More Ghosts less TheoriesSeptember 3, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This books covered real life encounters with the paranormal mainly in the USA. I found the encounters interesting and enjoyable. Unfortunately they were hardly the star of the show. Too often then not the encounters that are mentioned has no historical research to back them up. Instead you get the author's theory on what is going on. A good example of this is in Chapter 1, Restless Nights. A young boy sees a ghost of a woman without pupils in her eyes carrying a basket. Leslie the postulates that ghost could be a blind woman from a school teaching basket weaving for the blind. The only evidence she shows for this is a school in Batavia New York 400 plus miles from the haunting site. She shows no evidence of such a school within closer distance of the haunting or a woman from that school living nearby. So all we are left with is guess and no hard evidence. This repeats itself throughout the book. A couple more examples would be that of a ghost girl being a possible victim of an epidemic to ghosts in a closed tobacco company having a possible origin in disease. Once again this is just the author theorizing and no connection with actual facts. That is not saying these places are not haunted just that the reason is unclear.
The other thing I had a problem with is focusing on the investigators. This is a book about ghosts not those who hunt them. While a book about these people could be warranted and quite interesting, bringing them up here only distracts from the subject matter. This also leads into her putting forth modern ghost theories and techniques. Once again this steers away from the subject matter and into the realm of current belief.
To me a ghost story is about the human drama of those who have gone on and the drama of those who are alive who witness the past via the hauntings. When this book focuses on that it shine but as I have said too often it ignores for the author's own theories and stories of the investigators.
Interesting readingAugust 26, 2008 This book is a collection of stories involving interactive spirit encounters or residual ghost sightings by everyday people, pulled together by a writer and researcher who already published 3 prior books on collections of ghostly stories.
The stories are short and plentiful, giving us the facts on who saw what, the history of the haunted site, and even talk a little about the research to discover who or why the ghost or residual might be there. You're even told when research couldn't uncover the facts and make it clear when either the `who or what' is actually speculated on.
Many of the stories involve benign residuals or ghosts, although there are some who are definitely not of the friendly sort. But you won't find a book loaded with horror stories or ghosts that rattle chains.
As someone who has my own paranormal experiences, I found the book to be a light, easy read and appreciated that the author didn't appear to embellish the stories with rumors. The story regarding a Greyhound Bus driver is a `must read.'
