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...

  (2017). ISBN: 978-0-9991237-0-6 Wise ones have said (and I count my blessings every day that I have never had to test it) that the most unnatural thing in the world is a parent outliving their child. If the loss is related to suicide or drug use (and sometimes it is all too unclear) then the burden must be even worse to bear. Anne C. Cooper lost her youngest of three sons, Todd, when he was 16. The author’s journey to healing, forgiveness, and understanding is the core of this book, which is much more than a story about the death of a child. It is a brutally honest autobiography of a mother and wife’s experience of alcoholism across multiple generations, and the damage addiction does. Useful books on grieving are hard to find, although there are many (many) titles available on the subject. My favorites are Neil Donald Walsche’s Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends (which was invaluable in helping me process the loss of a spiritual mentor, who was also my aunt), Elain...

  (Cardiff, CA: Waterside Productions, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-951805-66-1. Let’s begin with a buyer beware, spoiler alert, and disclaimer. First, this isn’t a book written from the onset by a true believer, filled with anecdotes involving inspiring messages from the deceased. If you are looking for that type of book on the afterlife, they are abundant. So abundant, that is what I thought I was reviewing when I picked this one up. Instead, it details the author’s six-year journey from near cynicism to a scientific skepticism where he spent a good deal of time and money, created or adapted protocols, and did all he could to debunk psychic mediumship, all while receiving what seemed to be messages from his recently deceased father. Now, the spoiler alert: At the end of the six-year journey (on p. 286 of 305), the author writes: “[O]nce you have come to see this truth for yourself, and your personal universe expands, it is no longer so important to you that everyone else sees it.” ...

 (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...