Flipping through Spook in the bookstore, it looked like a good chance to follow up on the subject. Being an anthropologist, I guess I know about as much about that topic as any reasonable person could want.īut I recently saw a really interesting documentary about Harry Houdini, focusing on his other career: debunking mediums. I haven’t read Roach’s previous book, Stiff, which explores some of the odd things that happen to cadavers after people die. Ectoplasm is a paranormal substance described as “a strange, mystical material that flows out of any orifice and opening of a medium’s body during a seance.I’ve just finished Mary Roach’s entertaining book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. After returning from her trip, Roach dives into the history of attempts to physically observe the soul with the help of scales, x-rays, electrographs and a device called a “Snook tube.” She also uncovers some fascinating anecdotes about fraudulent claims by mediums that they had produced ectoplasm during seances. Rajat as he travels to villages to visit Indian children who are rumored to be the reincarnation of people that have recently died.

Rawat, director of the International Centre for Survival and Reincarnation Researches in Indore, India. In the first part of the book, Roach spends time with Kirti S. (For example, did you know that when a pope dies, he is struck three times on the forehead with a silver hammer to confirm his death?) “Spook” is full of entertaining facts and anecdotes. And she delivers on that promise, with humor and an infectious curiosity.

Roach doesn’t promise that she will find the evidence she’s looking for in her book, but does promise a diverting journey as she looks into the most mysterious of existential questions.

“Simply put,” she says, “this is a book for people who would like very much to believe in a soul and in an afterlife for it to hang around in, but who have trouble accepting these things on faith.” She stipulates that the research she’s interested in uses scientific methods and is being done at reputable universities or institutions. It is, on the other hand, a scientifically minded query into the question of what happens when we die, a delve into the research being done on the topics of the soul and the afterlife. (Debunking books assume an outcome and set about trying to prove that outcome, whereas Roach’s goal is to approach her investigations without an agenda). In the preface to “ Spook: Science Tackles The Afterlife,” author Mary Roach tells her reader that she is not interested in philosophical debates on the soul, but neither is Spook a “debunking book” for skeptics.

Spook by mary roach