Customer Reviews

SHADOW WORLD: True Encounters with Beings from the Darkside

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Have you ever experienced strange occurrences? Have you seen and heard things that go bump in the night? If not, have you ever wondered what may be behind such numerous tales down through the centuries?
Once again, one of Brad Steiger's masterworks has been re-released, this one from 7 years ago. Again, in the style that has made Brad one of the primer researchers/writers on all things strange, Brad takes us on a fascinating journey into the unknown, this time on spirits...not benevolent, but this time malevolent. This non-fiction quest leads us on the path and questions all manor of where dark beings originate. We explore spirit contacts, poltergeists, animal spirits, nature spirits, spirit mimics and look into what makes certain people magnets that seem to attract entities from the dark side. If you love ghost stories (fiction), then read this some night before going to bed. This one is guaranteed to chill you to the bone, more so than any work of fiction.

When I bought Shadow World, I was looking for answers. Chapter six had everything I was looking for. This book was such a good read that I read it in one sitting. Great writing, with a style that holds your attention from word one until the last word on the last page. This book covers all of the topic of ghost with eye ball accounts from the people who have been there.

In a day when books on Ghosts contain references to infrared film, thermal camera displays and milligauss meters, Steiger's narrative style still shines above the competition. All the technical proof in the world doesn't convey the chill of a concise, well written paragraph that puts you toe to toe with the unexplained. In this book Steiger takes on the darkside. The book defines some apparition types that you have probably heard of before if you read this genre. Thankfully, it doesn't belabor them or get heavy handed about who sent them or exactly how to get rid of one.

If you're looking for some good old fashioned ghost stories and other spooky tales, this is the book. I read it in one sitting. That the stories are based on trued accounts makes it even more.....well....spooky.

If you are new to the world of hauntings and psychic phenomena, you will find this book very informative and interesting.

If you have read extensively on the topic, you will enjoy the first half of the book. The second half will become tedious. Good read, but it won't have a permanent place in my collection.

I used to love reading parapsychology books and collections of odd tales when I was younger, all the way through college in fact. From Charles Fort to Colin Wilson, it was fun stuff even if I never believed more than a small percentage of it at any time.

Steiger seems pretty popular among the cryptozoology and weird happenings crowd nowadays, so I thought this book would be the ideal point to jump back into the subject. I was so very wrong.

The prose is amateurish at best. The encounters are hokey, predictable, and I cannot believe any of the dialogue is real. And why are there a collection of prayers at the end? This is just a jumble of boring ghost stories with warmed-up quasi-New Age Christianity slapped on here and there. The pretense of some sort of "theory" about the "Shadow World" gets no actual support: the author apparently believes his audience will just take his word for its existence.

Not worth the purchase. I already gave this copy away.

Of all the people one may associate with in the course of a lifetime, the brightest and happiest among them are the ones who, perhaps due to their will to abide lawfully and in harmony with their surroundings, often maintain a strange attraction to darkness. Author Brad Steiger is no exception, and perhaps his extraordinary charity and goodness helped allow him to draw from the depths of the darker nature of our selves for his latest work, Shadow World: True Encounters with Beings from the Darkside. Steiger, having conducted research through five decades and across four continents, concludes that a richly populated Shadow World exists all around us; a haven for the things that man has instinctually feared since birth, and will continue to question until the end of time.

As influential as he is eloquent, Brad Steiger is the only writer who has ever scared me, and yet that same fear has kept me glued to the pages of his books for as long as I can remember. For those of you who dare to be frightened by the strange truths Steiger will reveal in this latest work, in summary I must add this quote from T. S. Elliot:

"Between the conception and the existence... between the essence and the descent, falls the Shadow."

-Micah A. Hanks

I have been reading accounts of hauntings and such for some years now. This particular book although calling itself "True", is nothing of the sort. Go no further than the "Sacred Places of the Deiform Spirits" chapter to see my point. It does make a good bathroom reader but if you're looking for solid accounts of actual hauntings, you're barking up the wrong tree.

I would recommend ANY book by Brad Steiger. Not because he is an aquaintance of mine via E-Mail; but because he does the necessary research and REALLY knows what he is talking about.

I think Mr. Steiger has been researching the paranormal, for about 40 years.

I began having paranormal and mystical from the age of 5 years old (in 1960).

I know that alternate planes exist because I have encountered many inhabitants from those other planes of existence.

Not all of the good guys wear white, and deffinately all of the bad guys wear black.

Don't be fearful because of their appearance; listen to your feelings and emotions. Your unihipili in Hawai'ian vernacular, or nephesh in Judaic vernacular.

If the hair on the back of the neck stands up, or you feel chill bumps break out, or animals start growling, or showing fear; you are in the presence of something evilm and yes evil really does exist.

However; there is no need to fear the dark side because there are many things you can do to protect yourself.

I have to say that the Catholics have it wrong about exorcisms. They cast the spirits into the void. This is only making a bad problem 100 times worse because when those entities return to the earth plane, and )they will). They will be 100% evil and beyond redemption except by a few of the most skilled metaphysicians.