Customer Reviews

Haunted Newport (Open mind)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

i am a paranormal reshearcher and in one case at least, the story has not been debunked. my group went into shadow lawn armed with night shot plus minidvrs, emf meters, thermal scanners, and negative ion generators. we had the place to our selves and foun a great deal. doors slamming shut, rods, lights that had ther own source and some of the best class a evps ive ever heard. to sat its debunked is not true. we try at great lengths to disprove things, but shadow lawn is indeed a haunted location

I hate writing negative reviews but this book and the stories inside are hardly worth the price. In all, the book is less than 75 pages long! And this includes the many pages of useless pictures, an index, a glossary, a bibliography, title pages, a list of locations, and even a transportation guide for Newport. The book is full of fluff!

The stories themselves are hardly haunting or scary. There is little to no research done on most of the stories. Many are as short as a small paragraph. Many of the stories are accounts according to one or two witnesses. Others are simply hearsay and legend. Most of them are residual hauntings and not intelligent spirits. And the author has no experiences with any of them and probably has never even visited some of the locations.

I was mostly disappointed by the 'product description' for this book. It claims to tell 'haunted' stories about many Newport locations and lists a whole bunch of them in the description. The one I was most interested in was Fort Adams. I am currently researching and investigating the Fort and purchased this book hoping for some interesting stories. But Fort Adams is never mentioned anywhere in the book!

I really feel as though I wasted my money. I read the book in 20 minutes. It takes longer to read the Sunday newspaper.

Journalism in the America of the 1890's frequently wasn't distinguishable from fiction. This type of fiction based journalism depicted the Rhode Island of the 1890's as the Transylvania of the Western World and the Vampire capital of America. This did sell newspapers. The trouble is the newspaper stories weren't true. Austen Sharp doesn't adequately inform the reader of the fact that all of Rhode Island's fantastic tales, old and modern, have been soundly debunked. [...] The book targets an immature teen audience. This book is a must read because it is at the top of the heap for its genre.