Adventures in the Supernormal

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read for Anyone Who's Interested in the Paranormal
Review: For anyone interested in paranormal phenomena, this is a great book for you. Eileen J. Garrett founded the Parapsychology Foundation (based in New York City) in 1951. The Parapsychology Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the scientific exploration of psychic phenomena and still exists today. This book is her autobiography. There is so much mystery surrounding psychics, and Adventures in the Supernormal is a very insightful look into the life of someone with psychic powers.

Garrett knew at a young age that she was different. In her preface she writes, "I have a gift, a capacity--a delusion, if you will--which is called 'psychic.'...living with and utilizing this psychic capacity long ago inured me to a variety of epithets...In short, I have been called many things: from a charlatan to a miracle woman. I am, at least, neither of these. In this book I hope to tell the reader what I am. It is an answer to literally hundreds of requests for information concerning supernormal perception and how it functions."

She begins with her Irish childhood, where she was "exhausted in a world that did not understand or believe" her and continues on through her life to tell of her marriage, her businesses (she was a smart, entrepreneurial woman in a time when that wasn't very common), her divorce, and her move to New York. Garrett was one of the first people to objectively study parapsychology and in her lifetime she made huge contributions to psychic research. She clears up "psychic research" by saying that it's not "spiritualism" or "religion," but rather, it's the "scientific study of the human personality beyond the threshold of what man calls his conscious mind." Her book covers her experience with and knowledge of ESP, clairvoyance, psychometry, telepathy and precognition, and she emphasizes the need for more objective study and research, with an eventual unification of science and religion - a necessary development if we want to truly understand and express psychic powers.

Adventures in the Supernormal is an intriguing look into one of America's primary and highly regarded psychics, and I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in paranormal phenomena.