Product Description

Does the light just go out and that's that - the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop?"Mary Roach trains her considerable humour and curiosity on the human soul, seeking answers from a varied and fascinating crew of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.Along the way she encounters electromagnetic hauntings, out-of-body experiences, ghosts and lawsuits: Mary Roach sifts and weighs the evidence in her hilarious, inimitable style.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91201 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Review
"* 'Surprising and highly enjoyable. Mary Roach is a wonderfully dry, funny, trustworthy tour guide.' - Jon Ronson * 'Very funny, and the dottier examples of human resistance to the idea of terminal mortality make fascinating reading.' - Salley Vickers, The Times * 'A perfect balance of objectivity and cynicism' - Herald"

The Scotsman
... whether you're interested science, the afterlife or neither, Six Feet Over will amuse and entertain.

Salley Vickers, The Times
Mary Roach's entertaining book gives the dead a new lease of life.

Customer Reviews

Investigating the outer fringes
Mary Roach spent a year investigating the outer fringes of psychic phenomena and has written up her findings in Six Feet Over - a book full of healthy scepticism but also honest investigation. She seems to be a generous and open-minded investigator who does not belittle the enthusiasts she meets and writes entertainingly of what she finds.

Starting with "reincarnated children" Mary Roach travels to India to meet children who are allegedly reincarnations of (mostly)deceased relatives and neighbours - how unlike the western past lives people who always seem to claim to be reincarnations of more glamorous subjects of the Mahatma Gandhi, King Nefertiti ilk. Because the surrounding culture is accepting of the childrens' claims, the children are not usually subject to even the most gentle questioning of their claims, and Roach finds that a little gentle interrogation of witnesses and the children themselves, soon makes the stories fall apart.

Roach then goes on to look at the history of psychic claims, beginning with the search for the "soul" - where does it reside, what happens when it "leaves the body", where does it go? These were hot questions for early scientists of the 18th and 19th century and Roach describes their attempts to find the soul and track its progress from conception to death. The experiments seem highly amusing to us, but Roach reminds us to see them in the context of the days when electricity and radio waves were just being discovered and seemed quite miraculous. She then discovers researchers in the present day who are still on the quest for the soul (in the Univeristy of Arizona for example).

Subsequent chapters look at ectoplasm (hilariously funny accounts of early "mediums" attempts to secrete cheesecloth in their bodily cavities and extract if during seances), ghost-hunting, near-death experiences. A very interesting chapter looks at those who try to capture messages from the beyond on tape-recorders and other devices. We met some of the same people a few years ago in Justine Picardie's "If the Spirit Leads You", and it is good to hear that they are still going strong (if somewhat nuttily).

I think I need hardly say that Mary Roach fails to turn up any evidence at all for a single psychic phenomena. These things seem to depend on belief, and disappear like the morning mist when anything approaching serious investigation takes place. The book is a good read. Its probably well-trodden ground, but Roach's non-judgemental and humorous approach is a welcome relief from the more cynical psychic investigators who delight in implying that their subjects are escapees from the mad-house.

Another gem from Mary Roach
Anyone who knows Mary Roach's first book, Stiff, a fascinating study of human corpses, will be aware that she is one of America's best kept secrets, a wonderful writer who is funny and informative in equal measure. Six Feet Over won't disappoint and is every bit as illuminating and even more amusing. In her quest to discover if there really is life after death she comes across all sorts of great weirdness as she travels the globe. It's definitely one of my books of the year.

Look out!
Nice book, but beware: it's the same as SPOOK, only with a different title!!! I bought both, and regret it.