Customer Reviews

The Mystery Chronicles: More Real-Life X-Files

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For anybody who likes reading Joe's "Investigative Files" column in Skeptical Inquirer magazine (the I only reason I read it), this book is a much better investment than a subscription. I can't wait for the next volume.

Contents of this book:

1) Mystery of the Nazca Lines
2) The Fiery Specter
3) The Exorcist: The Case Behind the Movie
4) The "Goatsucker" Attack
5) Undercover Among the Spirits: Investigating Camp Chesterfield
6) Alien Hybrid?
7) Image of Guadalupe: Myth-perception
8) Human Blowtorch
9) Remotely Viewed? The Charlie Jordan Case
10) Amityville: the Horror of it All
11) Sideshow! Investigating Carnival Oddities and Illusions
12) "Mothman" Solved! Investigating on Site
13) Relics of the Headless Saint
14) Circular Reasoning: Crop Circles and Their "Orbs" of Light
15) Zanzibar Demon
16) Winchester Mystery House
17) Voodoo in New Orleans
18) Secrets of the Voodoo Tomb
19) A Case of Spontaneous Human Combustion Demystified
20) Tracking the Swamp Monsters
21) John Edward: Talking to the Dead?
22) Scandals and Follies of the "Holy Shroud"
23) "Pyramid Power" in Russia
24) Diagnosing the "Medical Intuitives"
25) Alien Abductions as Sleep-Related Phenomena
26) "Visitations": After-Death Contacts
27) The Sacred Cloth of Oviedo
28) A Typical Aries?
29) The Case of the Psychic Shamus: Do Psychics Really Help Solve Crimes?
30) The Pagan Stone
31) Benny Hinn: Healer or Hypnotist?
32) Australia's Convict Ghosts
33) Psychic Pets and Pet Psychics
34) Cryptids "Down Under"
35) Joseph Smith: A Matter of Visions
36) In Search of Fisher's Ghost
37) Ghostly Portents in Moscow
38) Mystique of the Octagon Houses
39) Weeping Icons
40) Spiritualist's Grave
41) Incredible Stories: Charles Fort and His Followers

Other books by Joe that I recommend are Entities (which I also reviewed), Real-Life X-Files, Secrets of the Supernatural, and Mysterious Realms.

The Mystery Chronicles is a collection of 41 reports on a wide range of different mysteries and paranormal occurances, many of them quite well-known, thanks to other books with titles like "Great Mysteries" or "The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries" -- you know what I mean. (In fact, if I didn't know the author, I would have dismissed this book as yet another one of those books because of its sensational-looking cover.)

What sets this book apart from the rest is that the author Joe Nickell is well-qualified to investigate these mysteries with his skills in private investigation and professional magic. Best of all, he has personally gone down to many of the mystery sites to experience first-hand the mysteries for himself, rather than relying solely on second-hand information. Many of those experiences have been detailed in the book.

Each report forms a chapter, and most of them are quite short (around 5 pages), with only a few exceeding 10 pages. They are not linked nor arranged in any particular order (as far as I can tell). Each report ends with a list of references -- I doubt it's necessary for most readers, but it lends credibility to the author.

Although the inclusion of the references does make the book appear academic (in contrast to the cover design), the writing style is hardly so. On top being easy to read, the book is well-illustrated with photographs/illustrations. Along with the mostly-short chapters, this book is just perfect for the busy reader.

For those who don't know the author, Joe Nickell is a skeptic, and the conclusions of his reports will not helpful (nor welcome) for those who prefer to believe in those mysteries. For those who are open-minded, this book will prove to be a great eye-opener. For the hard-core skeptic, there's nothing new here, but still a good read.

Self-taught paranormal investigator Joe Nickell's new book The Mystery Chronicles is sub-titled "More Real Life X-Files" with good reason: it includes over three dozen mysteries in supernatural X-file style, with powerful documentation of solutions and focus on some of Nickell's most significant cases, from crop circles to New Orleans voodoo. There are scientific explanations for seemingly paranormal happenings: Nickell's inquires expose these underlying truths, while his background as a scientific researcher exposing paranormal events lends credence and authority to a fine investigative study.

