JOTT

JOTT by Mary Rose Barrington (2018 Anomalist Books softcover 190pp)

 

JOTT stands for Just One of Those Things, what we might say when something unexplained but apparently minor happens to us in everyday life. In this volume the late Mary Rose Barrington, an accomplished lawyer, researcher and vice-president of the Society for Psychical Research introduces us to the concept of the JOTT and the categories such events have been placed in over the last century as they’ve been reported to the society and the author. The typical event would be something like placing your keys down in a certain location and then being unable to find them again…only for them to return to that place days, months or even years later. This would be classed as a “Come Back”, other categories include “Walkabout” (item found in another location), “Fly-away” (item never seen again) and “Windfall” (an item from unknown origin suddenly appears). Also, baffling is the “Trade-In” where a familiar object disappears and is replaced by a similar but obviously different item. Of course, many of these incidences can probably be explained by memory issues of those involved but there are some truly bizarre events recounted in the case selection which makes up the first part of the book.

In the second part Barrington attempts to create a grand unified framework of paranormal events that might just explain the JOTTs. Unfortunately, she goes about this by a long and tortured route, spending pages and pages explaining the relationship between Psi and science and why researchers often find nothing. Eventually she invokes both the paranormal and religion to make her case and I was less than convinced.

Worth it for the JOTT stories in the first half but probably a bit disappointing overall.