This book has a lot of QR codes in it, I haven't read a book before where I had to use my phone to get "extra" material. I'm not sure if I like it, as it brought me out of the book a lot and I had to "wait" to continue. Overall the book is much more about psychology than I expected it to be. It's okay enough, with some bad jokes in between (that are so bad that you have to laugh). ( )

In 1853 Michael Faraday was looking into "table-turning", a fashionable paranormal activity at the time. Trying to disprove it, of course, to show what is really going on, scientifically.

He concluded his investigation into the science of table-turning by noting that he was somewhat ashamed of his work, wishing that ‘in the present age . . . it ought not to have been required’.
As in "we are so advanced and we understand the world so well, how is it still possible for people to believe in paranormal?".

165 year later, people don't seem to be any smarter.

Richard Wiseman concludes his book with "Our minds have helped rid the world of terrible diseases, put a man on the moon, and begun to figure out the origins of the universe. Why then, are they capable of being fooled into thinking that the soul can leave the body, that ghosts exist, and that our dreams really do predict the future?"

It's an interesting book. I've learned a few things about how the mind works.
It was also a bit boring here and there, as Mr. Wiseman insisted on giving all the details of each case studied, even those cases that were less of a learning experience.

And, of course I listen-read the book using Evie Reader, my eVoice reader app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lenntt.evoicereader ( )

An exploration of supposedly supernatural phenomena from mind-reading to prophetic dreams to ghosts, by someone who is way more fascinated by the psychology of why we seemingly experience these phenomena than in postulating otherworldly explanations for them. Most of what's in here wasn't particularly new to me, but some of the examples and specific details were, and overall I found it an interesting, entertaining read, anyway. Wiseman's writing is breezy, friendly, and laced with humor. It's also a pleasantly interactive experience, as he includes some little tests and exercises and such for the reader and offers light-hearted but genuine advice for things like how to make a table move at a seance or how to induce an out of body experience. (The book is, sadly, slightly less interactive now than it was ten years ago when it was published, though, as it includes a bunch of links and QR codes intended to take you to videos containing supplemental material like interviews and demonstrations of psychic readings, which no longer work. Well, I didn't try the QR codes, but the links provided with them just take you to the front page of Wiseman's Wordpress site now, not to the relevant material. One of the hazards of tying an ephemeral medium to a more permanent one. Fortunately, none of them seem remotely essential, anyway.)

Wiseman does, along the way, talk about some rather dark things, such as the brief history of Jonestown in a section on cults, but overall it's a nice demonstration of the fact that skepticism and science can be just as fun and full of wonder and fascination as any tale of the supernatural, and it teaches readers some interesting stuff about human psychology along the way. You could do a lot worse as an introduction to to this sort of deeper thinking about the paranormal. ( )

Fanfreakingtastic! ( )

Completely debunks all paranormal 'activity' and very funny with it ( )