Arch-skeptic Joe Nickell has returned with yet another collection of stories and eye-witness accounts about various alleged supernatural and paranormal phenomena. Alleged, because as far as Mr. Nickell is concerned, they're all just hoaxes, misunderstandings, or simply misinterpretations of natural phenomena. And it's a large collection, to say the least. Crop circles, Chupacabras, various mediums and psychics, alien abductions, the Guadalupe painting, Amityville, Voodoo, the Shroud of Turin, crying statues; nothing eludes Nickell and his relentless investigations, and he's just as exact as always. And as always he includes tons of footnotes.

However, as I just mentioned, the collection is quite large, with no less than a little more than forty chapters. Still, some of these chapters are only a few pages in length, which is much too short to prove his skeptical point. For instance, the Chupacabras are dealt with on three short pages. Crop circles too are given equally little space, and even though his reasoning and argumentation is both convincing and well-researched, the whole thing nonetheless comes out a little hasty. And since this occurs again and again throughout the book it's easy to get the feeling that he didn't put too much thought and passion into it and that many chapters were included only because the pages needed to be filled with something.

Not only that, some of the chapters really don't make much sense, especially the stories about contemporary pagan New Age groups in Russia that worship stones out in the countryside in ways similar to old pagan traditions dating back to the pre-Christian days. And from time to time I couldn't help but to feel disappointed when a chapter ends much too soon, only to leave me with a feeling of having read something uninteresting and not at all supernatural.

More than once does the same explanation appear multiple times in the text. Nickell is apparently fond of discussing sleep-related hallucinations, and by the time you've read the same explanation three times including definitions or once again is told about the history of American spiritualism, then it's easy to doubt if the book has been proof-read at all or if it's just a quick mishmash published in order to cash in on the allure of the supernatural.

No matter what, Joe Nickell remains Joe Nickell, and thus the book delivers those things that James Randi promises in its foreword. Skeptics will appreciate it, believers will not, and me, I sit here thinking I've real all these stories in Nickell's earlier books.

One again, Joe Nickell demonstrates his unflappable penchant for "debunking through ignorance." Case in point: his chapter on Our Lady of Guadalupe, an image of supposed miraculous origin hailing from 1531 Mexico. Although scientists have written for eons about how the painting shows no understructure, no outline, no paintlike materials, no fading of either artwork or underlying fabric, etc., Nickell casually dismisses the whole affair as "a sixteenth-century painting done with sixteenth-century techniques." He goes on to point to the supposed testimony of a priest and an Indian. What priest? What Indian? The Church, Nickell adds, reached startling conclusions in a report. Which report? Does it have a name? Where does it reside? How did he obtain permission to view it? D. Scott Rogo's analysis, by way of comparison, went so far as to give the precise names--middle names and all--of the bishop and allied officials, but Nickell seems most comfortable merely identifying "a priest." Despite the fact that the Church always conducts detailed--and I do mean _detailed_--investigations before casually slapping the term "miracle" on some piece of happenstance, Nickell was quite comfortable bandying about 'some document' and 'someone'. What poppycock and balderdash! Sir, can't you even try to provide a glimmer of solid footing for your ridiculous claims that masquerade as science? By failing to do so--when the opposition presents a deftly woven narrative chock-full of personal and documentary attribution--you only add strength to his case and detract it from yours. When are you going to learn to write a balanced analysis? Perhaps that's a silly question: I imagine you have to be _open_ to a balanced analysis in the first place before you can presume to pen one!

Joe Nickell is a very interesting character and has, without doubt, a lot of experience in investigation and trickery. He is the perfect sceptic. He also has assumedly a lot a friends in science, who are able to disprove several of his mentioned "alleged supernatural occurrences". So some of the chapters are very interesting and and the solutions he provides are looking plausible (i.e. Nazca Lines). It is fun reading these chapters.

In other cases his attempts to explain the reader, that something is indeed not mysterious or supernatural, is only a listing of assumptions and possible explanations without any scientific evidence (i.e. Wynchester House). I agree to him, that most of the occurences are explainable without the need of some mysterious background. What, in my opinion is a pity, is, that he complains, that most of the cited people have a strong fantasy and are not going to look for scientific explanations, but he is doing the same from his perspective.

In the the whole book I did not find the consideration, that some things are not supernatural, but in our days still mysterious, because our scientifc knowledge lacks of some things not discovered so far or methods not developed, yet. He is only searching for a prove for his doubts and if he cannot find one, claiming that it is disproved with providing a lot of assumptions (fantasy) without any scientifc evidence (i.e. acupucture stated as an example of intuitive healing).

As a good investigator, he should be more open minded to all possibilites and not only focused on trying to disprove everything.