I posted some pre-release interviews with Peter Bebergal about his latest book, Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural. The book examines the frequent use of science and technology in pursuit of the otherworldly.

In Strange Frequencies, Peter gets up close and hands on with such tinfoil fun stuff as ghost boxes, spirit radios, EVP recordings, spirit photography, brain toys, and more. — Read the rest

Boing Boing pal, Peter Bebergal, has a new book coming out later this month called Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural. In 2015's Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock n' Roll, Peter explored what he identified as the "occult imagination" and how it had provided critical inspiration to many ground-breaking rock artists of the 60s and 70s (and beyond). — Read the rest

We've posted previously about Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), the weird sounds in electronic recordings that some paranormal researchers insist are actually voices of spirits. But I didn't realize that EVP is part of a larger genre of ghostly phenomena called Instrumental Transcommunication "said to occur on devices as varied as television sets, radios, computers, handheld devices such as ipods or iphones, and even fax machines," according to Mysterious Universe. — Read the rest

Electrical engineer Gary Galka is proprietor of D.A.S. Distribution Inc, a company that makes and sells a variety of industrial sensors for medical, aerospace, and factory automation applications. After his teenage daughter was killed in a car accident, Galka began to develop instruments to detect ghosts and scan for electronic voice phenomena that he says could have paranormal origins. — Read the rest

Were our ancestors water apes, hairless bipeds that lived an aquatic existence? Did Canadian inventor Troy Hurtubise really build an "Angel Light" that makes any object transparent when bathed in its glow? How come fish sometimes fall from the sky? Can pets actually predict earthquakes? — Read the rest

bOING bOING pal and Techgnosis author Erik Davis interviews the late Philip K. Dick:

"In the course of my current researches into techgnostic religious phenomena, I was experimenting with electronic voice phenomena. I was recording the analog noise between tracks on a scratchy old copy of Karl Muck conducting Parzifal with the Bayreuth Festival Chorus onto a cassette tape.

Here's this year's complete Boing Boing Gift Guide: more than a hundred great ideas for prezzies: technology, toys, books and more. Scroll down and buy things, mutants! Many of the items use Amazon Affiliate links that help us make ends meet at Boing Boing, the world's greatest neurozine. — Read the rest

When we got to rounding up our favorite books for our annual Gift Guide, we found that there were simply too many this time to throw in the Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukah/Yule/Solstice/Nonspecific Winter Celebration/New Year/Chalica hopper along with the tech and toys.

It's almost as if 2016 made the traditional way of learning more about our world — and of sharing dreams of other worlds — somehow more enticing. — Read the rest

We're making an infinite, shared universe where what you draw becomes real.

EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow's visionary 1996 text A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace has stirred hearts since he penned it in 1996 — and now you can own a beautiful recording Barlow reading it in his wonderful, gravelly voice.

In 1991, after having been paroled, convicted kidnapper and rapist Phillip Garrido snatched an 11 year old girl named Jaycee Dugard off the street. He kept her captive for 18 years, repeatedly raped her, and fathered two children from those rapes. — Read the rest