might hold the answer to some of these mysteries. The anecdotes in this section include the author's own experience of navigating a boat while in a kind of trance due to extreme tiredness, which he compares with the practices of Melewi Dervishes, whom he said that he studied under in Syria. Seabrook then goes on to recount a meeting with G.I. Gurdjieff, and to describe the dances performed by his followers. Seabrook claims that Gurdjieff asked him to invite some his friends to Gurdjieff's apartment, where Gurdjieff gave a reading from his manuscript Beelezbub's Tale. Apparently the listeners (who included the behaviourist John Watson, Lincoln Steffens, and George Seldes) were perplexed and unimpressed; Seabrook notes that the book did not have a publisher (although it was later published under as Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson). This is followed by a sympathetic account of Aleister Crowley and Seabrook's encounters with him. The final chapters discuss Upton Sinclair and his book Mental Radio, and an incidence of biographer William Woodward debunking someone who claimed to have a supernatural power. This is followed by an account of Seabrook's experiments in sense deprivation involving his lover Justine. The experiments include the use of a specially made mask, which Seabrook notes was considered to have "psycho-erotic" elements by Michel Leiris. Seabrook claims that the experiments led to results suggestive of precognition. Part Four: Appendix The Appendix contains extra anecdotes and references, often taken from newspaper reports. There are also long quotes taken from Elliott O'Donnell's Strange Cults and Secret Societies of Modern London (describing a "panther-cult"), John Mulholland's Beware Familiar Spirits (describing his investigation of chance by using a randomising process developed by IBM, in order to criticise Rhine), and Peter Freuchen's Arctic Adventure, which describes the mystical practices of Eskimos. The appendix also includes discussion of Jiddu Krishnamurti, yogi Pierre Bernard, Nostradamus (apparently before he was well known in the USA), Spiritualist Bishop Arthur Ford, and Ignatius Trebitsch. Critical reception The publication was widely reviewed. Time called it a "mildly entertaining potful of scraps." Newsweek was more complimentary, saying that the book was ".. no doubt a valuable contribution to the science of this peculiar subject." The New York Times Book Review wrote: "These personal experiences of the author are especially interesting parts of an interesting book." The book was used as a source for the 1972 novel Daughter of Darkness, about a young