The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts: A Riveting Investigation into Channeling and Spirit Guides is a book by the journalist Joe Fisher. It was published in 1990 in Canada and the United Kingdom and was later published in the United States in 2001. It has become a popular book within the New Age movement.
Fisher began to investigate paranormal phenomena and made contact with his own spiritual guide, a spirit who claimed to be a Greek woman who was his lover during an earlier life. He received much information from his contact with the spirits and started to check whether it was true or not. At first, some seemed to be correct, but as he started to check more closely, some turned out to contradict what he had been told. This raised doubts in his mind. Information given by different mediums contradicted and he came to the conclusion that at best, the spirits were guessing and at worse, deliberately lying. He also came to the conclusion that some of the information that he was provided could not possibly have been collected by natural means, that is, the mediums were not frauds.
By consulting a friend, he came to the conclusion that the spirits were trying to gain total control of him.
By re-delving in to numerous and varied ancient religious mystical texts, he eventually found in the Tibetan Book of the Dead what he concluded these entities are, namely Pretas, or Hungry Ghosts, which stimulate in the living un-naturally heightened levels of all the negative emotions the living can have, and then feed on the negative emotional energy produced.
The same year that the book was published in the United States, Fisher, experiencing personal problems and feeling tormented by the spirits that he claimed to have angered, committed suicide. Something that his publisher thought were quite incredible as Fisher was known as one who wrote against suicide in a previous book he had authored.
Famous quotes containing the words siren, call, hungry and/or ghosts:
“The siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss—a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Peasants are a rude lot, and hard: life has hardened their hearts, but they are thick and awkward only in appearance; you have to know them. No one is more sensitive to what gives man the right to call himself a man: good-heartedness, bravery and virile brotherhood.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheephook, or have learn’d ought else the least
That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped.
And when they list their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Why the ghosts of poor old dead Romans should be dragged in every time a man eats an oyster, I don’t see. We’re as fine specimens as they were. I swear I shan’t let any old turned-to-clay Lucullus outlive me, even if I’ve never eaten a lamprey.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)