Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife

by Mary Roach

This book might be best described as the logical sequel to Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. After probing autopsies, the funeral home business, and the implications of human composting, it seems only natural that the author would turn her attention to the afterlife. To learn what she can about the Other Side, she enrolls in an English school for mediums; banters with reincarnation researchers; and interviews a Duke University professor about a plan to weigh the consciousness of a leech.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Humor, Paranormal, History, Death, Religion

293 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Mary Roach is a science author who specializes in the bizarre and offbeat; with a body of work ranging from deep-dives on the history of human cadavers to the science of the human anatomy during warfare.

Mary Roach is the author of the New York Times bestsellers STIFF: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; GULP: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, PACKING FOR MARS: The Curious Science of Life in the Void; BONK: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex; and GRUNT: The Curious Science of Humans at War.

Mary has written for National Geographic, Wired, Discover, New Scientist, the Journal of Clinical Anatomy, and Outside, among others. She serves as a member of the Mars Institute's Advisory Board and the Usage Panel of American Heritage Dictionary. Her 2009 TED talk made the organization's 2011 Twenty Most-Watched To Date list. She was the guest editor of the 2011 Best American Science and Nature Writing, a finalist for the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies' Engineering Journalism Award, in a category for which, let's be honest, she was the sole entrant.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roach is the author of Stiff, a raucous romp through the wonderful land of death. It is only natural that she might continue that escapade with a look past the curtain. Are there ghosts? Is there life after death? She examines a host of topics under her conceptual umbrella, looking at reincarnation, the hunt for the seat of the soul, the notion that the soul weighs 21 grams, ectoplasm, the effectiveness of mediums, including her stint in medium school, (she outgrew small but was not yet advanced enough for large school?) EVP, and more. As with Stiff, it is a bit hazardous reading this in public as one is apt to burst out into laughter every now and then, victimized by the snide commentary that makes this book great fun to read. I particularly enjoyed the section on the possibility that infrasound, that is, sound at or about 18-20 decibels, might account for a wide range of supposedly psychic experience. Spook has enough payload to justify the trip and the humor makes it a very spirited ride.

Other Mary Roach books we have enjoyed
-----2021 - Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
-----2016 - Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
-----2013 - Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
-----2010 - Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
-----2004 - Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a number of interesting things reading Mary Roach's survey of the historical and scientific efforts to prove the existence of a soul.

Her discussion of the scientific inquiries into stories of reincarnated children provides an excellent example of the difficulties of trying to objectively prove something when your main resource is the shaky memories of those who are already convinced of whatever it is you're trying to prove.

Though I was already familiar with the theory that infrasound (sound at a frequency too low for humans to hear) can cause the experience of ghostly phenomenon, I was intrigued to learn that a tiger's roar contains infrasound and some theorize that the fear we feel in the presence of infrasound is left over from days when escaping tigers was a high evolutionary priority.

I also learned more than I ever wanted to know about the various ways spiritualist mediums faked the extrusion of ectoplasm.

Despite the interesting nature of the topic, however, I didn't love this book as much as I hoped. There were moments in which the narrative got bogged down as the author detailed a few too many historical efforts to prove the existence of the soul.

In addition, I struggled with the tone of the book. Roach admits to being a skeptic, but she said her goal was to explore this topic with an open mind. In this I don't think she really succeeded. Though she does acknowledge some inexplicable events, she spends more time poking cheap fun at many of her subjects. In some circumstances, I can imagine the temptation was hard to resist, but this semi-snarky tone felt a little too easy. A few moments of genuine humor combined with her generally readable style, however, made me want to seek out her first book, which I've heard is much better.

[Simeon Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but Roach reveals her limitations in this book; namely, she writes mostly to entertain. She spends most of her time making fun of mediums from the spiritualism craze in the 20's (which, let's face it, is like shooting fish in a barrel).

But you can also sense the places where her unspoken thesis (i.e. that the idea of a soul, and any attendant special effects, is bunk) runs into problems.

She hurriedly scurries past it (as in the case of Kirlian photography, or a scientific experiment which seemed to validate the presence of an astrally projected body form). This is not to say that either of these is "true" or "valid." Just that the clumsy and hostile way she handles stuff she can't turn into a modest punch-line is in sharp contrast to her deliberate and even-handed approach to the other (more easily debunked) examples. Which I find insulting as a reader. I don't mind being entertained, but I do mind someone pretending that I won't notice flaws in her argument.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book that tries too hard to be cutesy. From page one, we're dumped with tons of cute little footnoted anecdotes about quaint pseudo-scientific afterlife-related topics (many of her anecdotes tend to veer far off topic), but nothing meaningful or even slightly memorable. Furthermore, Roach's humor comes across not as funny but as smug, even mean-spirited (and, as a firm non-believer, I was predisposed to agree with her point of view anyway).

Her research and organization were both terrible. She seemed to jump into topics haphazardly, with no segues between them, and with no reason except to poke gleeful fun at the topic she's investigating: "Look at me! I managed to get into the highly-exclusive Cambridge Library Manuscript Room! First, I'll make a joke about all the nerds doing research in the room, and what mind-numbingly boring topics they're studying! Then, I'll discuss at length how embarrassed I am to be studying such a silly subject! Then, after summarizing the articles I read in boring detail, I'll have a good long laugh about the ridiculous shenanigans people got up to in olden times, and how funny their beliefs sound today!" Long story short, her "investigations" into phenomena are cursory at best. This is a book that claims to speak for science...but true scientific research is never this shallow.

