Will Storr vs The Supernatural - Will Storr

I would never have read this book if left to my own devices, but it was sent to me by my sister and she can be very insistent. I don’t want to have a battle of wills with someone who can run 26 miles!

As I checked out the book I noticed that it was made out of recycled articles written for such respected scientific journals as “Loaded” and “The Face”. The day I turn to Loaded to unravel the mysteries of the universe for me will be the same day I get my tits out and claim it’s feminism. Despite this, the book is actually quite good fun. For the most part, Will Storr uses the Louis Theroux method of simply following people about and letting them make fools of themselves, rather than subjecting them to rigorous cross-questioning. There are some amusing descriptions of how Will manages to scare himself on some of the outings, and I find the juxtaposition of the paranormal and the everyday in some of the quotes very funny. For example there are two self-appointed anti-Satanist vigilantes who claim that Clapham Common is popular with sinister group The Friends of Hecate partly because it is the confluence of six leylines, and partly because it has good parking facilities. I also liked the way several people in the book say they are, “Going to do a Ouija board.” the same way that I might say that I am “going to do a poo”.

Despite being an Atheist with no belief in the hereafter, I think it would be kind of nice if ghosts did exist, because it would make the world more interesting. But there are some bits when the quality of the “evidence” given by paranormal investigators in the book just makes me want to put my head in my hands. These include Electronic Voice Phenomenon, photos of “orbs” and man who claims to have met a werewolf. It seems that for every normal, sane person who has seen something they can’t properly account for, Will meets 4 or 5 shysters, attention-seekers and nut-jobs, including the cast and crew of Living TV’s Most Haunted!. And then there are the very, very many mediums all of whom have a American Indian spirit guide – I’m not sure there are enough dead Indians to go round!

I think that one of the main reasons that I remain very skeptical about ghosts is that I have seen one and I don’t think what I saw was the spirit of a dead person: One summer in the late 90s, I went on my first and only package holiday. My friend and I stayed in a Spanish resort which closely resembled Blackpool for a week. One night as I was drifting off to sleep on the settee (we had a double bed and a settee, for some reason), I saw a transparent white lady in a Victorian dress sitting on the stool next to me. My eyes were open and I could see the cupboards on the other side of the room through her. Not only that, but she held one of my hands and I could actually feel the pressure of her fingers. The experience was absolutely terrifying, especially since I couldn’t move at all. Unable to do anything else, I thought hard at the woman to go away and she slowly faded out. When I eventually calmed down a bit, I started to think a bit more sensibly about the experience. I was staying on the 7^th floor of an apartment block built in the 70s or 80s. How could anyone have been strolling about 7 floors in the air over 100 years ago? Sadly, my visitor must have come from my own demented brain. My experience has shown that it is possible to be in a mental state in which you are awake but dreaming. So when people claim, as in this book, to have witnessed supernatural events, I don’t assume that they are liars or mad, but I don’t necessarily think that what they saw was real either.

Not only have I visited places that could not possibly be haunted and seen a ghost, but I have looked for them at an allegedly haunted caving hut and seen nothing. I have noted that people who have seen the Ystradfellte ghost (which takes the form of an old woman who tells you off for making a mess in her cottage) tend to have known that the hut is supposed to be haunted, and also been in the pub. If you chose to investigate these sightings, be warned: All caving huts are very basic and this is the worst one I’ve ever stayed in. The ghost is probably its best feature and may not even show.

Borges Hurts My Brain...

Have you ever picked up a book, started reading and thought, “Oh, dear. I’m not sure I’m clever enough for this.”? It happened to me last night when I picked up a book of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories. In the space of a few short pages I experienced great confusion and had to resort to the dictionary. I need a rest before I try to read the next one!

By the way, I have a theory that you can tell how seriously someone takes their literature by how they pronounce “Borges”. Pronouncing the “e” like “ay” is a bad start, and the longer they roll the r for, the less fun a person is likely to be. If you have the misfortune to find yourself speaking to someone who talks about how much they love “Borrrrrrgayz” the best thing to do is to claim to be rewriting “Mill On The Floss” with a speedboat chase at the end. This will stop them from speaking to you again.

Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett

Well, I needed some light relief after the last two books. What is there to say about this book though? It is the 136th Discworld book and people who liked the other ones will like this one; people who didn't, won't. Still, I can't always be pushing back the boundaries of weird fiction. I need some easy, cosy reading sometimes.

In Monstrous Regiment war and gender politics are up for discussion as a whole platoon of girls cut their hair and stick socks down their trousers in order to enlist in the army of Borogravia, an ultra-nationalistic war-crazy state which I suspect might be modelled on Serbia. In a typically Balkan way, Borogravia actually has nothing to be proud of except its fierce national pride. After centuries of fighting anyone they share a boarder with, all of the surrounding countries have united against Borogravia, which would sort of serve it right, except that thousands of ordinary everyday folk are about to get killed by invading armies or starve in the aftermath. Don't worry too much though, because Mr Pratchett hasn't written a sad ending yet, and he's not about to start now.