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Ghost Hunter Interview

By Gregon

I’ve posted a new interview to the Grail today which I’m sure many of you will find fascinating. I had the good fortune to have a chat with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Deborah Blum, whose book Ghost Hunters (Amazon US and UK) provides a wonderful glimpse into a period 120 years ago when some of the most esteemed scientists in the world studied the possibility of an afterlife. I’ve titled the interview “Science and the Afterlife“, as a good deal of our conversation also revolved around the way modern science has reacted to the topic of afterlife research. Deborah’s answers are intelligent and well worth reading, so get a brew and sit down for a good read. I should mention too – as I have before – that at the time of posting Amazon have Ghost Hunters for an unbelievable $5 in hardcover – you won’t get better value for your dollar than that this year. Thanks to Deborah for sharing her time with us, and also Michael Tymn for helping me set this up.

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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11 Comments

  1. Six Feet Over
    Listening to the radio in my car the other day, I happened across an interview with a woman talking about her book on the afterlife. I thought – this must be Deborah Blum. But it wasn’t, it was Mary Roach discussing her book “Six Feet Over”. She sounded very reasonable and concluded the interview with an answer to the obvious question: after her research, is she now a believer? Her answer was guarded but she said that she had certainly moved in that direction. Then she added that this was not as a result of her research but more because she found it impossible to dismiss the mass of anecdotal evidence that she had been presented with. Few of those who provided the anecdotes could be described as kooks or fantasists – they were sincere and level-headed people.

    After hearing these snippets from the interview, I checked out Amazon.co.uk and came across a review which just didn’t seem to tally with what I’d heard. For example:

    Quote: “I think I need hardly say that Mary Roach fails to turn up any evidence at all for a single psychic phenomena. These things seem to depend on belief, and disappear like the morning mist when anything approaching serious investigation takes place.”

    I have not read the book so I can’t comment, but it does seem to me that the reviewer is right in one sense – he started out with a belief and he found something in that book to confirm it. The author herself seems to have suspended her own prejudice and moved in the opposite direction.

    Regards,

    Dave.

    http://www.davidsmuse.co.uk

  2. Great book
    I can vouch for Greg’s review of Ghosthunters, it’s a terrific book. Well, the first chapter is, and the few pages I’ve read at random; I haven’t actually read it from cover to cover yet. It’s been sitting in my to-read pile for over a month now and sadly, I just have too many books demanding my attention.

    What I can say however is don’t read this book alone, late at night, during a thunderstorm, with a view from your window of a graveyard across the road.

    I’m not scared of ghosts, I just have a lot of books to read. Really.

    1. Ghosts
      Hi Rick,
      You shouldn’t be so nasty to ghosts. Nobody ever understands them. I want to speak out for the ghosts. Just imagine what it’s like for them, having to put up with us all the time.

      …

      The balanced adult retains an inner child

      Anthony North

      1. well..
        from what I have learned of ghosts… is .. some of them need a parapsychologist… but there are a decidedly large number who need a para psychiatrist!

        In serious need of therapy and perhaps some sort of spiritual medicine? lol

        hugs

        marissa

        1. Mmmm….
          Ectoplasmic Prozac.

          Now that would be a hit concept 🙂

          —–
          It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
          It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

          Red Pill Junkie

      2. Friendly ghosts
        I’m actually very nice to ghosts. I leave them a saucer of milk by the back door every night.

        I’m also writing a story about a boy whose family moves into a haunted house. He puts the ghost up for sale on Ebay, is offered a fortune, and… well, if I tell you what happens that’ll spoil the story. You’ll have to wait until it’s published. 😉

        Cheers,

        Rick

          1. The problem
            That’s the problem, Marissa. Too many talentless celebrities publishing books written by ghost writers.

            …

            The balanced adult retains an inner child

            Anthony North

          2. publishing books versus selling books
            Anthonynorth has mentioned lulu.com before, and there is even a link at the top of TDG “Publish Yourself”.

            So the publishing part itself is not that hard, and costs you next to nothing.

            However, as anthonynorth correctly points out (I think that what he means), nobody will know that you published, in the snowstorm of pointless things being promoted by the big book sellers.

            So the problem is not technically publishing, it is getting some half way decent promotion.

            —-
            You can observe a lot, just by watching. (Yogi Berra)

  3. Ghost Hunters and other books
    I promptly ordered GH when Greg first mentioned it. Professor Blum is certainly in the right business: she can really write! Even though there was a certain scholarly cadence befitting an historical book like this, it was certainly fascinating to learn of the grand ol’ masters of their day doing their science.

    A couple of observations: 1) the best and brightest of the day were truly open to what reality was really about. Many early Nobel prize winners were in this group when that was truly an accomplishment. The back benchers were the same as today — quick to boo and sneer at what they were afraid to see. 2) Remote viewing was alive and well as a new science a century befoe we gave it that name. It was even a popular parlor game, but with few of the proper disciplines.

    On a related book note, I would recommend Bernie Haisch’s The God Theory. It is a quick read and does a nice job of arguing that the Universe(s) probably had a creator. He does not argue specifically for Intelligent Design or other current variations of that theme, but goes for more of the “too many coincidences” school of how we could even exist as stable molecules, etc. I had little argument with his main themes, but I actually though he was way too much of a traditionalist in his core expertise of astrophysics. There were all of the official, Scientific American approved, versions of our Universe. How boring! Perhaps he only wanted to be burned at the stake for one heresy instead of two.

    Xavier Onassis

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