Customer Reviews

Ghostly Lights Return (Haunted Lights)

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This is not a book for those interested in ghosts but a collection of very boring short stories. I started to read it as soon as I got home from Christmas brunch. I will not say that I read all of them because I just couldn't get through them they were so bad. I suppose they were supposed to be scary but failed in a most spectacular way. I tried to read the factual information at the end of each story but they were so brief they could have been printed on about 5 sheets of legal paper. You might as well throw your money down the toilet as buy this book. If you want an interesting book about ghosts I highly recommend anything by Brad Steiger.

These stories of the macabre - ghosts, phantoms, vampires, gruesome thoughts called up by extreme issolation - are set in the lighthouses of the Great Lakes. Each story is followed by a crystal clear description of the lighthouse in it's geographical and historic context. The comforting reality of fact is like a night light shining through torturous dream images! I liked "Dear Diary", based on actual keeper diary entries, "Going Home" a touching prose poem on the watery fate of The Edmund Fitzgerald, and "The Head" for its unmitigated gore!

This is one of the biggest disappointments in my journeys through the world of books! First, I thought from what I had read that this would be, by and large, a series of stories about the lighthouses of the Great Lakes. WRONG! These stories are the sick wanderings of the author's mind, and except for the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, there is almost nothing informative or inspiring or uplifting about the author's fictitious fill-ins after offering a thumb-nail sketch of each lighthouse. I had originally planned to buy several of these books to give as gifts - think heavens I read them first - and now I'd recommend them for the trash barrel.