Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
September 13, 2018
A State of Many Mysteries Mysterious New Mexico: Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment. By Benjamin Radford. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-8263-5450-1. 300 pp. Softcover, $24.95.
Welcome to New Mexico, where I had no idea that there were odd paranormal mysteries waiting to be solved (other than in Roswell). CSI investigator (and Skeptical Inquirer Deputy Editor) Ben Radford has taken a variety of ghost stories, UFO accounts, cryptozoology, crystal skulls, psychics, and all other kinds of pseudoscience under his investigative eye in this 300-page book. Not only is the inside full of the mysterious and creepy, but the cover (featuring a scary ghostly woman holding a baby) is just amazing. It sets the tone for the contents of the book.
Full disclosure: Ben Radford is a friend of mine, and I am listed in the acknowledgment section with a thank you. So of course I’m going to say nice things about the book—but only because I really did enjoy it and am now intrigued enough that I will visit New Mexico someday soon. It’s called the Land of Enchantment after all.
The book is not just about investigation of the paranormal. It is first a collection of stories, mostly ghost stories, told from the viewpoint of the media and the people who pass these stories on to the next generation. Only after Radford has intrigued us with the story does he break it down into thinkable chunks. You can see how he is thinking through how best to investigate it. What are the actual claims that can be tested and researched? Bit by bit, he relates all he discovers and all the frustrations he encounters as the stories change and the documentation that was promised by the ghost story teller does not manifest.
KiMo technician Dennis Potter shows investigator Benjamin Radford the site of a 1951 explosion which spurred a ghost story.
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Them All!
