The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal [Paperback]

Lynne Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2005

Can a human being really spontaneously burst into flames? Just how deadly is the Bermuda Triangle? And what's the real story behind all those alien abductions? The answers to these and many other questions lie within the covers of The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal. Guaranteed to liven up any dinner party, this delightful, highly readable book offers color photographs and scientific case-by-case explanations for twenty-seven phenomena that appear to defy known science, including ghosts and poltergeists, the predictions of Nostradamus, and yogic levitation, among many others. Speaking directly to the reader, and always with respect for those who believe, Kelly gives us a bite-size, nonacademic approach to debunking hugely popular superstitions and mysteries. Did you know that you, too, can bend spoons and read minds? This book will show you how.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'Lynne Kelly's Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal is a lovely book. It covers a wide range of paranormal "mythconceptions" in an entertaining and comprehensive way. The fascinating topics include the Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, Astrology, Nostradamus and Spoon Bending. The Universe around us is magnificent enough to fill us with awe and wonder - and this book shows us that we don't have to rely on second-rate re-hashed myths.' Karl Kruszelnicki, Julius Sumner Miller Fellow, University of Sydney 'We find ourselves in a society which erroneously believes it has undergone an Enlightenment, but has only experienced a certain degree of Brightening. Lynne Kelly's informative book should never have been needed, but obviously is. Telling people what they already know - that there is no Tooth Fairy, magic is a subject for children's story books and immortality, ESP and astral projection belong in fantasy stories - is made a more acceptable and communicable message via this book. Kudos and applause to the author. Let's have more...' James Randi, President, James Randi Educational Foundation, www.randi.org" --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Lynne Kelly has been teaching science, mathematics and computing for over 30 years. She holds degrees in engineering, education and computing and is well qualified to present clear, scientific explanations to claims of the paranormal which appear to defy the known laws of science. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st Thunder's Mouth Press Ed edition (March 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560257113
• ISBN-13: 978-1560257110
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #155,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Writing dominates my life. I started with educational books - 10 of them - logical because I was a teacher. I specialized in gifted education, and have now produced most of my best material as a suite of 50 online units. They are available from my website, through my little company, EUMY Education (EUMY = Enrichment Units for the Middle Years).

I wrote a novel, "Avenging Janie", published in 2004. I want to write more fiction, but non-fiction dominates my life at the moment. I have had three popular science books published in Australia, the US and UK: "The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal", "Crocodile: evolution's greatest survivor", and the latest: "Spiders: learning to love them". I overcame my arachnophobia a bit too well, and now I am obsessed by spiders. "Skeptic's Guide" has now been translated into Russian.

I have a full-time doctoral scholarship in the English Program at LaTrobe University, Melbourne, as a science writer. I have been investigating the way non-literate knowledge systems encode knowledge, especially the pragmatic stuff - animals, plants, all sorts of medical stuff including a pharmacopoeia, laws, navigation, genealogy, history, land and resource rights plus all sorts of ethical metaphors. I am constantly astounded by the range and cleverness of the mnemonic devices contemporary oral cultures use to aid remembering so much information. All those I have researched use indexed structured information systems to ensure knowledge is not lost. I am now applying the understanding of the way oral mnemonic work in the archaeological context, and getting some amazing results. Focus contexts are the British Neolithic, the mound-building cultures of the American Southeast and the Ancestral Pueblo of the American Southwest. A lot of enigmatic sites and objects really fit the pattern well - from monumental earthworks, stone and timber circles and incredible ancient buildings, to 'non-utilitarian' handheld objects.

