Mary Roach author of Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)
Mary Roach became a SuicideGirls favorite when she wrote her first book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers which went into great detail with how useful a dead body could be.
Her latest book is Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and she applies her witty journalistic eye to all the people who wonder what happens after we die. Instead of thinking that we just lie dead in the ground rotting and waiting to be turned into topsoil Roach finds those that study out-of-body near-death experiences, people who extruded a substance called ectoplasm from their private parts and of course those that watch John Edwards thinking that he isn’t trying to steal your money.
Buy Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
Daniel Robert Epstein: How’s the book tour going?
Mary Roach: I’m a little sleep deprived. I got up at 4:30 this morning but other than that it’s great.
DRE: 4:30! For what?
MR: Isn’t that sick? I had to get a plane to go to morning show on NPR in Philadelphia.
DRE: You could have done that over the phone.
MR: That’s my opinion. It just seems the phone would be fine and dandy but now they want you in the studio so I got up at 4:30.
DRE: Stiff ended up becoming a bestselling book.
MR: Yeah, it was on the bestseller list for months. Go figure, a book about dead people.
DRE: What did that do for you?
MR: It set me up to be in a position to worry like hell about my next book. It put the pressure on me is what it did.
DRE: Is that good or bad?
MR: It just ups the ante a bit.
DRE: Normally I would say it helps you get your next book made but since you tackled a not dissimilar subject, I imagine it wasn’t a very tough sell.
MR: No, it wasn’t. It’s funny though because people think of this book as a huge departure. For me it’s just more weird stuff going on in labs and more quirky people. But people wanted more maggots and severed heads so I’ve been a little nervous.
DRE: So you don’t see it as totally different?
MR: It’s just different in that it’s more abstract. There isn’t as much gory stuff to describe. The last book had to do with medical research and very tangible real life things. This is still people in labs and people using scientific methods but the subject has the stigma of the paranormal, which is a whole different audience than Stiff. But I’m just trying to reassure people that this is the same spooky stuff. I haven’t gone all soft around the edges and found God or anything.
DRE: Was there a change at your readings with the kind of fan that would show up?
MR: Not at all. Readings are great. The people who like Mary Roach are really fun nice people. What’s really different is live radio with listeners calling in. That is just a really weird world. One person after another called saying things like “About ten years ago, my grandmother died. Then I went outside and there was a rainbow”. People kept telling me their stories. All I can do is listen and say “Yeah that is really eerie”.
DRE: Obviously you ventured on this to see if this stuff could be taken seriously. But even so, was it tough to be objective?
MR: I did actually do my diligent duty as a journalist and really tried to look at the studies that have been done. Some of it’s intriguing and isn’t quite what I thought it was such as the near death experience stuff. Some of those studies are pretty cool and suggestive. It’s not like anybody knows for sure what’s going on. So some of the approaches were actually interesting and more than just something to goof around with which is normally what I’m after.
DRE: But you did find plenty of people that who take it seriously.
MR: Oh yeah, pretty much everybody in the book was taking it seriously. I don’t take anything all that seriously but these are people who are very bent on what they’re doing.
DRE: Is it tough to not to laugh at those people?
MR: Some of the amateur ghostbuster types were a little hard for me to take. With the people who are doing work at the University of Virginia, I didn’t feel I was suppressing the giggles all the time. I did giggle when I went out to the Donner camp with the guys who were trying to tape record the spirit voices of the Donner party cannibals.
DRE: I hope it didn’t turn you into any kind of believer.
MR: No, but I don’t feel like science is at a point where it can deliver hardened facts. Though it is amazing that we haven’t figured it out yet though.
DRE: I guess that’s what those scientists are doing. They are doing serious work even if they should be concentrating on curing AIDS.
MR: They’re trying to do serious work. There is the guy in Virginia with the computer laptop near the operating room ceiling trying to find people who have out of body near-death experiences. There are cardiologists involved in this study. Near death experiences very perplexing, bizarre and the people who deal with it a lot get very caught up in it. That study was really trying to answer the question, are they going somewhere or not? Are they floating up by the ceiling or are they hallucinating? That experiment had a very simple design.
DRE: Did anyone want to hook you up to a machine to give you a near death experience?
MR: Initially when I heard about the study I didn’t realize they were doing it on patients who get a defibrillator put on them. That machine basically kills them for a few seconds and then they start their heart up again. I’m so desperate to have good material for my book that I emailed the guy and said that I was willing to volunteer as a subject. He laughed and said that wasn’t exactly how it worked. He did thank me for offering to have my heart stopped in the name of scientific pursuit.
DRE: How much did you travel for this?
MR: I went to India, England and the rest of it was mostly in the US. I still had to foot the bill myself.
DRE: Why?
MR: When you do a book you don’t get your expenses covered, it all comes out of your advance.
DRE: I just read your mom was catholic, were you raised Catholic?
MR: Yeah, my mom raised me Catholic as hard as she could. She took me to church every Sunday and she used to read the Bible to me but I never had that religion gene. Like when Jericho was falling, I would think “maybe there was an earthquake coincidentally at that moment.” Then there were these guys living to be 600 years old. How would that work? Where’s the science there? I’ve always been geeky, questioning and a little cynical.
DRE: Do you think that’s what gave you your sense of humor?
MR: No doubt because a lot of people involved in this work are very earnest. So that’s just a different personality type all together.
DRE: When did you lose your earnestness?
MR: I don’t think I ever had any earnestness. My father hated the church. My father was a wise cracking Irishman. He came over here when he was 19. He wanted to be buried in a pine box. He was a very down to earth non-spiritual guy. My parents were just a bizarre couple. I don’t know what they were doing together.
DRE: Reading the book I think my favorite thing was Harry Price and the ectoplasm.
MR: That was my favorite part as well. That was just the weirdest period in science. In the 20’s people were really taking it seriously and women had that “convenient storage warehouse.” I love Harry Price because he was a tireless debunker but he was so wanted to believe. He really wanted to find the real deal.
DRE: How about the medium classes?
MR: Oh goodness, that was humiliating. I was just so out of my element. It was a three day class and I didn’t know what they were going to do. I didn’t know if they were going to teach you tricks or teach you how to contact the afterworld. It turned out to be the latter. They were certainly very sincere and we were supposed to do things like expand your energy. I don’t know how to do that. It’s not like telling somebody connect wire A to socket B. But I seemed to be the only person having a hard time following directions.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Mary+Roach+author+of+Spook%3A+Science+Tackles+the+Afterlife/