FSHOD - Fearlessly Seeking Honest Open Disclosure

The Spooky Stiff

490 comments - Click for Blog by ScarletM


With Halloween just around the corner I thought I might pass on a book review, if nothing more than to relieve Sunking of blog duty.

On a recent trip to the bookstore I happened to pick up a copy of Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach. (Copyright 2005)

I had read her last book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, about what happens to the physical body after we die. It was a most thoroughly informative and really funny book, (without being too irreverent). I knew I was in for a good time with Spook. In it she tackles what happens to the spirit after death.



Roach doesn’t necessarily go out to debunk such aspects of the afterlife as reincarnation, spirit communication, NDE’s etc…. she simply tries to put a decent scientific spin on things-which by nature tend to debunk supernatural phenomenon. She does all this with a wit and honesty rarely found in these kinds of subjects. She comes away with more or less a “they never disproved it conclusively.” feeling regarding the afterlife, an attitude which I found refreshing.

Her only true “ uh, yeah, right..” moments come while researching the Spiritualist movement and most specifically, the phenomenon of ectoplasm.. I have to agree with her assessment, it's not just implausible...but how gullible were some of these people to believe this cheesecloth feeling/appearing substance (which, actually, IS cheese cloth) could have actually been considered” otherworldly” much less completely laughable?


A Medium expelling 'ectoplam' from her ear during a seance

More than one medium of the time was inserting the cloth-yards of it in some cases-into their most private parts and expelling it on command-both disgusting and impressive at the same time! One woman was actually stuffing {dead} unborn rabbits up there and then “giving birth” to them!

In their defense, it was an age of brand new technology: radio, telecommunication via Morse code that must have seemed to them as magic if not utterly supernatural, still does for me to this day, so why not “ectoplasm??” At any rate, I have to side with Mary on this: both ectoplasm and bunny birthing is probably a hoax.

I enjoyed this book wholeheartedly-both skeptics and true believers alike will be entertained..

And a happy dia de los muertos to you!

Labels: Ectoplasm, Ghosts, Mary Roach, Spiritualist Movement, Spooky, Stiff