This topic is leading me in so many directions that I expect quite a few books will emerge from it. But first - lots more peer review and gaining support for my theories. And a doctorate!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensible Explanations for the Very, Very Strange, March 15, 2005

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal (Paperback)

It's a strange world out there, full of mysteries that no one has gotten a grip on. It is even stranger that some have taken grips on mysteries that are artificial, imaginary, or delusional. You can read the astrology column in today's paper, for instance; millions do, and of those millions, many feel it is instructive and that the stars and planets affect our lives. There are those who insist that they can bend spoons not as a magic trick but by using mental powers that physicists cannot yet measure. Psychic detectives claim they have used extrasensory powers to catch criminals. Into the Bermuda Triangle vanish untold numbers of ships and airplanes. The letters in your name, or the numbers in your birth date, reveal your personality and fate. Aliens are picking us up to do gastrointestinal tests and impregnations. People seem sincere in advancing such beliefs. They can't all be lying, can they? What's the rational way to examine such ideas? Lynne Kelly knows. In _The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal_ (Thunder's Mouth Press), she devotes one chapter to all of them, and many more. The aim of her book is that it "gives a rational explanation for some of the most widely known claims of the paranormal." Kelly takes tangible claims and examines any applicable tangible evidence. She knows that there are book-length refutations of most of the paranormal phenomena that people believe in, but the beauty of her book is that each is pithily examined, and although not all evidence pro and con is given, there is advice on how to look at the evidence that will make each case clear.

Skeptics have some sensible rules to go by, like extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, or for the acceptance of the simplest explanation that covers all the evidence. Kelly is a teacher of physics and mathematics who for thirty years has employed such tools on paranormal claims. "Not cynicism, but a healthy skepticism," is her motto. "Not disbelief, but a reluctance to believe without substance." In each chapter, Kelly takes one phenomenon and examines evidence pro and con. She repeatedly confronts the human eagerness to believe in fun and fanciful explanations; it is more delightful, for instance, to conceive of aliens mystically bending crops rather than a couple of guys doing it with ropes and planks and stomping. Desire for fanciful explanations does not, however, trump the need for good evidence. She has acted as a psychic, using cold readings and impressing the credulous with her psychic powers. She insightfully reports how easy it would be in cold readings to fool herself into thinking she was getting her hits from some psychic source, just as she explains that when she has used a dowsing rod, she has been astounded by how real is the feeling that the rod is actually being pulled down. She'd like for such an indicator to really mean something, just as she'd love to be around when aliens do drop in for a visit, or she would enjoy having veridical prognostications via dreams. It's sometimes tough to be a skeptic.

Other topics here include the Shroud of Turin, spontaneous human combustion, ESP, levitation, Bigfoot, reincarnation, and many more. Kelly has repeatedly confronted those who are eager to believe in paranormal explanations for such things, and she admits, "Some believers accuse skeptics of having nothing left but a dull, cold, scientific world." She shows, however, that rigorously trying to examine the way the world works by our best investigative method, that of science, is anything but dull, and that anyway, our world presents plenty of enchanting realms like music, sex, love, and imagination that call upon no explanations, scientific or paranormal, to enjoy in full. She has written an instructive and useful guide about some very strange matters that can eventually be explained without recourse to anything beyond physics and human nature.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well done!, August 11, 2005

By 

A reader (Geneva, Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book that sets the record straight. I remember when I was a kid, it was the latest thing to read about the Bermuda Triangle, or spoon-bending and so on. What a thrill it was, although now we grew up and we see the world through different spectacles. Lynne Kelly uses great insight to pick the most intriguing cases of paranormal claims. Her respect, humor and scientific logic do miracles (although I am sure she would question this last word). Some of these claims she deals with are just the product of our wrong attribution but most of them have remained a question mark in our minds. For example back in the seventies I was reading about numerology and trying to make it work for me, or then the horrible spontaneous human combustion - never expected to see an explanation for this one. Astrology, which always intrigued me, is approached and explained in a very logical and straight-forward way and Nessy is treated with charm. Whoever is interested in setting the record straight should definitely read this book. Highly recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!, June 27, 2008

By 

Rebecca Heitbaum (Victoria, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal (Paperback)

I found this book to be an excellent, easy-to-read and understand explanation of many paranormal events that are constantly having the scientific or rational explanations ignored. I whole-heartedly congratulate the author and highly recommend this book to all - skeptics and non-skeptics alike. It isn't at all the "usual" skeptic book!