battery seems dead

left xj parked over the weekend and when I tried to start it, it appears to have no power whatsoever. no lights, nothing at all. I connected a battery charger and still nothing at all. I energised the headlights and while messing with the charger they came on very breifly and then back off.
I am out of town and have no tools or meters at all.
I also visually checked connections and the fuses in the compartment under the hood. They appear to be ok.
It almost seems as thought there is some kind of relay that is not kicking in when 12 volts is present.

Usually the dome lights or something wil come on with a charger attached but I got nothing.
Help!!!! I'm out of town and have no backup vehicle.

if your battery is REALLY dead, you may need to jump start the charger... sounds kinda funny, but it works. jump the battery in the xj to another battery, and put the charger on it at the same time... if the battery is just completely dead, this should fix it.

had a similar problem a couple weeks back...don't know if this helps. for me it turned out to be a corroded negative cable. and yeah, it happened overnight. one day it worked, one day it didn't.

http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=952006&highlight=battery+killer

Assuming the charger is good, you have a bad hot or ground wire or terminal near the battery. Does your model year have the relay/block near the pass. fender with connections for the fuse links? A recent thread ended up being one of those..

found it:
http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=950727

X2 on the bad connection.....
You can turn on your headlights and wiggle each battery wire hard and see if you get any flicker of light.
If you can find a wire and or a jumper cable you can use a dome light bulb and make a test light.
You can set one contact point of the bulb on the positive post of the battery.
Then connect your found wire to the ground side of the battery and then touch the other contact point of the light bulb.
You can use this method to track down problems, just don't cross your connections, it could lead to larger problems, like injury and or fire......play it safe and keep us posted.