Engaging the Anomalous is a collection of essays written by Jack Hunter between 2010-17. Together, the essays push toward the development of a non-reductive, participatory and experiential anthropology of the paranormal. Over the course of the book, Hunter surveys:

• Trends in anthropology’s engagement with the paranormal
• The anthropology and neuroscience of spirit possession
• The history of Spiritualism and the phenomena of physical mediumship
• The overlaps between mediumistic practices and other mind-body phenomena

Hunter also poses serious questions about consciousness, experience, spirits, mediumship, psi, the nature of reality, and how best to investigate and understand them. In addition, the book features a selection of illuminating interviews with the author, as well as an original Foreword by leading parapsychologist and trickster theorist George P. Hansen. Engaging the Anomalous is a bold contribution to Anomalistic literature.

Dr. Jack Hunter is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of consciousness, religion and the paranormal, living in the hills of Mid-Wales. His doctoral research with the University of Bristol examined the experiences of spirit mediums and their influence on the development of self-concepts and models of consciousness, and is an effort towards a non-reductive anthropology of the paranormal. He is the founder and editor of Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal. He is the author of Why People Believe in Spirits, Gods and Magic (2012), editor of Strange Dimensions: A Paranthropology Anthology (2015), Damned Facts: Fortean Essays on Religion, Folklore and the Paranormal (2016), and co-editor with Dr. David Luke of Talking With the Spirits: Ethnographies from Between the Worlds (2014). He has served as a reviewer for the Journal of Exceptional Experiences and Psychology (JEEP), Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religion (JBASR), the Journal for the Study of Religious Experience (JSRE) and is a founding member of the Afterlife Research Centre (ARC). He is currently an Access to Higher Education tutor for Health and Social Care (Social Sciences) at North Shropshire College, where he teaches Psychology and Sociology. He completed a Permaculture Design Course at Chester Cathedral in 2017, and is currently working on a project to develop a mainstream permaculture curriculum for schools. He is also a musician and an ordained Dudeist Priest. To find out more about his research and publications visit http://www.jack-hunter.webstarts.com