Customer Reviews

The Awful Thing in the Attic

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When I first saw the cover, I knew I had to read this book! I have other books by Brad Steiger, and know him to be a ghosthunter of some repute, but it was the cover, showing a cemetery statue superimposed over an abandoned house, that grabbed my attention. Steiger takes the reader on a tour of frightening and sometimes sad true ghost experiences. Some already known, such as the Bell Witch and Esther Cox, but many which had not been related before now. My only complaint was I thought the stories would have been more suspenseful---I wanted to be scared out of my socks! However, it is a entertaining way to spend an afternoon, and if you desire a very good book for teens or young adult readers, this would fit the bill.

The jacket blurb says the author has written more than 100 books on "the strange and unknown." In this book he, "draws upon his forty years as a psychic researcher to select the eeriest, spookiest, scariest true stories from his own investigations and from his extensive files." Steiger adds fictional dialogue to some of the stories, and generally relates his stories with flair, not always sticking to the facts as published in other books.

I thought this book would scare my socks off after seeing the cover, but it wasn't scary at all! The stories were really interesting, but some are hard to believe. The author believes most hauntings are caused by the subconscious of someone living in the home and most are caused by pubescent teens. This is the first book I have read that takes this approach to hauntings. I did notice many glaring grammatical errors in the text and some caused me to reread certain passages again because I became confused. For example, he used the word difference when it should have said different. There were also several times when words were doubled.I am not a grammatical expert by far, but they also don't pay me to write books. Overall, if you just want a fun read... you might enjoy this. If you are looking for a scarier experience, then skip this book.

I loved this book. Story after storie, I could not put it down. Well written.