Lost at Sea

Written mostly from a perspective of the study of folklore, this covers a range of mysterious events associated with maritime disasters. It starts out well, with interesting coverage of ghost ships like the Flying Dutchman, the haunting of the UB-65, and similar stories. Here, the authors delve into not just the stories, but the reality behind them, and most were of cases that I'd not heard of before, making them especially interesting.

Since the approach is mostly a folklorist's one, it's quite right that they don't always offer explanations for things like encounters with ghost ships. If you don't know the answer, it's better to admit that than to make things up. The writing is perhaps a little dull in places, but, on the whole, this section isn't bad.

The latter part of the book, however, dealing mainly with premonitions of disaster, is a bit of a flop. The authors seem entirely too willing to take things at face value, and to over-estimate how strange some mundane explanations might be. For example, the fact that, during WWI, (at least) one person out of a population of 40 million might happen to have a vague dream about a ship sinking on a night on which, as it happened, something somewhere was being torpedoed isn't even what I'd call a coincidence, still less a plausible account of a paranormal event.

Other pieces of evidence just aren't explained. For instance, the authors say that there's a “strong case” for the a ship called The President having sunk on the same night that an acquaintance of one of the passengers had an undeniably spooky experience - but they never explain what this case is (and, frankly, it's hard to imagine what it even could be).

To be sure, the authors never insist that any given event is paranormal in nature, although this does rather feel like copping out. But I could have done without the prevarication and the weak or non-existent evidence. The first part of the book is better, so why it all falls apart in the last three chapters or so, I have no idea.

Rather disappointing, then, but by no means a loss when taken as a whole. If nothing else, there are some interesting ghost stories and some food for thought about what sort of evidence would suffice for the events described.