Customer Reviews

Lore of the Ghost: The Origins of the Most Famous Ghost Stories Throughout the World

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This book is a treasure among cookie-cutter books of "ghost stories." This book delves deeply into the roots of the folklore and urban legends... the same tales that are often the foundation of ghost stories we try to investigate.

The book is described as an "investigation into human belief in the supernatural and its affect on how ghosts are interpreted and recorded."

The author, Brian Haughton, is an archaeologist and a researcher, and his expertise shows. He's documented the history of stories such as:

* the Wild Hunt
* phantom "white ladies"
* vanishing hitchhikers
* screaming skulls
* phantom vehicles and haunted roads

His research is thrilling if you're a history buff.

For example, he not only translates the often-misunderstood terms "doppelganger" as doublewalker or doublegoer, he also tells the story of when Queen Elizabeth I's doppelganger was seen in her castle home.

If you consider yourself a "ghost hunting geek," this book is a must-read.

Most books on ghosts today consist of nothing more than scary stories and the stories of encounters that people have had. This book offers real information, based on folklore. It has answered many of my questions in this area of research. It includes information on the Headless Horseman, which is very hard to find elsewhere. Overall, this is a great book! I recommend it to all who are trying to look past the scary stories and study the real thing.

This review originally appeared at www.hauntedamericatours.com


Brian Haughton knows his stuff. Over the past few years he has gained a reputation as one of the strongest researcher in the field when it comes to odd people, weird places, and the folklore that lives just this side of unexplainable. With his past work he has always made an effort to keep one foot in legitimate history while stretching the possible past with his work in older cultures and text. His new book, Lore of the Ghost, focuses his skills at looking into several of the haunted motifs that form the tales we hear in old ghost stories and that help to mold the true hauntings we hear about from down the street.

Lore of the Ghost suffers from being written by the smartest man in the room. While his previous work has always taken advantage of his knowledge, it becomes a hindrance in Lore. The book looks to explore the origins of many of these ghost stories, but does little to get to heart of them while offering only retellings of them throughout the years. No origins are found. This would be allowable (most legends are impossible to trace to their true origins by their very nature) if Haughton offered some explanations as to why these legends are spread or how they tell us about ourselves. The book offers neither.

What the reader is left with is a collection of legends with no direction. There are still few out there in the publishing world who can tell these stories as well as the author, but he spends too much time jumping from old tale to old tale. Any of his chapters could be an entire book by itself, and with subjects like phantom hitchhikers and black dogs, the reader wants to know more. He does not stay in one long enough to examine it fully before he is on to the next variation. The jumping can become somewhat disorienting, and ultimately the format he uses becomes predicable and a bit boring to read through. American audiences may also eventually tire of the numerous examples of British and European stories while only grazing some of their American counterparts, especially because there are so many of them to be found on this side of the ocean.

Part of the issue arises with the connection between the legends and folklore that are the focus of the book and their true paranormal origins. Haughton does not take a side as to the truth of the tales and yet offers many classic hauntings as proof of the motifs they involve. This will isolate the folklorist and the paranormal enthusiast. While exploring the folklore he misuses or heaps together ghost stories with tales of odd animals and time slips, and other supernatural occurrences.

Brian Haughton still knows how to tell a story, but his skills are wasted here. With his base of information, it feels he sat down and had a conversation with himself and wrote it down. More likely, his latest conference presentation was a bit fleshed out and submitted to the publisher. This book has the feel of being too easy for him, too phoned in, to offer anything truly unique to the reader. Haughton is someone who deserves to be on the paranormal reader's bookshelf, Lore of the Ghost is just not the book to add.