Customer Reviews

Stories from the Haunted South

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Alan Brown has traveled far and wide to do interviews and research so that he could put together a very interesting collection of Southern ghost stories. I know this because he was kind enough to include a bibliography that not only includes his personal interviews but also his secondary sources. I appreciate this because it lists several books that aren't in my collection and that I never even knew about and which will now swell my wish list.

There are a few problems to be found in this book but overall I enjoyed it very much. There are some typos and a few historical errors that need to be fixed in future editions but they are fairly minor. The biggest problem is to be found in the most promising part of the book. The author gives directions and phone numbers for most of the sites he discusses which is always a plus for me. The directions however are sort of fuzzy and I'm not sure that they would help me locate a site without stopping to ask for directions. I am sure also that many of these places have web sites but Brown for some reason doesn't give them. Having those web addresses would have improved the book quite a bit.

On the positive side the book is fairly well written and it kept my interest although there is not much of a chill factor in the stories. The most attractive aspect of this book is that there are many recent eyewitness accounts included. Some of the events described occurred less than a year before the book was published. I can not overstate how important these recent eyewitness accounts are to the credibility of this type of book and on this point Brown gets an A+. Another plus is that most of the stories to be found here are lesser know stories and not the same old hauntings that one tends to read about in almost every book of this type. I was particularly happy to find the story of the, "Bunnyman Bridge" which I had heard about but had never run across in a book. Now that I have a general idea about where this site is I may just pay it a visit some day. Of course I will probably have to stop and ask for directions because yet again the directions in the book were not too clear.

There is also a good balance between the history of a site and the history of the haunt itself. Often the authors of this type of book get carried away with history and forget the haunt or operate in reverse and give the reader no idea why the place might be haunted. Brown however gets it just about right and seems to provide all of the relevant details.

Overall this is a good book and while it will not scare the reader it will provide a lot of useful information. A superb read for a ghost hunter or ecto-tourist.

I found this book to be a good read and excellent if someone does not want to be "scared". It was a simple overview of hauntings with info about the place and the "legend" of the haunting. As I have read a number of books on hauntings and such, I found this alittle boring. I prefer more personal info on the haunting. I found it alittle too open ended: more of a "well, this is what they say" but I don't think it is true, go see for yourself.