The only chapter that I really found interesting was the one on ghosts/ghost sightings. However, I was put off by Roach's presentation: for example, she investigates in some detail a case in which a farmer claimed to see the ghost of his deceased father; the ghost directed the farmer to a hidden copy of his will, a will which just so happened to give the farmer a greater share in his late father's estate. No surprise here: First, Roach "investigates" the ghost-sighting claim, then feels the (surely noble) need to tell the farmer's grandchildren that their ancestor was likely involved in some sort of scam (even though they previously had held no doubts about their grandfather's story, and didn't seem to want to hear any of her arguments).

Blah blah blah. Nearly none of this book is clever or particularly engaging. When it's not trying to be humorous, it just feels like a long list of names and dates and titles of research studies. Most inexcusable: this book is boring. I'm one who actually watches those terrifically bad Discovery Channel shows about hauntings (the ones with dramatic re-enactments, complete with computer-generated "ghosts" and spooky noises soundtrack). I shouldn't have found this book boring. I should have devoured it. Instead, I was bored out of my mind and desperately wished each page was the last.

[Francisca · Rating 5 out of 5]

All of Mary Roach's book have a few things in common:

(1) They are brilliantly and exhaustively researched.

(2) They are incredibly engaging.

(3) They are hilarious without ever being silly.

Spook is not the exception. Roach take on the afterlife is a fresh one, aimed at explaining the many similar phenomena reported by every culture around the world in a compelling way, one that doesn't alienate but widens our view of the world.

Whatever the reader's background--religiously, culturally--this book offers answers (and, as all good books, also creates more questions) to soothe our fears and make us feel a little bit more at ease with that last stage in every life: death.

[MariNaomi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was unable to get through the first chapter of this book, as the narrator, when reading the quotes of an Indian doctor, spoke with a fake Indian accent to the likes of Apu from the Simpsons. Audiobook directors: DON'T DO THIS. IT'S RACIST.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Given the title, I expected a little more actual science and less mockery of fringe and historical science. The last two or three chapters came the closest to what I'd actually expected this book to be-- chapters where she's researching subjects she felt were credible-- but the rest of the book was... meh. The subjects were mostly interesting, but the author's superior and mocking tone REALLY got up my nose. (For the record, no, I don't believe in most of the stuff she talks about, either, but I do at least feel that there are things science can't sufficiently explain yet... nor do I expect 19th century scientists to be able to apply 21st century rigor to their studies.)

Honestly, I think this book would have worked much better as a either series of (shorter) magazine articles, or as a title co-written with an opposing viewpoint (at least someone more tolerant of unexplained phenomena, as she is most definitely NOT). I understand the author was attempting to be playful and lighthearted in tone, but that's not how it came across to me. Yes, she poked fun at herself, but she spent a lot more time making fun of her subjects, their methodologies, and their (to her standards) nonexistent evidence. (This from someone whose research method of choice was mainly to "Google it.") She did avoid most major religions in her survey (I suspect to avoid a nasty backlash), although she took on Hinduism's belief in reincarnation in the first chapter.

Open-minded she was NOT. (Sometimes, I found myself wondering why she chose this subject at all-- excess research material from her bestselling "Stiff," I was told.) She was at least up-front about her lack of belief in anything except hard science, but she also seemed pretty intolerant of people who *did* believe or question. (On the subject of weighing souls, when a researcher came up with a result for which he had no rational explanation, the author's explanation was that the researcher was probably a loony.) Though she was concerned over the researchers' possible biases, she had no problem freely expressing her own. (Her ambiguous "can't really prove or disprove" statements in some chapter conclusions didn't really smack of conviction-- for the most part, it was pretty clear she'd made up her mind on the subject.)

Some of her asides were entertaining (I have GOT to try the thing with the cows), though a larger number of them were extremely juvenile (mocking Kimberly Clark's name, for example, because it was the same as that of a feminine product manufacturer).

If I want more lighthearted edge-of-normal human interest works, I think I'll stick with A. J. Jacobs, who is at least respectful of his subject even when he disagrees with it.

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would have been a much better book if I had read it, rather than listened to it as an audio book. The problem was that the person reading it had been told Roach is funny, in much the same way bad actors spend too much time remembering Shakespeare wrote his plays as ‘poetry’ – so she read this almost with a laugh-track playing throughout. Nothing kills a joke quite so stone-dead as telegraphing it in your voice two sentences ahead of the punch-line.

Given that the humour in this one had been sent ‘to the other side’ for me the only interest left was in the subject matter itself. But let’s face it, the subject matter is inherently interesting. Our feeble hold on existence, which is both fleeting and precarious, outrages our sense of, well, of fairness. Why raise us as this quintessence of dust only to scatter us again all so quickly back to the winds? What kind of divine joke is that, exactly? Whatever did make fatuous sunbeams toil only to cast us once again down into eternal the darkness? Why must our first screaming inhalation foretell all too predictably, even in its repetition, our final, sighing exhalation? If anything confirms Stendhal’s quip that ‘God’s only excuse is that he doesn’t exist’ then surely our infinitely insignificant three-score and ten standing as it does divided by 13 billion years quickly takes most of the humour out of just about everything.

Vanity spurs our ‘reason’ to snatch at, grasp and cling to the hope that this is not, nor can be, all. There must be more. And if there is more, then surely there must also be a two-way desire – both from us in the here and now and from those we love wherever they have gone from the here and now – to somehow communicate.

