Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

   (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...

(Next Chapter, 2021). ASIN: B096M2H3PP If I’ve learned anything in my 11 years as a paranormal investigator, it is that a high percentage of hauntings are the result of a ghost—a sentient being with emotions, moods, and wants—who needs to tell their story. The reasons vary… unresolved issues, revealing a secret, acknowledgment, and the seeking of justice are the major motivations, with the last being the subject of this review. Tainted Harvest is a ghost story in the grand tradition. It takes as its time and place (in addition to the present) the Deep South during the U.S. Civil War. Cities in the South (Savannah, Charleston, Harper’s Ferry) owe their atmosphere and personality to the aftermath of the war and the stain of slavery. Their navigation of the history of slavery and Jim Crow alongside the tourism industry has been the subject of countless academic studies. The ghosts of slaves and the oppressed are everywhere. In the North, Civil War–era hauntings tend to be contained t...

  (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...