Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

I enjoyed this one, but I suppose I have to say, with some regret, that I didn't enjoy it quite as much as her breakthrough, "Stiff", which traced the possible paths that our bodies, not our souls might take after we depart this mortal coil. One of the reasons why is that Stiff's slant-rhyme twin, "Spook", isn't quite as good as its predecessor is that it lacks the delightful element of surprise that made "Stiff" so entertaining: Roach seemed to have started writing "Stiff" with the intention of publishing a fairly standard, if fun, book about what happens to people's bodies after they died and then plunged into the deep end of weird without any idea of where she might have been headed. About three hundred pages later, we ended up in show more plastic surgery practice rooms, disreputable Chinese crematoriums, and early-modern Scottish graveyards, all while reviewing the most unfathomably odd bits of history imaginable. That book wasn't just a revelation to many of its readers; it also seemed to be a revelation of sorts to Mary Roach herself.

But the author's a few books past that one now, and her style's a bit more burnished: she's still funny, but the jokes don't really shock you when they arrive. She seems to know the kind of book she's expected to write, which is, in a sense, okay. There is a lot of interesting stuff in "Spook," from a short history of attempts to weigh the soul to courtroom squabbles over ghosts who might have have changed their wills. Roach takes a trip to India to talk things over with a man who tries to track reincarnations from one village to another, and while she highlights the social utility of this belief, she mostly comes away with the impression that India is both incredibly strange and highly dangerous. It's a shame, then, that Roach, for all of her trouble, only seems to have found two scientists doing real research on what happens to the soul after death. The first, who teaches at the University of North Carolina, is a brilliant polymath attempting to weigh the soul — or at least consciousness — in the same way that other scientists weigh information. The other is a scientist who studies near-death experiences and believes that similarities among them suggest that the brain might go into a sort of "full reboot" mode in the long moments before the body expires. Neither scientist can say what comes after that, of course, which may annoy some of Roach's more scientific-minded readers. (Of course, it must be admitted that the afterlife isn't a particularly scientific subject, which is, of course, part of the fun of "Spook.") But I still found this one highly interesting and thoroughly enjoyable. And that, come to think of it, is exactly what I expect from a book written by Mary Roach. show less

When "science tackles the afterlife" in Mary Roach's 2005 book "Spook," you don't find much in the way of answers to age-old questions, but you do find a good time. Roach, as in other books with mostly one-word titles like "Stiff," "Gulp" and "Bonk," seems more interested in satisfying her curiosity and discovering science's lighter side than in hard science. Her college degree was in psychology. Still she imparts some information you are not likely to find, at least not all in one place, in any other science book.

Her most amazing bit of information may be simply that a few scientists really have made serious studies of such questions as: Do human bodies lose weight after death, possibly because of departing spirits? Can mediums really show more communicate with the dead? Do near-death experiences really give glimpses into heaven? Can cameras, recorders and other devices capture evidence of spirits that cannot be detected by the human senses?

The evidence in these studies proves inconclusive, yet often suggestive. Roach herself, if still skeptical about an afterlife at the end of her book, nevertheless seems hopeful. "I believe in the possibility of something more ...," she writes. "It's not much, but it's more than I believed a year ago."

Thus, "Spook" is a book both believers and skeptics can take some comfort in. It doesn't prove their position, but neither does it disprove it. Is there life after death? This book leaves most of us where we began, relying not on science but on what we believe, or what we want to believe. show less

I loved this book! This was my first exposure to Mary Roach's crackling wit and acerbic humor, but it will not be my last.

Roach, who has had articles published in magazines ranging in diversity from Vogue to Discover, has taken on the question of whether there is life after death with a scholar's passion for details and support. Her book is a wide-ranging examination of both past experiments in the field of parapsychology and current attempts to figure out if near death experiences could be anything but neurological phenomena. A self-confessed skeptic, her investigations were as wide-ranging as her impressive intellect.

Yet for all her skepticism and insistence on replicable proofs, she confesses to some moments of doubt. For example, show more when psychic Allison DuBois (whose life is the basis for the NBC hit series MEDIUM) suddenly comes out with a statement purporting to be from the author's "discarnate" mother, a statement that is both specific and relatively abstruse, Roach admits to experiencing a "dazzle moment" of utter belief.

Her knack for poking fun at sacred cows, as well as her scalpel-like ability to cut away the bloated rhetoric of both researchers and true believers, makes this investigative journey eminently readable. Add to that Roach's ability to poke wry fun at her own predilections and you have a book that is a delightful literary adventure.

Very highly recommended. show less

Mary Roach is the Dave Barry of popular science writing. Her text is funny, her chapter titles are funny, her footnotes are funny, even her page numbers are funny.* Spook explores the history of “scientific” studies of the afterlife. This is, of course, a subject that lends itself to cheap laughs, but all of Roach’s are earned.


I can do no better than just describe some of the issues covered: reincarnation; ovism vs. spermism; the soul’s weight (apparently about 20 grams), volume (about 0.3 quarts) and color (greenish-purple), leading one researcher to conclude that leprechauns are discarnate human souls; attempts to X-ray the soul; the Carrington Soul Box, which incorporated hermetic seals, anesthetics, “ionization rays”, show more and a live monkey; ectoplasm (including an actual sample in the Cambridge University Library, which, strangely, appears to be cotton cloth); various communications with the spirit world (including a claim that Heaven is full of sailboats); Ms. Roach’s experience in a medium school (“There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind”); attempt to get in touch with the dead using tape recorders (conducted, ominously, at the USFS Donner Party Picnic Ground); using EMF and infrasound to induce hallucinations; a note from a dead man settling a law case; and NDE experiments.


Extremely recommended

* “17”. See? show less

Phantastic phantasmagoric phun. Mary roach is sharp as a tack and witty to boot. Her humor style has been honed since "Stiff." Never has running around in circles and finding nothing been so entertaining. She transitions from chapter to chapter very well, framing the end of each with a proper introduction to the next. I enjoyed immensely.

A “dogmatic scientist”, I came to this book after a difficult loss. It's about several kinds of investigations relevant to whether we survive death in some way. What I found was a series of plunges down rabbit holes, such as claims of children being reincarnates, old attempts to locate a soul pattern in eggs or embryos, measuring weight loss or invisible emanations immediately after death, seances, and audio recordings of invisible ghosts.

The author makes a sincere effort to being open-minded about all these possibilities, but she also is a specialist in clever ironic quips when an investigation takes a nose dive. She has consulted a lot of primary written sources, but the most entertaining bits are when she shows up to actually show more talk to investigators, or to their descendants, or to people involved in an anomalous case. The best story was one in which a ghost revealed where an updated will was located, causing a big change in a fractured family.

I was hoping to learn something that might change my own mind, but halfway through it was clear that there was nothing new here. Roach ends with a sort of agnosticism, yet at the last minute puts emphasis on the theory of the brain as a radio receiver of different consciousness channels. To me, that's a tired old trope, and I have written about why it is at least paradoxical and probably absurd ("Against Outsourcing the Mind to a Soul") on my Substack. show less

I have fallen in love with Roach's writing style. She makes science and all the ins and outs very approachable, and has this humorous twist that helps to keep you engaged. I love how wholeheartedly she throws herself into all the different avenues of research from witnessing interviews with children in India who remember their past lives to attending a class for mediums Roach does it all. She also does a great job of presenting all the information, and does not make it difficult to understand what bias she might have that colors her interpretation of facts.