Why don’t spirits ever tell you anything good?  I mean, you’d think they’d have had something important to say about the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the collapse of the world economy.  You know, little things like that.  It’s not like they don’t know the future.  They’re hanging out in eternity, or thereabouts, so there’s no chronology to escape them.  Still, only silence on this sort of thing.  Sure, these ghosties speak to people, so-called “mediums,” but apparently, they can’t be bothered with anything more substantive than the location of granny’s favorite recipe for cherry pie or forgiving a spouse for that thoughtless affair.

Needless to say, I am rather suspicious of people who claim to talk to dead people.  Or feel them.  Or see them.  Or believe there’s any reality to the idea.  Of course, it might be nice if it were true.  I’d like to know that my dad and Nany and innumerable pets and others are okay — whatever that means in infinite terms.  But there’s just too much evidence to suggest that things don’t happen for “a reason,” or that we “go” anywhere at death, let alone “a better place.”  Frankly, those who believe in souls and the like have to my mind a treacly, smug — and entirely undeserved — sense of complacency about themselves.  Meanwhile, the world falls apart around them.  Ugh.

So, maybe it’s unfair of me to agree to review the new book by “Britain’s most popular psychic and ghost hunter, Derek Acorah” (that’s what the back cover says).  I’m negatively disposed to people whose excuse for failing to talk to dead people in a controlled environment is that the dead guy just isn’t talking that day.  So, I won’t give the guy a fair reading, right?  But I’m also — I hate to admit it — committed to considering the arguments, wherever they may lead.  With that in mind, I opened the book penned by the host of the popular UK show, “Most Haunted”.

Acorah claims to have had his first psychic experience at age 5, when he met his dead grandfather on the second floor landing at his grandmother’s house.  Rather than dismiss her grandson’s experience as fantasy, young Derek’s grandmother, along with his mother, calmly told him he would spend his life working for “the spirit.”  Fast forward about thirty years.  It’s been lucrative employment — for Acorah.  After ending his football career (that’s soccer to us), Derek started giving readings in his apartment.  That led to radio and then television.  Along the way, he met his lifelong “spirit guide,” Sam from Ethiopia.  Thank goodness Sam speaks English!  Could you just imagine the missteps of bad translations?

The main problem for psychics, the poor lot, is that they can’t prove their claims.  On the other hand, myriad and far more plausible explanations for supposedly psychic events abound, which seriously undermines those claims.  Think about it this way: you’d be far pressed to agree that someone who hit the lottery had been blessed by the ghost of some patron saint of something-or-other.  You’d simply say the winner was lucky.  ‘Wait!’ you might exclaim.  ‘What caused the luck?  Couldn’t it be a ghost?’  Okay, fine.  Say it was a ghost.  Now I ask you to tell me what that explains — how is it significant?  And how can you tell the difference between a casual ghost and just plain old causation?

None of this matters to someone like Acorah and the dupes who believe him and, worse yet, patronize him.  His business is making money off people’s fears and regrets — and stupidity.  Wish you’d never had that last fight with the mother who died?  Don’t worry, Derek will find her for you and tell you she doesn’t hold any grudges.  The stories he offers are simply told and nothing new to anyone interested in this genre.  Were he to tell us something really unique — or even tell about the run of the mill emotional junk in an inspired way — he could be forgiven for trafficking in other people’s misery.  Unfortunately, he does not.  And I cannot.

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