Unfortunately, I start from the premise that those who believe in an afterlife cover a rather unappealing spectrum – that is, from the deluded to the charlatan. And although I can understand the motivations of self-interest that motivate both ends of this spectrum (even if I can only view one end with any compassion), I generally turn away from this all too bright light as a pitiful kind of wish fulfilment. Better by far the cold realisation of eternal non-existence that is awaiting us, than the infinite horrors eternal salvation seem to invariably impose on the vast majority of those not saved.

It is difficult to get the tone right in a topic like this, particularly if you are going to also try to be humorous about it. It is hard to avoid pointing and laughing at all of the clearly self-serving beliefs you don’t share, even while remaining completely blind to your own and probably equally self-serving beliefs.

I couldn’t help feeling there was so much more she could have spoken about – at one point she mentions William James, but then says nothing at all about his extensive work on the continuation of our ‘souls’ after our need for our worldly solid form goes away. Other books http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... cover this topic in much more detail and probably are better in many ways. James’ own work http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... makes it clear that he expected Spiritualism to have come into its own long before this.

If I must make a snide remark it is to wonder why people who believe in the afterlife don't seem to be appropriately concerned about senility. This is something she mentions in this book too and is something I’ve often wondered about. I’m sure most people who believe in an afterlife assume dying somehow restores their faculties back to mid-season form (as Wodehouse might have put it). But just why this might be the case is never made all that clear. The idea of eternal mental decay, or worse, being endlessly fixed in a part way decayed stage, seems as good a definition of hell as I can think of.

This wasn’t a bad book, in fact, some of it, particularly at the end with the stuff about the ghost and his second will, was really fascinating – but the book could so easily have been a much better one.

[John Wiswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Roach's book has two great strengths. The first is that she's damnably funny; she brings humor to any place of uncertainty and any place of anyone's absolute certainty. The second strength is that she's humble and friendly; her prose is downright gregarious, so that reading often comes off as chatting with a well-versed (but not know-it-all) friend. She is less interested with one person being right and more interested in finding every available source of information, which often means transcending two sides of an argument and finding bystanders. In her opening she casts doubt on both religion and science, doubting and chiding them paragraph-for-paragraph, setting us up for the spirited search of spirits she's about to embark on.

Spook provides neither New Age pseudo-support for every little possibility of the supernatural, nor mean-spirited skepticism. The aforementioned two classes seem to dominate far too much of these subjects, making much of the discourse unbearable. If you need her to seriously lean towards orthodoxy or the scientific method, don't bother reading Spook. She will not bow to your paradigm, and really, if you're so certain that you cannot stand anything but confirmation of your belief or disbelief, why do you even bother reading about these matters? You're done. Get a less parasitic hobby than arguing with people over their interests. Roach is wise enough to observe interests and report them in detail, even when they run as absurdly as a court case over the existence (and desires) of a ghost, or a real life sample of ectoplasm.

It's wonderful to read someone who can be funny about this sensitive matter without ever coming across as hating one of the embattled sides. It allows me to forgive her naive definitions of "proof," "evidence," "belief," and "knowledge," because by the end you aren't reading Plato. You're reading the observations of a friend, from whom you have much to learn and much to laugh about.

In short - this is a book titled "Spook" and only subtitled "Science Tackles the Afterlife," and the photo of the author on the dustjacket shows her laughing hysterically. If you pick up and carry it all the way to the checkout desk, you know what you're in for. You're only lucky that she went through such a thorough journey of research and observation of other people's research.

--Written 2008; edited for typos, 2014.

[Clidston · Rating 2 out of 5]

A trip through various scientific and not-so-scientific attempts to ascertain whether or not the human soul, consciousness, personality, or whatever survives the death of the body. Looks at reincarnation, mediums, ectoplasms, attempts to measure or weigh the soul, anatomical searches for the seat of the soul within the body, electromagnetic haunting, quantum physics theories of consciousness, ghost-hunting, electronic voice phenomena and near-death experiences. Not at all a "scholarly" work and written in a tongue-firmly-in-cheek fashion. I'll allow there were some funny moments (I'm still chuckling over the chapter on reincarnation, entitled "You Again?"), but unfortunately it's not as entertaining as the diverse and bizarre subject matter might suggest. The tone of the whole thing is smug and self-involved, enamored of its own clever little turns of phrase, like an endless NPR personal essay or a salon.com article.
Could be good, amusing food for thought if you're interested in this kind of thing, but for some reason it seems to drag a little bit. It's almost boring.
How can anything be boring when it includes people killing themselves out of curiousity about the afterlife, mediums hiding cheesecloth and animal parts in their vaginas, electromagnetic impulses being sent into the right lobe of the brain to simulate the experience of being "haunted," and a man mowing his lawn in a three-piece suit? Don't ask me, but it is.
Incidentally, I actually listened to this on audiobook - whatever you do don't do that. The reader is terrible, and manages to step on the punchline of nearly every joke (I also didn't need the exaggerated French accent when reading a quotation from Descartes in English, thank you very much).

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to know what happens when we die? You and everyone else apparently. Many people believe in some sort of continuation be it an afterlife, reincarnation or maybe that your soul sticks around and haunts old, abandoned mansions? Unfortunately, no one really knows for sure. With Spook, Mary Roach isn’t going to provide you with a concrete answer but rather an exploration of several beliefs and possibilities.

