Customer Reviews

Investigating the Unexplained

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This book is a little treasure. Harris, a BBC investigative reporter, turns his critical eye on a number of mysterious phenomena and asks - did this really happen?

My only complaint is that he didn't include a detailed footnote system for checking his research, but he does give plenty of information that one could use to double-check him if one had time.

When he passed he got a nice obituary from Joe Nickell - and I just regret that I never heard of this book back when it came out. The reissue from Prometheus books is a very nice quality paperback. There are plenty of illustrations, and many cases which I'd never heard of before here in the States.

If you love mysteries, you'll find this book a lot of fun as he presents the mysterious "intact" and then gives the explanations in a friendly conversational manner.

I read this book many years ago in conjunction with Daniel Cohen's Encyclopedia of the Strange (equally excellent) as a sort of point/counterpoint exercise. After becoming more and more seduced by the otherworldly allure of the various mysterious phenomena then being explored by authors such as Charles Berlitz, Daniel Cohen, et al., I remember feeling that Melvin Harris' book was the best counterbalance I could find at the time to scrutinize these unexplained events in a more rational light.