Stearn, Jess
Entry updated 16 March 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1914-2002) US journalist (for the New York Daily News and later, as an associate editor, Newsweek) and prolific author of sensational nonfiction, mostly dealing with the occult. Topics covered included Prediction in The Door to the Future: Can the Future be Foreseen? (New York: Doubleday, 1963), Psi Powers, Reincarnation and Spiritualism. The Romance of Atlantis (1975) with his friend Taylor Caldwell is based on the latter's childhood dreams of having been an empress in Atlantis; the nonfiction The Search for a Soul: Taylor Caldwell's Psychic Lives (1973) recounts Hypnosis sessions in which Caldwell recalled several supposed past incarnations in ancient Greece, Israel, Rome, as the wife of Genghis Khan and so forth. In the Biblical thriller I, Judas (1977), written with Caldwell, the titular betrayer of Christ explains how his well-meaning intentions to promote the Messiah went awry because he himself was betrayed by the Jewish and Roman authorities. [DRL]
Jess Stearn
born Syracuse, New York: 26 April 1914
died 27 March 2002
works (highly selected)
- The Romance of Atlantis (New York: Morrow, 1975) with Taylor Caldwell [hb/Tom Miller]
- I, Judas (New York: Atheneum, 1977) with Taylor Caldwell [hb/]
nonfiction
- The Door to the Future: Can the Future be Foreseen? (New York: Doubleday, 1963) [nonfiction: hb/]
- The Search for a Soul: Taylor Caldwell's Psychic Lives (New York: Doubleday, 1973) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
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