I didn’t enjoy this one nearly as much as Stiff. It’s not to say it’s a poorly written book, I just found my interest waning at certain points. That being said, there are some interesting chapters detailing EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) reincarnation, ectoplasm and the ongoing search for the human soul but they felt long winded and repetitive. With Stiff, Roach’s research is scientific and factual whereas with Spook, it’s a lot of interviews with folks who are speaking about belief systems and faith. I’m not trying to knock organized religion or anything, it just didn’t hold my attention as much as Stiff, or even Packing for Mars.

If anything, seek out the chapters about her enrollment and experience in medium school. I’m not the biggest fan of that “profession” and while she goes on record in detailing her personal skepticism, I found that she provided a fair and balanced approach regarding the students and professors.

I’d be interested to hear thoughts from someone who carries a firm belief in the afterlife and what, if anything, this book did for them. I consider it a fault of mine to be unable to shut off the voice in my head screaming, “You’re lying! None of this is possible!” when Mary is interviewing someone. If I could, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more.

[Jill H. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was totally disappointed in this book. Although I like the premise, which is looking into the scientific aspects of afterlife/reincarnation, I did not like the way that the author approached it. . The first chapter is about reincarnation and she travels to India to investigate some of the reincarnation reports. I should have gotten a hint of the tenor of the book at that point as she is condescending and borders on being offensive about the Indian people and the Hindu religion. The rest of the book deals with her experiences with scientists and groups that study the subject of what happens when one dies and takes a very smug attitude, interspersed with "humor" which is totally inappropriate. The only saving grace is the chapter where the fake mediums which were popular during Victorian times are exposed as frauds, with some particular cases highlighted.

It really doesn't matter whether one believes in an afterlife or not, an unbiased study of the subject was what I was looking for in this book. Instead I got the cynical, demeaning. and rather flippant attitude of the author who obviously thinks that the study of the existence or non-existence of an afterlife is an unworthy topic for serious consideration.

[Melora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now this was fun! I've never read Mary Roach before, but I enjoyed her exploration of possible evidences for life after death very much. She's a skeptic, but not a debunker – she would like to see solid evidence that some sort of consciousness continues after the body dies, but for the most part what she finds is that even where scientists and other investigators are trying to be rigorous in their experiments, squishiness often intrudes. Results can be interpreted in various ways, and the ways subjects and investigators perceive occurrences are influenced by their beliefs. Still, some of the researchers Roach visits are surprisingly objective, and on a few occasions Roach allows that the paranormal explanation of events might have something to it. And, as she points out, choosing to believe that the more mystical answer might be right might just be more fun!

”Has my year among the evidence-gatherers left me believing in anything I didn't believe in a year ago? It has. It has left me believing something Bruce Greyson believes. I had asked him whether he believes that near-death experiences provide evidence of a life after death. He answered that what he believed was simply that they were evidence of something we can't explain with our current knowledge. I guess I believe that not everything we humans encounter in our lives can be neatly and convincingly tucked away inside the orderly cabinetry of science. Certainly most things can – including the vast majority of what people ascribe to fate, ghosts, ESP, Jupiter rising – but not all. I believe in the possibility of something more – rather than in any existing something more (reincarnation, say, or dead folks who communicate through mediums). It's not much, but it's more than I believed a year ago.”

Roach reminds me of Bill Bryson or Sam Kean – a fine storyteller. She includes some personal information and responses, but she doesn't overshare. Her description of her efforts to unobtrusively examine the “ectoplasm” she has borrowed from the Cambridge University library archive, while sharing a library table with other library visitors, is entertaining, and certainly conveys the repulsiveness of the stuff. Tales of her participation in other experiments, such as when she sits in a soundproofed room at Laurentian University to find out if exposure to EMF's will make her sense presences and see and hear ghosts, and in investigations, such as when she brings in a forensic handwriting expert to determine the authenticity of a “ghostly” will, are engaging and told with sympathetic, if sometimes flippant and earthy, humor. Her footnotes are also amusing.

This was particularly interesting in conjunction with The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World (also better than that one, btw) in that Roach includes a couple chapters which overlap the subject of that one – Harry Houdini and the Scientific American “medium challenge.” Roach actually gives a better context for understanding how serious scientists could have been taken in, at least temporarily, by mediums who appear now to be so obviously fakes. The table tipping and cheesecloth ectoplasm still looks pretty blatantly phony from where I sit, but at the time, when photography was in its early years and X-rays, radio waves, etc. were newly discovered and poorly understood I can imagine how things might have looked different, and open-minded people might more plausibly have imagined disembodied personalities zipping about in the ether.

So, lots of fun, and recommended for those with an interest in the subject. 4 stars.

[Darlene · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very interested in reading this book, 'Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife' , as I have had a lifelong interest in the supernatural and paranormal. I was curious to know just what science has contributed to this topic. In this book, Mary Roach ambitiously tackles a wide range of topics. The first subject she delves into is reincarnation… a subject I have read a great deal about. She recounts a visit she made to India and her meeting with Dr. Kirti Rawat, director of the International Center for Survival and Reincarantion Research. Dr. Rawat , a retired philosophy professor, takes his role very seriously and approaches his subjects in a thoughtful manner and demonstrates a firm belief in the claims made by families and their young children regarding memories of people and events from what they believe are previous lives. Dr. Rawat tirelessly visits families throughout India and Ms. Roach recounts her impressions of particular visits. Reading these accounts was tremendously fascinating to me but if you are a reader looking for more definitive proof…. well, you won't find it here. For me, however, each time I read such stories , I can't help but marvel and wonder…. and perhaps ultimately that is all I can hope to do.

