Customer Reviews

Haunted Castles of the World: Ghostly Legends and Phenomena from Keeps and Fortresses Around the Globe

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Castles and ghosts go hand in hand, we all know that. Every castle ever built, it seems, appears to have its own White Lady, its own ghosts walking the gloomy halls at night frightening the people who happen to see them, and their own myths and legends about gruesome deaths and unhappy love.

This becomes extra clear after having read through Haunted Castles of the World. Every chapter looks the same; Coulombe begins by offering a short description of the history of the castle and its inhabitants, followed by stories about different ghosts and how they have appeared throughout the centuries, and the chapter is then closed with a lively remark and the address and contact information in case the reader too wants to go there and see what all the fuzz is all about.

Which is both good and bad. It's good because you'll always learn where the castle is, what ghost or ghosts it has, and how to contact the owners if you want to go there yourself. But at the same time it's pretty dull, because you really don't learn very much about the ghostly phenomena themselves. The book is actually more of a history book than a ghost book, because the chapters all have a lot more text dealing with history than with ghosts. And also, there's no bibliography whatsoever, not even when the author uses direct quotes, and all in all the entire book very easily feels boring and repetitive.

But on the other hand, it's written as a guide book about different castles and their ghosts all over the world - England, Scotland, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and much more - and as such a book it works perfectly. As long as you're aware of the fact that it's a guide book you probably won't get disappointed, but if you want to learn more about the ghost phenomenon itself you're a lot better off picking a different book.

I bought this book because I love ghost stories and pictures of haunted castles. However, this book provided none of that. It is more like world guide of haunted places, and each place gets a couple of pages of fanciful description and then the address. It did not provide the beautiful castle pictures, nor the involved, ghostly stories based on history I was looking for.

A great book that is informative, but would like it to have more substance and more ghost phenomena written down for the castles. it feels like a quick run down of certain local tourist hotspots, and does not give much information about the particular hauntings that go on at the locales.

Although the stories are short and to the point, they are wonderful rich true stories without a bunch of "fluff" b-s ! I LOVED the deep research done for each of these, so the book also has a lot of history lessons in it! If your wanting to read about gross gory fake stories- this isnt the book for you. If, on the other hand, you have brains and like to learn, this is a spooky history lesson!