Customer Reviews

Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings

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Joe Nickell isn't just a member of CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal). He's also a former detective and stage magician, and in paranormal circles he's known as a diehard skeptic who prefers to base his research on first-hand investigations. This latter quality becomes very evident in Entities, where he personally carries out a large number of investigations. On more than one occasion during the reading you'll find a section where it's mentioned how this or that case for a long time has remained forgotten. Until Nickell finds out about it, that is. And after investigating it he always comes to the same conclusion: there is no such thing as the paranormal; everything can be explained using traditional scientific methods and rationality, it's just misinterpretations, hoaxes, and so on.

The book deals with, just as the title says, all kinds of possible and impossible "beings", from poltergeists and ghosts to angels, demons, spirit entities, lake monsters, extraterrestrials, and much more. On page after page, Nickell demonstrates how even the most outrageous reports can be explained without using anything paranormal whatsoever, and he uses tons of different sources to back up his claims. For example, chapter two, which deals with ghosts and haunted houses, is 33 pages long with a total of 100 footnotes. Not only that, each chapter ends with a list of recommended reading for anyone interested in pursuing his or her own research.

But I had a real problem with this book, the meticulous research aside. It completely lacks unexplained cases. Every time Nickell, for instance, cannot find a definite explanation to an alleged haunted house or encounter with an extraterrestrial he simply concludes that it was all imagination or a hoax. Misunderstandings among the witnesses or staged supernatural events are nothing new for the paranormal researcher, but I have to say that it really does feel greatly insulting towards the reader - not to forget towards the scientific principle - to quite bluntly assume that if you cannot find an explanation through the use of mainstream science, then obviously the witness must have misunderstood the entire thing, had a hallucination, joked, or in some other way fabricated whatever it was that took place.

This attitude sounds more like fundamental scientism than healthy scepticism to me, and even though this is the only real drawback to the book the high level of annoyance it results in is such a nuisance that it overshadows all the great things about Nickell's research.

What else can I say, this book's great.

Being the person of no faith that I am, I was drawn to the premise of Entities: what evidence, if any, is there that proves beings such as ghosts, fairies, aliens, Loch Ness monster, and bigfoot exist?

Well, besides the occasional anecdote, not much. Read it and find out why.

Joe Nickell, in this work, tackles a formidable task. He has looked at a variety of "entities," beings that are outside of normal human experience. Angels, demons, sasquatch, faeries, and extraterrestrials are just some of the beings that he covers, reviewing the folklore of these beings and the actual cause of belief in them.

The only drawback to the book is that he seems to try to cover to much in too limited of a space. Much detail that might be interesting is lost, due to the number of beings covered. Overall, this is a good general overview of the belief systems that revolve around these nonexistent entities.

A very well written book with great sources. I'm the first to say that there are plenty of hoaxers out there, and I'd love to see them all outed. If you can explain cases with perfect scientific certainty I think you've done a great job, but the cases you don't read about are the ones that can't be explained, the ones that have some really great witnesses.
The major flaw in most skeptic ideas are that they can NEVER say that any paranormal phenomena can exist. The best investigators are ones that can keep an open mind for the possibility of anything being possible. Starting out with this flaw limits you from the beginning.
When you have circumstances where there are many witnesses, the majority being top class witnesses and your conclusion is that they just don't have your brain power is an insult to everyone. When you say that something couldn't have happened because that phenomena doesn't exist, or at least you haven't seen any scientific evidence that it does exist, is short sighted thinking at it's best.
Did ball lightning exist before it was discovered? Yes. Did Gorillas exist before they were discovered, but only talked about in local legends? Yes, of course they did. What would Mr. Nickells have told people in one of these circumstances if they came to him saying they observed one of these things before they were officially discovered? That they were imagining them, or were misidentifying them?
If I were investigating something I wouldn't believe someone from the get go, I would always be aware of the hoax possibility, why can't most skeptics keep in mind that a phenomena might be real? What if it turns out to be real and you're the one that can prove it?