The Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology

This fifth edition of the Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology (EOP) continues the tradition established by its predecessors in providing the most comprehensive coverage of the fields of occultism and parapsychology. The first edition, published in 1978, brought together the texts of two of the standard reference works in the field, Lewis Spence’s Encyclopedia of Occultism (1920) and Nandor Fodor’s Encyclopedia of Psychic Science (1934). Later, editor Leslie Shepard took on the task of updating their observations and supplementing the volume with new entries.
The production of this massively ambitious work was sparked by a heightened interest in psychic phenomena, the occult, witchcraft, and related topics in the 1970s. This interest, which led directly to the New Age movement of the 1980s, provided a continued wealth of material for parapsychologists to examine. It also led to a reaction by a group of debunkers to form the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal. This group believed that they were spokesmen for the scientific establishment.