In addition to my empirical research, I also write popular science articles on esoteric science and history topics, including X-rated hauntings, witch trials, 4th dimensional spirit entities, and hallucinated Pokemon.
I also wrote a book that was published by Thames and Hudson in partnership with the Wellcome Trust: The Spectacle Illusion. Written for general readers, the book examines historical and contemporary relationships between magicians, fraudulent mystics, and scientists. I was published in 2019.
The Spectacle of illusion
My new book is written for general audiences on the topic of historical and contemporary relationships between magicians, scientists, and fraudulent mystics.
Featuring stories of ghost rapping, mind reading, lethal autopsies, full-body-cavity ghost hunts, death defying stunts, and death...obeying(?)stunts (by which I mean stunts where the performers accidentally died for real, i.e., literally the opposite of 'death defying’).
A selectively honest account of lies about the truth about lies.
With lots of weird pictures.
View from Elsewhere- Photographic Ghosts of Abraham Lincoln
I wrote a guest column for Source Magazine about the duelling spirit photographs by P.T. Barnum and William Mumler. Mumler presented his image as genuine, while Barnum asserted that both images were genuinely fake.
Two Illusions that Fooled Arthur Conan Doyle
A true story about two (of the many) hoaxes that fooled the creator of everyone’s favorite rationalist superhero detective. Featuring magicians William Marriott, PT Selbit, and Molly Wynter, the incidents together illustrate how hard it can be to ‘rule out the impossible,’ when it comes to questions of human perception, memory, and belief.
Henry Slade (left) sitting with Johann Zöllner
Blinded by Seance
A biographical sketch of "Dr." Henry Slade that was featured in the New Scientist. Slade was an American spiritualist medium who convinced a group of German physicists that he had genuine supernatural powers. He sparked a scientific debate about the nature of reality itself, that I like to think of as the origin point of my own empirical research.
The Strange Case of the Phantom Pokemon
A woman wakes-up to find that she's being attacked by a real-life Pokemon. In this piece, I argue that this is a perfectly normal psychological phenomenon. My argument variously features alien abductions, nightmare demon sheep, Tetris, and vanishing witch nipples.
The Strange Tale of an X-rated Haunting
The true story of one man's valiant efforts to haunt an adult movie showing, and why his experiment actually anticipated developments in cognitive psychology by nearly half a century.