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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
its ok, April 8, 2000
This review is from: Real hauntings: America's true ghost stories (Hardcover)
this book is pretty good if you are looking for the science and documentation of ghosts, it has real hauntings from every part of america, like new england, new york, from pennsylvania to the midwest, the southern states, adn ghosts in california. I would reccomend this to anyone intersted in real ghosts.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
If You Like Summer Reruns, You Will Love This Book., August 13, 2004
I have been a Hans Holzer fan for many years and there is little doubt that he is the most widely read author of this type of book. Almost of the hauntings he writes about are those he has investigated for himself and he seems to only investigate well-documented cases where there are several living witnesses that he can interview. There is never any danger of picking up one of Holzer's books and being bored to tears with a bunch of old unsubstantiated folk tales.
"Real Hauntings" is a collection of some of Holzer's old investigations, mostly from the 1960s. He and his sidekick Sybil Leek, who is a medium, travel about the country investigating haunted houses and urging the ghosts to cross over to the other side. As usual, Holzer's writing style is superb. Even though he holds a Ph.D. he does not try to write in a pompous manner that is over most reader's head. The stories in this book are fun to read and I found it hard to put down. If you read this book at night while all alone you may have trouble sleeping for Holzer conveys the eerie nature of these haunts very clearly.
There is one major problem with this book however, and it is a problem that crops up with Holzer again and again. He likes to recycle his stories and if you have read previous books by this author you may have a strong sense of having read these stories before. I had this feeling and pulled out a couple of Holzer's other books that I have in my library. In checking just the first third of this book I found that five of the stories in this book were also in one of the author's books other two books I checked. Two more stories were in this book and also in both of the other two books. I don't know how many new stories were in this book, but I suspect there weren't many.
Try Holzer out because he has a great talent for this type of book. If you have never read Holzer before this book would be a fine one to read. On the other hand, if you have read any of Holzer's other books avoid this one for it seems to be only a collection of previously published stories.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More, please!, December 31, 2010
This review is from: Real hauntings: America's true ghost stories (Hardcover)
This is an absolutely excellent ghost book. If you like Hans Holzer then you will love this book.
There are some cons I would like to mention. For example, a few of the cases go unresolved. There is one particular one where his medium, Sybil Leek, says there is a body buried in the garden. She also gives the precise location of its burial. A few little bits later Mr. Holzer finishes off by saying that they never did go digging because the owner never wanted to find out such a thing. Those unfinished cases are the only real cons. Despite that, there are very many pros.
There are many resolved cases. My favorite one was a lady who was doing garden work after having spent a year restoring this defeated and destroyed house to its original beauty. While alone she gets a visit from an old lady who wants to be taken through the house. She says she was once the owner of it. The lady eventually disappears when the new owner of the house does a double-take. Upon telling this to her friend across the road it turns out that the lady across the road knew who the old lady was, but that she had been dead for many, many years. Absolutely fascinating!
A lot of the complaints about this book that get the negative reviews are from people who don't want the same ol' ghost stories from the same ol' guy. My suggestion would be to read personal stories from authors who have written on one story that spans about 200 pages. Night Stalks the Mansion, Don't Call Them ghosts, The Ghosts On 87th Street..those three come to mind immediately. The reason I loved this book was because it was more of the "go here, deal with these people, move on" type cases. I want to hear about ghost stories and I heard about them!
Great read.
5/5
John McAdam:
Were Ancient Gods From Other Planets?
Am I Mad or Coherent?
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