I have to admit I was a little disappointed with this book. I was already pretty familiar with the details of the crash of Flight 401 and the stories of ghostly manifestations of the crew in jets using equipment salvaged from the crashed plane, and John G. Fuller didn't give me a lot of additional information in this book.

Obviously, someone with less knowledge of the subject matter should find the book more fascinating than I did, but I also think the book suffers from the method of presentation Fuller chose to use. I would say that The Ghost of Flight 401 is more about Fuller's experience writing the book than it is about the subject matter in and of itself. In no doubt due partly to the era in which he wrote (ghost stories received much more ridicule in 1976 than they do today), he seems too preoccupied with his credibility. Early on, as he discusses the way in which this book came about, he refers repeatedly to his previous books on such serious matters as nuclear power. Then, toward the end, he takes us on a quick jaunt through some of the more serious and credible scientific theories regarding the possibility of life after death -- just before closing the book with what he knows to be the most questionable part of the whole story.

Fuller never really presents the reported ghost stories in any kind of delineated order, merely mentioning them here and there along the way -- sandwiched between his own internal debates over the validity of the information and his own ability to believe it. He doesn't let the facts speak for themselves, and that tended to make this a frustrating read for me. At times, I found myself saying OK already -- can we get back to the actual story now?

I certainly understand his desire to not be labeled some kind of kook, but his preoccupation with his role in the telling of this story does little to help his credibility. The words "Methinks he doth protest too much" cannot help but come to mind.

Fuller's detailed description of the crash of Flight 401 into the Everglades on Dec. 29, 1972, is informative and well-written. His discussion of the difficulty in getting witnesses of the later ghostly manifestations is also timely and germane. Some of the accounts he did manage to get are provocative and significant if true -- and therein lies the rub. A lot of the stories Fuller tells us are of the hearsay variety, acquired via third (or more) parties. Obviously knowing that he could offer up no authoritative proof for life after death (which was essentially the overall goal he pursued), I think Fuller struggled with the whole writing process, particularly in terms of how to end the book.

That leads him -- albeit reluctantly -- to ultimately journey outside of his own self-contained box of credibility into the realm of spiritualism. His claims of having communicated with the spirit of Flight 401 flight engineer Don Repo leave him wide open for the skeptical criticism he feared so much. That is not to say it isn't true -- and he offers reasons as to why he believes the communication was authentic -- but it probably takes this good ghost story a little farther than many readers will be willing to go.

I don't know if the definitive account of the ghosts of Flight 401 has been written yet -- I just know this isn't it.