Michael Prescott's Blog
Archived blog focusing on the paranormal
Category: History
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Conan Doyle for the Defense, by Margalit Fox, tells the gripping story of Oscar Slater, a German-born Jew who was arrested in Glasgow for the brutal murder of an elderly, wealthy woman, Marion Gilchrist. Sentenced to death, Slater won a reprieve at almost the last minute when his sentence was changed to life imprisonment at…
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In our last adventure, we looked at the Gnostic myth of creation as presented in The Secret Book of John, one of the ancient documents found at Nag Hammadi. As a story of God's origins and the subsequent creation of the material world, the myth is interesting but perhaps not particularly persuasive. There is, however,…
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Over the years, I’ve tried reading various examples of the Gnostic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, but usually without much success. The problem is that these fifteen-hundred-year-old codices, which were found buried in a large clay jar, are in poor condition, with many illegible or missing words. A typical translation might go something like this:…
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It’s often said that religion began as a way for human beings to address their fear of death by envisioning a happy, even blissful afterlife for the common man (or woman). This view, though popular, is not well supported by the evidence. True, many gravesites dating back to prehistoric times include personal possessions belonging to…
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This post is from 2008. If I were writing it now, I might give more attention to the possibility of low-level spirits communicating through the planchette, rather than focusing on "ordinary" psi. The title, by the way, is a pun on a movie called Things to Do in Jersey when You're Dead. Or at least…
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Lately I've been reading Charles Mackay's famous 1852 book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. An unabridged version is available for Kindle for only $.99. The book is a carefully researched, often entertaining, occasionally tedious overview of mass movements encompassing harmless fads and fashions (the length of men's hair, the catchphrases of the…
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Lately I happened to read Washington Irving's famous story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," about Ichabod Crane and his terrifying steeplechase with the Headless Horsemen. It's a very well written and amusing story, well worth a look. Ichabod, who is depicted in less than flattering terms, is said to be "a perfect master of Cotton…
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A compilation of captivating controversies and catty comments. # The Canadian Post reports on research into ghostly encounters in the trenches of World War I. Archival research by Canadian historian Tim Cook has found First World War diaries are more rife with supernatural encounters than one would expect. “There are spectral visions; people see ghosts,…
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As a follow-up to my last post, I thought I'd take a look at one of the authentic letters of Paul, the one he sent to the Galatians. Unlike the Gospels and Acts, which were written decades after the events described, Paul's letters were written in the heat of the moment and give a more…
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Lately I’ve been reading books of New Testament scholarship, something I haven’t done in quite a while. I plowed through two books by renegade scholar Hyam Maccoby, Jesus the Pharisee and The Mythmaker. I also read S.G.F. Brandon’s Jesus and the Zealots and am halfway through his Fall of Jerusalem. Since both of these writers…