Psychic Detectives

by Jenny Randles, Peter Hough

This true crime page turner documents how psychics have uncovered critical evidence in more than 65 famous cases. Here's the inside track on the psychics' investigative tools and techniques, plus actual police reports comparing the "hit rate" of psychic and pragmatic detectives.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, Reference, Crime

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

British author and former director of investigations with the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), serving in that role from 1982 through to 1994.

Randles specializes in writing books on UFOs and paranormal phenomena. To date 50 of these have been published, ranging from her first UFOs: A British Viewpoint (1979) to Breaking the Time Barrier: The race to build the first time machine (2005). Subjects covered include crop circles, ESP, life after death, time anomalies and spontaneous human combustion.

Reviews

[Shashank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitive af

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Amber Books for the digital copy of the book. I had to get a peek into this book as I have read and watched a lot of detective shows but not many involve or consult with psychics. There is a lot of good information and it has definitely broadened my genres.

#NetGalley #DigitalRead #Detectives #Crime #Psychics

[Theediscerning · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've seen several wildly different kinds of book from this publishing house, but none nearly as Fortean as this book – and none nearly as problematic. We're told this is a reprint (with revisions) of something existing twenty years ago, hence data from 1999 surveys into belief in ghosts, but it was flawed then and it really is flawed now. Overall it contains a lot of piffle, and just some things that give the frisson of the spooky, and all told the proportions are not right. And some of the contents are just plain wrong, and plain wrongly-judged.

If you know books about psychic things you will recognise the William Blake archive, and naff token-pale-splodge-in-a-photo-is-a-ghost imagery. That's a given, so what do we really have here? Well, building from a historical round-up the first major case is a retread of one psychic's 1998 musings on Jack the Ripper. The success of those musings has been, of course, zero. The same score applies to the need to publish the actual death-bed photos of the Ripper's victims, which I've luckily known no other book to so do. Sordid and unneeded are two words that come to mind.

Next, an extended survey of the dowsing art takes a long time to ever get to anything like a crime. Speaking of crimes, a lot of puff about Uri Geller seems to be stuck in the 1970s, with comments about his on-demand, replicatable psychic abilities, and their apparent sole solution. That is heinously biased and out of date. But then what comes later on is even more heinous and even more out of date. Remember, this is a proof I was seeing late 2021, but for very little reason the narrative regarding something else says that a psychic has the potential to be proven right, because in 2000 someone was being questioned in the Suzy Lamplugh case.

This was when an estate agent was presumably snatched from a London street at lunchtime and murdered. Only the culprit (unknown as he is) knows what happened, but what we all must know is that nobody connected with Miss Lamplugh has ever had any closure about her story, the case is quite irrelevant to the section of the book concerned, and the very notion that an arrest in 2000 will shortly be proving a psychic's investigative ability is really something that should be red-flagged. The publishers really must have seen this as a problem – a lot of unsolved crimes are in these pages, with spurious psychic investigations connected to them, but the Lamplugh case really showed me how tatty and grubby this book as I saw it is, dragging her horrific story in for no reason, and keeping it there because people can't be arsed to re-edit something way past its sell-by date.

And the authors should know better. Whatever their involvement in this reproduction, it's impressive that a lot of the contents are here due to a personal connection to their own Fortean work and research. This does also mean that too much here delves into SHC and other unnecessaries, but they do know what they're about. But in updating (yeah, right) these contents, they've offered so little as proof that wasn't in the original thesis. Lord Lucan has still never been found, and the pages on the Yorkshire Ripper grudgingly state one hit out of thousands was at all correct. The book if anything suggested to me there is little case for the whole phenomenon, whatever might be perfectly readable suggestions otherwise.

And the fact remains that what I saw should not exist in the way I saw it. Whatever Fortean delights it had it has to get a one star from me, until I see proof this is actually built for 2021 from 2021 material. And not the inappropriate and scurrilous and disrespectful.

