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soris 's review for:
Unexplained: Supernatural Stories for Uncertain Times
by Richard MacLean Smith
I had never heard of the Unexplained podcast until this, much less heard a single episode, so I was going in purely on the promise of spooky stories for Halloween season. And that is certainly on offer here, from haunted dybbuk boxes to reincarnated Luftwaffe pilots to possessed German schoolgirls to Native American skin walkers. The stories are all presented as factual histories, and none of them seem to be made up for this collection. You can go and Google the dybbuk box and get a lot more detail on one of the more famous ghost stories of the Internet age, if you want.
The stories themselves are a bit of an uneven bunch. Not all of them are scary in the strict sense of the word, but then the book doesn't claim that; they are merely supernatural and unexplained. Except they aren't, really, and that's where Unexplained gets real good.
Bookending each story is an essay, one which can offer a rational explanation to what is happening, or just present an interesting real world scientific theory or phenomenon, which is somehow related to the story at hand. It's slightly heady subject matter, tackling everything from the philosophical concept of the noosphere to the medical nocebo effect, or from the Gutenberg Parenthesis Theory to explaining just how the Internet is connected to the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. To me, this was pretty much the best part of the book, because as much fun as it is to hear about an evil spirit trapped in a Jewish wine cabinet, it's a lot more fascinating to consider the implications of String Theory or ponder the idea that the Internet phenomenon of creepypasta is just continuing the folkloric traditions that stretch back to the beginning of the human race.
Whether you believe in the supernatural or not, Unexplained is definitely a worthwhile listen (or I suppose a read, if you opt for the book instead of the audiobook), because in the proudest traditions of speculative fiction it presents a wide collection of ideas new and old, some of which are certain to fascinate just about anyone.
The stories themselves are a bit of an uneven bunch. Not all of them are scary in the strict sense of the word, but then the book doesn't claim that; they are merely supernatural and unexplained. Except they aren't, really, and that's where Unexplained gets real good.
Bookending each story is an essay, one which can offer a rational explanation to what is happening, or just present an interesting real world scientific theory or phenomenon, which is somehow related to the story at hand. It's slightly heady subject matter, tackling everything from the philosophical concept of the noosphere to the medical nocebo effect, or from the Gutenberg Parenthesis Theory to explaining just how the Internet is connected to the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. To me, this was pretty much the best part of the book, because as much fun as it is to hear about an evil spirit trapped in a Jewish wine cabinet, it's a lot more fascinating to consider the implications of String Theory or ponder the idea that the Internet phenomenon of creepypasta is just continuing the folkloric traditions that stretch back to the beginning of the human race.
Whether you believe in the supernatural or not, Unexplained is definitely a worthwhile listen (or I suppose a read, if you opt for the book instead of the audiobook), because in the proudest traditions of speculative fiction it presents a wide collection of ideas new and old, some of which are certain to fascinate just about anyone.