Ms. Roach also presents a multitude of other topics in her book, including a somewhat confusing explanation of ectoplasm (and I confess that I'm still unclear what it actually IS!), and an accounting of all the ways and manners in which phony mediums found to exude such substances from multiple orifices of their bodies…. definitely a little too much information !!! She also includes chapters on electronic voice phenomena (EVP), near death experiences… which I admit, I find particularly captivating… and an extensive and somewhat tedious description of the spiritualist craze of the 1920's.

All in all, there just was not much in this book that I had not read extensively about previously… with the exception of the experimentation which has been ongoing regarding the experience of ghostly phenomena and apparitions. The discovery that Ms. Roach refers to is the discovery of infrasound … sound at a frequency too low for humans to hear.. and how infrasound has been shown to create or cause the experience of ghostly phenomena.

Ms. Roach tackles many topics in this book and it occurs to me that perhaps this is part of the problem I have with the book. Each topic was discussed briefly and superficially ; and I suppose this was her intention .. a kind of overview on the topic. But for someone like me, who has done a fair amount of reading on many of these subjects, the book ended up very unsatisfying.

The other problem I had with this book… and at times, it was insurmountable… was its tone. Although Ms. Roach clearly states in her introduction… "The moral of the story is that proof is an elusive quarry and all the more so when you are trying to prove an intangible"; I found that rather than presenting the information that is available and allowing the reader to decide its veracity, she editorializes throughout and seems to be saying quite often that she finds particular topics silly and based on ignorance. Her tone, to me, often seemed mocking and disdainful; and although I'm assuming that she perhaps intended her tone to be playful and humorous, it didn't 'feel' that way to me. It sometimes seemed mean-spirited.

I have no idea what the truth is regarding reincarnation and near death experiences but along with so many people, I AM curious about what is next after this life ends. And I can't help but wonder… could this be true? As Albert Einstein said, "There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle or you can live as if everything is a miracle." I suppose I choose to believe in the possibility that miraculous things CAN happen.


I would give this book 2 1/2 stars as I admit that perhaps I was not the intended audience.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I could not believe these things had happened, because another god, the god who wore lab glasses and knew how to use a slide rule, wanted to know how, scientifically speaking, these things could be possible. Faith did not take, because science kept putting it on the spot."

This was a fun read. I love Roach's sense of humor, which is self-effacing and witty without being condescending. But make no mistake about it, she's a natural-born skeptic, an agnostic with a keen eye and a heart of gold. Spook doesn't completely dismantle the concept of an afterlife but it certainly illuminates much of the flawed logic people often use to assert its existence.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars for Spook (audiobook) by Mary Roach read by Bernadette Quigley.

It was fun getting to hear Mary Roach’s take on the afterlife. I think it’s amazing how much research she does on these unusual subjects. And she has a knack for making all that research interesting.

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Book Report: Hot off the success of Stiff, Roach launched herself at an equally surprising topic: Does the soul exist? Is it possible to find it? Can the soul's survival of individual death account for the mysteries of reincarnation and hauntings?

In a word, No. Roach travels the globe looking for the kind of evidence that scientists look for when postulating the existence of muons and Higgs bosons, sans the billion-plus dollar measuring equipment and teams of serious guys in funny coats and booties. Unsurprisingly, she fails to find it.

My Review: All the stars in this book's favor are for Roach's hilarious writing and funny anecdotal collections. None are for the subject at hand, which she simply cannot bring herself to treat seriously. Her lapsed Catholicism made her too deeply skeptical to break free of it horrible fist-clench and look at the improbability of success from the few, one-quarter-assed feeble swats science has aimed at resolving this topic scientifically. Spend twenty or so billion dollars and a couple decades on it. Then let's see what science has to say. After all, they're doing *just that* for this Higgs boson dingus at CERN, so far with no success, and the immense machine they've built to see this particular angel dance on that particular pinhead seems as cranky as my knees on a cold morning.

So please forgive me for rating her quest at zero, failed utterly before it started due to prejudice on the part of the questor and her chosen henchrats, but that's the only honest judgment I can render. Going looking for something in a place where it just isn't, and you already knew it wasn't, isn't looking...it's looking for chances to be funny, snarky, and cool, plus scoring one off the mental midgets who spiritually abused you in the name of Jeebus.

But GOD this woman's funny! I laughed and laughed and laughed at some of her lines!

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed "Stiff", also by Mary Roach, so perhaps my expectations were too high for this book. Although I liked Roach's irreverent style in "Stiff", I found it forced and distracting in "Spook". The copious footnotes, that were only sometimes relevant, annoyed me. Perhaps "Stiff" was more interesting because it was full of facts that surprised me, things that made sense, but that I didn't know about. For example, I didn't know that if you donate your body to science it could end up in an experiment helping determine time of death for murder victims. This is valuable information for forensic scientists. Fascinating.

In "Spook", there were a few interesting studies, especially concerning near death experiences, but I didn't find any surprises in Roach's conclusions, unless you count her weak last few sentences, "The debunkers are probably right, but they're no fun to visit a graveyard with. What the hell. I believe in ghosts." The "why not" attitude wasn't very satisfying. The book wasn't fascinating and if I wasn't reading it with someone else, I probably wouldn't have finished it.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author approaches her subject (the afterlife) with an open mind, if not with a little bit of wishful thinking. She looks into the research (mostly pseudoscientific, or bordering on it) on reincarnation, the soul, ghosts, mediums, and near death experiences (NDEs). She also relates research using some technology, like telecommunicating, electromagnetic fields, and acoustics. Almost all of the research she investigated she found wanting as it should be, but a few she still felt that the jury was still out.