[Courtnee Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

PSYCHIC DETECTIVES is a comprehensive account of crimes that were solved, or just predicted ("seen"), with the help of psychic intervention. I enjoyed the way the sections unfolded, revealing years of psychic predictions. Well-known psychic predictors, like Nostradamus, were mentioned, and a few lesser known, but interesting, psychics were brought to light.
I enjoyed the book. I learned new information, as I had never heard of dowsing. The book described its history, as well as a detailed account of well-known dowsers. Other psychic methods were discussed, and specific cases were mentioned. Also, the photographs and informational boxes were useful and intriguing.
The book would be a great resource for anyone who wished to study psychics and their relation to cases over the past two hundred years. I recommend it for mature readers, as graphic killings are discussed.
Thank you, NetGalley for providing a copy of the book for my review.
PSYCHIC DETECTIVES will be released on November 14, 2021. Be sure to check it out!

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Amber Books for the digital copy of the book. I had to get a peek into this book as I have read and watched a lot of detective shows but not many involve or consult with psychics. There is a lot of good information and it has definitely broadened my genres.

#NetGalley #DigitalRead #Detectives #Crime #Psychics

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author manages to give a good overview of psychic detectives and many other related topics. Their history, oracles, Nostradamus, dreams and visions, witches. You'll come across many outstanding depictions, illustrations and photos. Jack the Ripper is mentioned, Spring Heeled Jack, you are introduced to the tools of the trade (e.g. dowsing), supernatural crime hunting, voices of the dead, second sight and become acquainted with some prominent psychics. A fine overview I couldn't put down. Really recommended!

[Polo Acosta · Rating 5 out of 5]

There a lot things interested in this book how they use psychology and in fact they can invade someone privacy with there consent get info also with person in chapter psychic sleuth hallucination of third party aka chemical ritual using that ritual so my question if the person know why do it to the innocent person but anyways i learn from this sometime i feel like i can solve mystery myself

[Annarella · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's entertaining even if a bit dated. I think that the main issue was that there were no sources and I read it as a sort of paranormal mystery.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

[Aaron Jura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it as a book with a general overview of the topic and the historic accounts were interesting. Was using it as research for a novel and in that respect it wasn’t as helpful. I did get some great ideas and then used supplementary resources from the web and DOJ to fill in the wider picture.

[Dee Cee · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection on how psychic detectives work. Including predictions that were spot on accurate and others that missed an important detail (or were dismissed as nonsense) that could have prevented tragedies. From the 1800s to the current day.

[Chanda M · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. The in between info was ..meh. But I did enjoy many aspects of the real-life retellings. Some of them were really interesting! I just expected more of those I guess.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many thanks to NetGalley and Amber Books for providing me with a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I originally went into this book thinking it would be purely cases that psychics were involved in, but it’s more than that. There’s some history about psychics, some information on how they work, and interspersed with this are cases from the past few hundred years where psychics or psychic phenomenon has been involved. Psychic Detectives was originally printed in 2001, but has since been updated and rereleased.

One of the things I liked about this book was the authors don’t give an indication either way what they believe. I imagine they do believe in psychic phenomena otherwise they wouldn’t have written a book about it, but they include stories where psychics have gotten it terribly wrong as well as when they’ve been spot on.

A really interesting read about a topic I don’t know much about. I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys true crime and wants a different perspective.

[Sarah Couture · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @33% Unfortunately, I had to DNF it. I hated that the case files were in the middle of a sentence. I wasn’t able to follow the rest. Plus, i truly don’t believe in psychics and the fact that they always make some mistakes. Plus, the presence of ghost and possession just made it unbelievable !

*Received the book as an ARC from NetGalley. All opinions are mine.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed guide discussing forensics, crime scene investigation, psychics and the supernatural aspects sometimes used by LE. If you want actual lowdown on the aforementioned and have an understanding of such this would be of interest to you.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an advance copy of, Psychic Detectives by, Jenny Randles; Peter Hough. This book is very informative. From The Salem Witch Trials, to other lesser known case files.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

liked the format of this book. great info.