I have been asked many times why so much of what I write about - life after death, psychical research, and related paranormal subjects is taken from research done a hundred or more years ago, and why I don't write more about modern mediums and researchers. Part of the reason is that there has been relatively very little research looking at evidence of survival after death since 1930. But that is a secondary reason. The primary reason is that I am convinced that the phenomena observed by the pioneers of psychical research, especially in the area of mediumship and, concomitantly, in the area of spirit communication, were much more dynamic and evidential than those of today. Sometime around 1920, when Professor James Hyslop, one of the key pioneers, died, the research reached a point of diminishing returns. The scientists and scholars engaged in the research began to realize that they were continually reinventing the wheel and would never succeed in producing evidence to satisfy either the scientific fundamentalists or the religious fundamentalists. As strong as the evidence was, it did not offer the absolute proof the skeptics demanded. The pioneers were followed by researchers, who, having witnessed the derision heaped on their predesessors by materialistic "know-nothings," were concerned with their reputations in academic circles. Since consciousness survival had come to be a taboo subject in academia, the new breed of researcher focused on ESP - often going out of their way to avoid the survival of consciousness issue. In fact, a fair percentage of parapsychologists, while accepting the reality of ESP, rejected the spirit or survival hypothesis, concluding that all such phenomena were somehow produced by the subconscious of the individuals involved in their experiments. Such a conclusion was much more academically and scientifically acceptable and made sure funds for further research were available. To even hint at the spirit hypothesis was to invite disdain. While a few later researchers delved into the area of past-life studies, their work received little attention from mainstream science and was ignored or resisted by orthodox religions. When, during the 1970s, research began in the field of near-death experiences, the researchers, wanting to be scientifically proper, focused more on the positive effects of the NDE than on the survival implications. It was not until late in the 1990s, when Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona, began investigating the clairvoyant type of mediumship that survival research again resurfaced. But Schwartz came under attack by many scientific fundamentalists and research in this area was further discouraged. This volume, intended as the first of four volumes, covers the period before 1882, the year the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was organized and more formal scientific methods were employed. The pre-1882 researchers were by no means ignorant of the scientific methods necessary to validate mediums, and it becomes clear to the discerning reader that these pioneers were very much on guard against deception and mindful of other explanations, including the subconscious theories. It also becomes apparent to the serious student of this subject that the earliest researchers went beyond the evidential aspects of mediumship and recorded many messages concerning the afterlife environment and the meaning of this life. They served as the foundation for a whole new philosophy, one that made some sense of the afterlife and gave meaning to this life.

This book is not quite like other books about the Titanic. As the title suggests, it is an attempt to explore the more transcendental aspects of the Titanic story - those suggesting a non-mechanistic universe. The subjects include premonitions, apparitions, out-of-body experiences, telepathic communication among the living, and after-death communication, many related to the Titanic passengers, others offered in support of the Titanic phenomena. Many of them have to do with other ocean tragedies. Chief among the Titanic passengers in this book is William T. Stead, a British journalist, who did not survive the disaster but apparently survived in another dimension, from which he communicated in the weeks following his death. . The Titanic story offers us the opportunity to examine death in a safe haven with the added bonus that, unlike most stories involving death, the parties actually have time to contemplate theirs death, some to escape, some to succumb. More than any other modern story, the Titanic might be viewed as a microcosm of life, a "community" isolated in the vast reaches of the ocean, one offering wealth and poverty, the opulence of first class and the ordinariness of steerage class, with a middle or second class in between. Every type of emotion, mindset, virtue and vice is represented - love and fear, hope and despair, bravery and cowardice, arrogance and humbleness, pomp and shame, selfishness and brotherhood. To accent it all, the iceberg impacted by the leviathan was reported as being a rare black berg looming high over the vessel, as if a giant evil predator. More than anything though, the Titanic story represents the struggle between man's inner and outer self, a struggle which many people are interested in but prefer to avoid except in books or movies.