The book was fairly good, and she has a good sense of humor that clearly comes through. None of the research she looked into panned out; although, the NDEs experiment in the last chapter was still underway with no positive results so far. However, her desire for some proof of an afterlife I cannot share. In the final paragraph (p. 295) she shares her hope: “Perhaps I should believe in a hereafter . . . simply because it’s more appealing—more fun and more hopeful—than not believing.” I do not see why an afterlife would necessarily be “more fun.” And, why would it be “more hopeful”? Would it really be fun to live for an eternity? Would it not get boring? Plus, no one has any idea of what such an afterlife would be like. The Christian version is untenable as there is not any support for it outside the Bible, which does not really describe what it would be like, anyway. The Bible is just too inconsistent and contradictory in places to be valid. The same could be said for Islam’s version, which is actually worse because it sanctions violence, where death lands one in paradise. Would not they get tired of all those virgins? As for “more hopeful,” how so? I for one think that we live our lives as best we can and not worry about death, because death is it. When your dead you will have no awareness or memory of the past. So, what is there to lose?

I do not know who would like this book. I suppose it would be attractive to debunkers, or possibly just to get some laughs or chuckles. I see no reason why it would be attractive to those that believe, since it offers no evidence for an afterlife.

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a funny and fascinating book on the soul. Does it exist? Is it physical? Can it be seen or measured? Are NDEs (Near Death Experiences) real? Do animals have souls? Mary Roach fearlessly dives in head first. This book comes down on the side of 'no'. No proof of a soul, no proof of a next life, no proof of ghosts. Even though in the end, she says “I believe in ghosts”, that is just because she WANTS to believe that there is something more out there. The book will turn people into skeptics. I enjoyed it a lot. Mary Roach has a great sense of humor.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two realizations I had while reading this book:

1) I enjoy listening to Roach's books more than I like reading them with my eyes.

2) This isn't her strongest work. She did her normal amount of research but, in this case, there just isn't really anything new to share. There's no proof of an afterlife and, at least for me, there wasn't much I hadn't already encountered elsewhere.

Written in Roach's breezy-yet-serious style, which I love, it's thoughtful and thorough. This was just one of those things where I didn't get as much out of it as I usually do with her work.

2.5 stars

[Maria V. Snyder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped. The subject is very hard for science to pin down - and while she doesn't come right out and say there's no afterlife, she also doesn't find any proof. I wanted more stories and anecdotes, which doesn't match the whole "science" thing. I enjoyed Grunt much more. I've a couple of her other books on my shelf so I'm sure to read more. Stiff looks particularly interesting ;)

[Ashvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh, holy shit did Mary Roach drop the ball on this one. "Spook" reads like a terrible first draft. I didn't finish it.

I read "Stiff" and "Bonk," two of her other books. They were entertaining, informative, and light. "Spook" was just horrible. She didn't bother to come up with a real story for the book, so she resorted to the lazy device of describing her own experiences in chronological order (as if those experiences were the story). While uninspired, that would be OK if her experiences were interesting. They were not. She also inserted some pathetic attempts at humor here and there. These attempts reminded me of when I'm forced to hang out with someone I don't know well (like at a conference) and the other person tries to be funny by pointing out what he thinks are negative things in the our immediate environment... except they're not negative, they're just different, and he's not being funny anyway.

Here's what I think happened: the deadline for this book was coming up, after doing a little research, Roach realized that what she had wasn't all that great, she didn't feel like putting in any work, so she half-heartedly threw some crap together a said, "Good enough." Oh, and her editor was drunk.

As I read this book, I felt like I sometimes feel when I skim over some terrible sports column: "Some asshole got paid to write this piece of shit? And some other asshole OK'd it? What the fuck?"

Anyway, as I mentioned, I liked Roach's previous books. I appreciate books on science that are written for the general public. However, as for "Spook:" don't even bother.

[Margitte]

I have this book on my Kindle. Not a good idea. Spook is not a novel. It is a thoroughly-researched publication about the search for the soul by scientists and everyone else looking for it in different ways.

This is the kind of book that should be on a coffee table, or in the throne room of the house. It is for interest's sake. It can be entertaining, or it can be serious, depending on your approach to the subject. It can be many things to many people. It is just not a book that should be read in one sitting, like a novel.

Well-written. I will not finish it, nor rate it, for now. It simply does not talk to me nor does it hold my attention long enough. The information and experiments are interesting to a point. Perhaps a mood swing might do the trick.

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (how can I not adore an author who has me laughing heartily as I read about what happens to dead human bodies?!) (a 5 star book for me) and I’d like to read her book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void and maybe Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex too, but I wasn’t that enthusiastic about reading this book. But, it’s the October selection for my real world book club so I dived in, with maybe not an open mind but not a 100% tightly shut mind, just a 99.99% shut mind. This book, I’d likely never have picked up on my own, at least not until I’d read all other books by Roach.

This book is a delight because its author is funny. So funny! She’s also scientifically minded. Sense of humor and scientific mindedness are two things I value highly.

And, it’s a good thing that this book is laugh out loud hilarious because I also had to get through reading about absurd and gruesome experiments on animals and people that she describes. The contents turned out to be partly about a subject I’ve always enjoyed: the history of medicine.

And on page 72, there is even mention of the man I read about in the children’s picture book Fartiste by Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer and illustrated by Boris Kulikov.

