Book Review
Title: Disembodied Voices: True Accounts of Hidden Beings by Tim Marczenko
Genre: Mystery/Paranormal
Rating: 1 Stars
I requested Disembodies Voices on Edelweiss because I was intrigued by the description despite the cover but I couldn’t work out whether it was non-fiction or fiction so I had to pick it up and find out. The opening chapter to Disembodied Voices was intriguing and confusing at the same time as the author is discussing an incident from when he was a child hearing a voice calling to him from the forest and how he felt that it wasn’t a good idea to follow it despite being tempted to. Tim then spent years trying to find out what the voice was and when he moved to the city he began encountering people with similar stories to his and documenting them but there doesn’t seem to be any “proof” of supernatural activity. I am not sure at this point whether it is going to be a collection of true stories from people encountering the supernatural or Tim narrating his journey to uncover what the voice was that spoke to him when he was a child.
In the next couple of chapters, the author lays out different ways the disembodied voices can be heard and the different situation they have been heard in and their effects. In some cases, they are religious or military based (bear in mind all of these “cases” are from historical periods where no evidence can be provided for them) like with Joan of Arc who claimed angels had given her a divine mandate before she was put to death. In other cases, voices have spoken to people and led them to things as was the case with the Founder of the Mormon religion who claimed to have been led to a buried book which he translated which would become the Book of Mormon. In other cases, these voices are aids to people in danger and Marczenko details some cases where people have heard voices claiming they have tumours or cancer and they are proven correct but the voices are unexplained. In other circumstances people have heard the voices during a car accident or when they accidently set themselves on fire given them advice that allowed them to escape with very minor injuries. Then there is a final subsect of voices which apparently cause people to do bad things and one of the example used is the serial killer known as the Son of Sam who claimed to hear voices telling him to kill people but these are often explained as mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. While these stories are interesting in most of the cases that aren’t diagnosed as mental illnesses there is no way to prove or deny the allegations.
As we continue through the novel the author discusses various account of these voices presenting themselves throughout history although almost all of them are hearsay and are impossible to prove. However, he does make the point that these voices don’t just appear from thin air sometimes they come from objects such as radio, animals and even take the quality of other people known to the listeners. The author then delves into various figures in folklore such as the Banshee and the God Pan, who are known for speaking to people and luring them to untimely demises making the distinction that these voices can influence people for good and bad depending on the type of voice being heard. Despite that fact that this information is interesting it just seems to be a collection of stories of disembodied voices from folklore, historical accounts that can’t be proven and the author’s own personal experiences which are unreliable, so the book doesn’t feel like it has any substance to it. This continues throughout the book and by the time I reach the end I was bored. It was almost like I’d wasted almost 200 pages of text and come away with nothing from the experience which was extremely disappointing for me as a reader.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
I received this review copy from Edelweiss
Comments