James McClenon has earned near universal praised for his latest book, The Entity Letters: A Sociologist on the Trail of a Supernatural Mystery, on a mediumistic sitter group (SORRAT) that witnessed a host of table movements, table levitations, poltergeist phenomena, earthquake effects, and other startling physical events. Gerhard Mayer of the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany, is of the opinion that “James McClenon has written a courageous book which reflects his scientific curiosity, openness, and commitment to a ‘high-risk’ research topic. The kind of field study the author has described in detail is of great importance because it touches the core of paranormal macro-phenomena in the Western world. And it covers all the accompanying emotions, such as astonishment, doubt, skepticism, but also the excitement of having extraordinary experiences and getting in touch with something unexplainable. An important book.” Robin Carlile in Magonia gets to the heart of the matter when he writes “It seems the author reaches the conclusion that there is almost a need for some element of fraud to ‘prime the pump’ so that rapport can be built with the entities. The essential ingredient appears to be an unconditional belief in the entities, and when this is harnessed in a group, very powerful emanations can follow. The question then is whether such entities actually exist, or have been conjured up from the dark recesses of the human mind, collective or individual…I found the subject matter and content of this book highly illuminating,” Charles Emmons, a fellow sociologist at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, put it succinctly: “This is truly a ‘supernatural mystery’ bedeviled by the ‘trickster.’ A classic.”

How do you maintain your skepticism when your sense of wonder is being throttled by astonishing paranormal events? It’s not easy, but that’s exactly what James McClenon managed to do during his years-long investigation into a sitter group where he witnessed rapping sounds, table levitations, poltergeist phenomena, earthquake effects, and other startling physical events. The phenomena he witnessed grew to include ostensibly spirit-written messages found within a sealed container called a mini-lab specially designed to preclude the possibility of fraud. The group was known as the Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT), founded in 1961 by John G. Neihardt, the famous poet and author of the best-selling book Black Elk Speaks. The full story and context of this remarkable investigation is told in The Entity Letters: A Sociologist on the Trail of a Supernatural Mystery.