This is a remarkably quick read. I laughed and smiled more during the first half than the second half of the book, but I’m not convinced it got any less funny; I’m more inclined to think the humor wore thin for me, and I’d had enough of the subject. But there is plenty of humor throughout and even the “Acknowledgements” section is a hoot.

The book is organized beautifully; one chapter flows perfectly into the next.

Oh, and for all my talk of the hilarity present within these pages the subject is taken seriously, and with an open, albeit scientific, survey.

I must say I was a wee bit surprised by her expressed opinions in the “Last Words” section in the back of the book.

What I love most about this book (and Stiff and I assume her other books too) is that she takes her readers on a journey that she is also experiencing for herself.

There is an impressive Bibliography, materials listed for each chapter of this book.

My book club chose this as our October selection because it’s the month of Halloween. I’m not sure how much we’ll talk about the book vs. our own beliefs vs. general talk, but that’s the case for virtually all our book club meetings, no matter which/what types of books we read; most meetings we talk more about non-book related things than the books we’ve read, and the vegan food we’re eating and enjoying is a common enough subject of our conversation.

3 ½ to 3 ¾ stars

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up Spook first because it's subject matter interested me and then I knew I had to buy it when I saw that the author was none other than Mary Roach who had written another interesting and intriguing book dealing with the physical body at death. Remembering how amusing and fascinating that read had been (I recommened it to several friends who have the same weird sense of humor and morbid curiosities I do) I had a feeling this book would not disappoint. And it didn't.

First off I'm going to give the same disclaimer Roach did: this is not a book written to debate various moral, religious, or philisophical beliefs. It's not meant to prove or disprove life after death, the existence of souls, or if heaven is out there. Rather it explores the various research that have been imployed to discover that. It's meant to shed light and simply learn. Okay, with that out of the way, I can safely begin!

If you had started reading Roach's other book, Stiff and just found it to icky to go through with it, have no fear, you'll be safer with this book. There are a few moments you're a little disgusted, but the amount of times you'll be laughing, shaking your head, or simply saying "wow" definitely out weigh any squick moments. It's Roach's sarcastic wit that really makes the book an enjoyable and fun read. Her footnotes (that really read more like sidenotes) are a real treat constantly scattered throughout. Her approach and way of writing non-fiction subject matter is dealt with in a really nice way that even those who cannot stand anything dealing with real life will find the book hard to put down. There's almost a constant narrative and a steady stream of thought going on, something I think is made possible because instead of just constantly regurgitating facts a lot of what she's writing about she went and experienced first hand. It's the personal twist on everything she writes about that makes it a lot more interesting and easy to get into.

There were the inevitable dry moments that were scattered throughout. Those mostly came about when Roach began giving the scientific explanations that were needed to explain the theories and research being done. I did feel kind of dumb reading some of this as it was way over my head some of the times, but Roach managed to remedy that by poking fun at her own ignorance. The fact that even the author was a little confused at times makes you feel a lot better for not getting it.

I don't feel the book really opened any new beliefs for me, or pointed out anything I hadn't thought of before. For me, the book more or less explored the actual studies that went into what different people think happen to us after we die. No new school of thought is introduced to us in this book. That still doesn't make this book old and nothing we haven't heard before. I actually learned quite a bit. Especially with how long people have actually been trying to find the soul (and the various places people have put it in the body), my knowledge of Spiritualism has been greatly increased, and the fact that there are funded studies still being done out there to research the soul and life after death is fascinating. If this sounds interesting to you, even in the slightest, you will really enjoy this book then. Even if it doesn't sound interesting, Roach's style and humor will probably pull you in anyway.

[Noah Soudrette · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I sat down with my newly purchased copy of Spook and started to read, I was rather surprised. The first thing I find myself reading about is reincarnation. This is not a subject I readily think of when I think of ghosts, nor is it a topic I care much about. However, as I read I was fairly engaged and found Mary Roach to have an opinion of the whole thing similar to my own. As I kept moving through the first few chapters I began to realize something rather disappointing. While this book is titled Spook and the very last word of the book is “ghosts”, this book really has very little to do with ghosts. Instead, as the subtitle indicates, this book is really more about scientific attempts to prove the existence of an afterlife. Personally, I have little interest in this subject. I’ll find if there’s an afterlife when/if I get there. This revelation aside, I still found myself enjoying this book quite a bit.

The book is divided into what is essentially twelve essays. Each one deals with a different subject: reincarnation, the search for the soul by anatomists, the “weight” of a soul, ectoplasm, scientifically monitored mediums, a trip to medium school, telecommunication with the dead, the effect of electromagnetic fields on the human mind, psychoacoustics, a court case involving a ghost, and near-death experiences. As I said earlier, I have little interest in the idea of reincarnation (though I wouldn’t mind it turning out to be true) and I’m well aware of the history of anatomists trying to find the seat of the soul in the human body. However, chapter three, which deals with the commonly known idea of a human being losing twenty-one grams of weight at the moment of death, has been a subject I’ve been wanting to hear more about for a long time. I was equally disappointed and excited to see that the jury is still out on this one. While it has been tested in animals, resulting in only negative reactions, it has never been verified using a human being since the time of the original experiment. The chapter also provides a good reason why the theory could be true, but the results using animals have all been negative. Other highlights of the book include Mary exposing herself to electromagnetic radiation, resulting in minor auditory and visual hallucinations, stories of mediums hiding fake ectoplasm in their vaginas, and Mary solving a very old mystery involving ghosts through the use of a handwriting expert (though I have learned lately not to rely too heavily of handwriting analysts after watching Zodiac).

