Adventures in Paranormal Investigation

by Joe Nickell

Tales of alien abductions, miraculous relics, and haunted castles have attracted believers and skeptics across the globe for centuries. Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell tackles the world's most seemingly inexplicable myths in Adventures in Paranormal Investigation .

With four decades of experience in the field, Nickell employs skepticism and scientific analysis to pull truth from the mires of false evidence and trickery that surround both old and new legends and mysteries. Unlike authors who engage in hype and sensationalism in order to foster or debunk myths, Nickell approaches each case with a rational and scientific approach intended to find the truth. Occam's Razor―all things being equal, the simplest solution is the best one―is a principal instrument in his investigative toolbox, as well as the belief that it is the claimant's responsibility to provide the extraordinary proof required in such extraordinary cases.

Adventures in Paranormal Investigation features Nickell's on-site explorations in unusual phenomena. Among the forty unique cases, Nickell examines mysteries ranging from snake charmers who purport to hold influence over the reptiles, to the Holocaust victims who reportedly haunt a gas chamber in Dachau, to Lake Simcoe's resident lake monster Igopogo in Canada. In addition to the case studies, Nickell analyzes how the propensity to fantasize can affect human perceptions of and belief in paranormal activity and how his personal experience with the paranormal was altered when intuition led to the discovery of a daughter he didn't know existed.

More than just another myth-busting text, Adventures in Paranormal Investigation brings together reason and scientific analyses to explain both the phenomena and the role of human perception therein, establishing Nickell as the foremost paranormal investigator of our time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Paranormal, Skepticism, Science

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2007

About the author

Joe Nickell was an American skeptic and investigator of the paranormal.
Nickell was a senior research fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and wrote regularly for their journal, Skeptical Inquirer. He was also an associate dean of the Center for Inquiry Institute. He was the author or editor of over 30 books.
Among his career highlights, Nickell helped expose the James Maybrick "Jack the Ripper Diary" as a hoax. In 2002, Nickell was one of a number of experts asked by scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. to evaluate the authenticity of the manuscript of Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative (1853–1860), possibly the first novel by an African-American woman. At the request of document dealer and historian Seth Keller, Nickell analyzed documentation in the dispute over the authorship of "The Night Before Christmas", ultimately supporting the Clement Clarke Moore claim.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm realizing that a lot of the books on skepticism that I've bought might just be collections of short essays. :(

Anyway, this is one such. Nickell is one of the few (to my knowledge) dedicated paranormal investigators who are coming at it from other than a credulous perspective. There fun mentions of him going undercover and in disguise to get at the bottom of what might be happening, as well as a few new tidbits of fact about the history of a claim I hadn't known before. Overall though, sadly, the essays are far too brief, and the scattershot nature just isn't satisfying. I think they were arranged in chronological order but I would have preferred thematic order, so that (e.g.) all the material on aliens went together, all the material on miracle claims came next, and so on.

Two stars. It's not bad, but I think there's better.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

From Publishers Weekly
Nickell, a senior research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (Real-Life X-Files), relates short anecdotes about 40 years spent searching for the truth behind stories of psychic abilities, alien encounters, faith healing and other paranormal phenomena. As a former stage magician, private investigator and folklorist, Nickell has the right skills to separate truth from confabulation. Blurry photographs of ghosts said to haunt a historic Louisiana plantation or the gas chamber at Dachau are explained as photographic errors, if not outright fakery. Sightings of ghosts or religious figures in burnt tortillas most likely result from pareidolia, the ability to find shapes in random patterns like clouds. But Nickell's no-nonsense style fails to brings his stories to life. Confusion results from widely separated discussions of seemingly similar phenomena and from the inclusion of nonparanormal topics such as Jack the Ripper, the possible historical sources for Frankenstein and the fake cancer drug Laetrile. Finally, details are lacking on Nickell's Ghostly Encounters Questionnaire, which he claims shows that those who experience paranormal events have fantasy-prone personalities. Nickell's work is fascinating, but one wishes he were better at describing it.

[Krista Bolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book takes a skeptical view of a variety of unexplained phenomena. The author tries to prove that all of these occurrences, like crop circles, moving statues, haunted houses, alien encounters - can all be explained in perfectly logical ways. In some cases, like the chapter on the day of the dead, it's more about clearing up misunderstandings of what's really going on than proving something is a hoax. And sometimes, like in the case of the alien autopsy video, Nickell basically summarizes cases that are already known to be hoaxes. So there's a mishmash of things going on here that keep the book from feeling unified in theme. Maybe I'm deluded, but I don't think that every mysterious occurrence can be explained in either logical or supernatural terms, because we just don't know enough. Just as someone might perceive something supernatural is happening, so too a skeptic perceives a logical explanation. Nickell criticizes Patricia Cornwell for her lack of evidence in her book about Jack the Ripper, in which she argues the identity of the killer, but I found that the author used the same technique in this book. Often he uses persuasive argument over any real evidence that proves something was not paranormal. So although the book was somewhat entertaining, I felt it was basically unsatisfying.

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short explanations of various phenomena he has researched. All them turned out to not be true (shocker!), but he makes a big deal about he he is not a debunker of things like ghosts and UFO sightings, even though that is what he does. He seems like a very odd individual, quirky--he sometimes complained about being asked to investigate some reports, which is weird because that's his job. Overall, meh.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fun and interesting book on the skeptical research of the paranormal, but I could have done with a lot more detail on the actual case studies. I was disappointed by how short each section was.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Joe Nickell doesn't believe in ghosts. I do.

[Sally]

A collection of short magazine articles; not enough in-depth information for me to finish reading it.