and we have done several home and business investigations and haunting mitigations in the county independent of our work with the author. If you read the bestselling Haunted Hills and Hollows , you’ll notice that Paul takes a slightly differen...

   (Night Vision Press, 2020). ISBN: 978-0-578-63344-2 Every so often, a book comes along that requires me to assess just where I am on the healthy skeptic continuum. Being a healthy skeptic is crucial to being a good paranormal investigator and researcher. It is not to be confused with being a cynic —a person for whom no amount of evidence will change their position that we live in a predictable, mechanistic universe where one lives and dies and is forever gone. I’m a mix of Mulder and Scully. I “want to believe” and know “the truth is out there,” but I also know we’re bombarded with false flag ops and disinformation, while some people are just looking for attention, memory is stunningly unreliable when tested, and there are mostly mundane explanations for what is initially termed paranormal or supernatural. I also believe that, one day, as science catches up to experience, there will only be the normal and the natural. We are getting there, slowly but surely. About a...

A Review of John A. Keel: The Man, The Myths, and The Ongoing Mysteries , by Brent Raynes (Available on Amazon and from the author, 2019). ISBN 978-1-0790-1450-1 If you are interested in the paranormal—whether it be UFOs, cryptids, or poltergeist and haunting phenomena—chances are good that you know the name John A. Keel. A journalist turned paranormal investigator and author of some of the foundational works in the field (including perhaps his most famous— The Mothman Prophecies ), Keel was cutting edge and controversial. To fully appreciate his complexity, Brent Raynes—a life-long investigator, publisher, and podcast host—delivers a text that is part biography and part survey of the areas that Keel was studying and the prevalent investigators who are still carrying on that work. I found this approach to be refreshing and appropriate given who Keel was, and, as stated in the subtitle, the “ongoing mysteries” that survive him in death. It is also an opportunity for the reader to a...

(New Milford, CT: Visionary Living, Inc., 2018). ISBN: 9781942157311 As a reviewer, this book is a perfect storm for me. I have been fortunate to have been mentored by the lead author, and she has recently become my publisher for the paranormal research I do with my wife and other investigators. The methods and experiences in this book are things that I know firsthand. I am also familiar with Greene County, PA, having friends who live there. I can attest to its remoteness, feeling of being out-of-time (including a certain road we used to travel where—especially at night—it felt like time stretched and we were on it way longer than we should be), and I have heard stories for many years about their encounters with ghosts, UFOs, and possible parallel dimensions. Kevin Paul is a life-long resident of Greene County and his family goes back to the earliest European settlers in the area. This gives him intimate knowledge and a level of trust with the locals. Greene County’s story, ...

By Chad Lewis, Noah Voss, and Kevin Lee Nelson (Eau Claire, WI: On the Road Publications, 2013). ISBN: 978-0982431467 Thanks in large part to horror films and cable “reality” paranormal shows, the immense amount of time and effort legitimate paranormal investigators spend in libraries and historical societies chasing down leads is largely ignored. Most people are only interested in the “sexy” aspects of the haunting or cryptid visitation—who got chased, frightened, possessed, or injured? What dark menace is lurking in the corner? Are there “jump scares” as the investigators walk insane asylum hallways in the green glow of night-vision technology? Viewers don’t realize that paranormal investigators are in large part journalists and historians, tracking down the history that provides the context for the paranormal phenomena at play. One of the world’s best known paranormal investigators was John Keel, of Mothman fame. He was also a journalist. So was his counterpart in the film Th...

 (New Milford, CT: Visionary Living, Inc., 2017). ISBN: 9781942157212 More people than ever before (at least in modern times) believe in the existence of ghosts. Popular polling organizations such as the Pew Research Center are reporting that as many as 50% of the population believe in ghosts and some 20% have actually seen one. Just twenty years ago, in the mid-nineties, this number was 9%. The mid-nineties were also the time of Dionne Warwick hawking the Psychic Friends Network on late-night TV while Miss Cleo—and her fake Jamaican accent—solicited more laughs than legitimate interest in the fields of mediumship and psychic arts. In the 2000s we had mediumship enter the mainstream consciousness through the TV shows Medium with Patricia Arquette and Ghost Whisperer with Jennifer Love Hewitt. John Edward also had his platform reading non-fiction show on TV and mediums such as James Van Praagh and Theresa Caputo (the “Long Island Medium”) were gaining a considerable followi...

by Michael Brein and Rosemary Ellen Guiley (New Milford, CT: Visionary Living, Inc., 2018). ISBN: 9781942157250 Disclaimer: I have two entries in this collection. Also, a book that I am co-authoring with my wife about our two-year investigation of a haunted library in North Carolina (subject of one of the two entries in this book) will be published by Visionary Living in the summer of 2018. Followers of my blogs and my work know that I have long been an advocate for Telling our Stories. I have seen the power of story on stage in social justice theatre productions, in legislative lobbying for equal rights, and in swaying public opinion. In the news as of late are the powerful stories of teenagers demanding changes to gun laws. Although the field of paranormal investigation may seem worlds (and dimensions) apart from my three decades of work as a content creator and storyteller, I have found the parallels to be considerable. As I begin to establish myself as a paranormal investi...

 (New Milford, CT: Visionary Living, Inc., 2014). ISBN: 978-0-9860778-3-8 Over the past five years, I have reviewed many of the encyclopedias and books on the paranormal by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, one of the leading experts in both the paranormal and metaphysical fields. I have also been able to accompany Guiley on some of her field investigations, and have never been failed to be impressed by her professionalism and scientific approach to phenomena. Those traits consistently carry over into her books and numerous radio and television appearances, and her dream workshops and accompanying books (this is her eighth on the subject) are no exception. I was first introduced to the value of using dreams for both self-improvement and as a source of creative inspiration early in the new century, first by a spiritual mentor and then through the books of Robert Moss. Since that time I have kept a dream journal, incorporated dreamwork into my theatre workshops and training of actors...

 by Ken Gerhard (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2013). ISBN: 978-0-7387-3720-1 The field of cryptozoology, which many consider a pseudoscience, involving the search for and study of “hidden animals” such as Bigfoot, is one that is equal parts fascinating and controversial. In the age of Reality Television (which we all know often has little to do with “reality”), there is a vast array of shows in which cryptozoologists and their teams go out into the woods and other undeveloped geographical areas in search of creatures from the Mothman to the Owlman to the Chupacabra. For those who follow this field, names like John Keel, Loren Coleman, and Stan Gordon dominate, although there is a younger, very hip group of cryptozoologists out there, doing field research, and gathering reports and doing interviews with witnesses of a plethora of sightings, all over the world. Having witnessed a few unexplainable entities, and having a number of good friends in the fields of cryptozoology and, ...

  (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2014), ISBN: 978-0-8117-1115-9 It’s always a pleasure to read and review a new Rosemary Ellen Guiley book. Not only are they based on interviews and fieldwork coupled with a thorough review of secondary sources; I have also had the privilege of accompanying her on several paranormal investigations, including on the three acres on which I live. Some of the experiences of my family have been chronicled in other of her books (e.g., on Ouija boards), and in this book on West Virginia hauntings, there’s a segment about the arts center my wife and I used to run.             These personal connections aside, as an author who often uses the supernatural in my stories, novels, and plays, my growing collection of Guiley’s books is an indispensible part of my research library.             The Big Book of West Virginia Ghost Stories , broke...