While there’s a lot to like here, I did have one big problem with the book. I couldn’t help but feeling Mary could have searched out more reliable researchers than the ones she encounters. It’s not really her fault though. While she ends up consulting scientists at very prestigious institutions such as Cambridge and a few big fancy American colleges, I was a bit shocked to find these learned men so biased (particularly the guy who tests those who talk to the dead). Personally, I find people like the Ghosthunters from the Sci-fi channel much more open and practical. However, I too am biased having met them in person.

All in all though, this book is rousingly entertaining and Mary Roach’s ability as a writer is clear. Not only is she light and humorous, but she’s also very personal, and we walk away from this book feeling as though we know her quite well, and I look forward to reading her other books.

[Wigs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe a 3.5, but I'll round up because I laughed out loud several times and I'm hard pressed to do more than a smirk when I find something I'm reading funny.

If you've never read a Mary Roach book before, her work is like this: she researches a bunch of scientific studies about a particular subject, and then presents them to you with witty prose and tons of oddball stories along the way. It's quite enjoyable, but beware that there is a fuck-ton of name dropping constantly, to of course credit all the sources and people she found information from, and you have to be one who enjoys reading about sciencey type stuff at least on a cursory level.

This is her book on ghosts. She is a skeptic, hoping that through her research something can be proven to her. I am not a skeptic, I just don't believe anything. I don't sit and wonder, I personally feel confident in my decision that nothing is going to happen to me when I die, my brain will shut down and so will any control, memories, or anything, and that will be that. That's cool though, I don't care one way or the other (though my ex was just terrified by the notion that I thought this. Meh.) This book does nothing to try to convince you of any ghosts or afterlife either, because almost all experiments are either failures or serve the purpose of debunking anything that seems to be a ghost.

I think the issue with this book, and what makes it not as good as Stiff, or even Bonk, is that it is based on something that can't actually be proven one way or the other, intangible and untouchable. With the science presented in Stiff, we actually learn things that are exactly as they are. With these stories, it's like "well that was the experiment, and nothing happened." There are many stories like that in the book. It's interesting to see what lengths people will go to, but in the end, it's all the same, there's no proving it.

What I did like, is the silly stories of people acting like complete fools. There was plenty of that. And in fact, since I don't have much more to say (I enjoyed the book, you might enjoy it too if you like Mary Roach and science, but I recommend much, much more her book Stiff first), I'm going to leave you with my favorite passage from the book, which I typed up just now just so people can have a laugh:

Is it possible to dress up like a ghost and fool people into thinking they've seen the real deal? Happily, there is published research to answer this question, research carried out at no lesser institution than Cambridge University. For six nights in the summer of 1959, members of the Cambridge University Society for Research in Parapsychology took turns dressing up in a white muslin sheet and walking around in a well-traversed field behind the King's College campus. Occasionally they would raise their arms, as ghosts will do. Other members of the team hid in bushes to observe the reactions of passerby. Although some eighty people were judged to have been in a position to see the figure, not one reacted or even gave it a second glance. The researchers found this surprising, especially given that the small herd of cows that grazed the field did, unlike the pedestrians, show considerable interest, such that two or three at a time would follow along behind the 'ghost.' To my acute disappointment, "An Experiment in Apparitional Observation and Findings," published in the September 1959 Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, includes no photographs.
Several months later, the researchers revised their experiment, changing the venue and adding 'low moans' and, on one occasion, phosphorescent paint. One trial was set in the graveyard right off a main road and clearly in the sight line of drivers in both directions. Here observers hid in the bushes not only to record reactions, but to 'avert traffic accidents' and 'reassure anyone who became hysterical.' But again, not a single person of the hundred-plus who saw the figure thought it was a ghost, including two students from India. "Although we are superstitious in our country," the men told one of the researchers, "we could see his legs and feet and knew it was a man dressed up in some white garment."
In their final effort, the research team abandoned traditional ghost-appropriate settings and moved the experiment into a movie theater that was screening an X-rated film. The author of the paper, A.D.Cornell, explained that the X rating was chosen to ensure no children were traumatized by the ghost, as though that somehow explained the choice of a porn theater as a setting for a ghost experiment. This time the 'ghost' walked slowly across the screen during a trailer. The phosphorescence was not used this time, and presumably low moans were deemed redundant. No mention is made of the specific images showing on the screen behind the ghost, but clearly they were a good deal more interesting: The audience was polled after the film, and forty-six percent of them didn't notice the man in the sheet. Among those who did, not one thought he'd seen a ghost. (One man said he'd seen a polar bear.)

[Chiara F. B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un bel saggio. Sotto tanti punti divertente. La Roach riesce ad affrontare tanti temi, tanti episodi e la crescita dell’indagine verso quella che è l’esperienza con chi di noi non c’è più con informazioni, nomi, esperienze, casi piccoli e grandi, e la giusta dose di umorismo (che in alcuni casi è insita nelle stesse parole riportate dai protagonisti). È un saggio che deve, ovviamente, avere l’interesse già preesistente di chi sta leggendo. Ma credo sia comunque una lettura interessante per tutti, sia per chi ci crede che per chi è scettico.

[Megan Baxter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am feeling a little tired of Mary Roach's books. I think this is the fourth I've read, and I'm starting to get the same feel from many of them, and it is this: she finds interesting stories, but she doesn't do enough with them, just plops them down in front of the reader like her job is done with the anecdote, and without delving more deeply into the issues that really interest me.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook