Ghosts Among Us: True Stories of Spirit Encounters (Paperback)

by Leslie Rule (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Do you believe in ghosts? Whether you are a believer or a skeptic, the stories of the supernatural in Ghosts Among Us: True Stories of Spirit Encounters will keep you riveted.

Macabre and fascinating, Ghosts Among Us offers true-life, haunting accounts of eerie visitations and paranormal experiences along with artistically shot black-and-white photographs of haunted sites.

The personal, firsthand reports and chilling, full-length stories are bolstered by sidebars of actual accounts of "Ghosts in the News." Each chapter explores mysterious events--events that the reader will find hard to pass off as mere coincidence.

In her quest to uncover explanations for each incident, Leslie Rule extensively researched library archives and interviewed credible witnesses, historians, renowned psychics, and parapsychologists. Throughout Ghosts Among Us, Rule's findings are mesmerizing. She writes about being raised in a haunted house. "To top that," Rule explains, "[my mother] introduced me to a serial killer when I was fourteen." The reader is invited to skip ahead to learn about that chilling episode... but the pages prior to that offer their own gripping, spell-binding encounters.

About the Author
Leslie Rule, daughter of true-crime author Ann Rule, has had a lifelong fascination with the paranormal. Her previous writing success includes Coast to Coast Ghosts, two suspense novels, and over 50 feature articles in national magazines. Her photography has appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Cosmopolitan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0740747177
• ISBN-13: 978-0740747175
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #138,321 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Topic Thoroughly Explored, December 21, 2004

By	William Hare (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Leslie Rule is the daughter of bestselling true crime author Ann Rule. Her definitive research and crisply written prose revealed in "Ghosts Among Us" are characteristics of her mother's exhaustive efforts in comprehensively covering the true crime scene by communicating her information in a manner both folksy and readable.

"Ghosts Among Us" marks the author as an important pioneer in a fascinating and rapidly evolving field of parapsychology. The numbers of skeptics, some of whom sought to ridicule the topic of ghosts, have sharply diminished through the efforts of authors such as Leslie Rule, who have demonstrated that many credible people have had encounters with beings in situations that cannot be explained through traditional human analysis.

Having been born and raised in Seattle, it is fitting for Rule to launch her exploration at the colorful Pike Place Outdoor Market. Located in downtown Seattle, the market attracts not only scores of people from the Pacific Northwest and throughout the rest of the world; explorations reveal that ghosts have been known to visit as well. Numerous reports of such visits by scores of individuals from disparate walks of life have been related about such appearances.

Rule's extensive research effort took her to all parts of America from Washington to upstate New York and into Canada. As well as reporting on numerous cases, she provides photos of some of the more interesting hotels, restaurants, and mansions where apparitions were seen. An element of her effort that readers should greatly appreciate is that, in addition to researching the cases thoroughly, she invites interested individuals to follow up on their own. She provides address and website information, as well as mentioning names of individuals involved at the various locations discussed.

While conceding that she had never encountered an experience like the individuals she interviewed, who reported clear views of ghostly apparitions; she reports that at one site she received a tug on the shoulder. The two women who were accompanying Leslie were too far away to have touched her. The contact was and remains unexplained. In another instance she heard sounds of laughter while traversing stairs in the darkness of a hotel at a late hour. Leslie later learned that there was no apparent human activity at that time and that the laughter was a common occurrence during late hours.

A common thread of Rule's efforts revealed that the appearances of the beings observed frequently lived at the locations where the sightings occurred. The belief is that their spirits extend beyond their human lives. In one instance a short, jolly, white-haired woman, greeted a man at a bed and breakfast. When she offered to make him breakfast he declined, feeling somewhat eerie about the meeting. Shortly afterward he encountered the woman who ran the establishment, who told him calmly that the woman he met was her deceased mother, who made frequent appearances to guests.

My interest was seized by one particularly interesting account near the end of the book, the activities at the old Lemp Mansion in St. Louis. It was once the opulent family home of the famous Lemp family of local brewery fame and is now in operation as a bed and breakfast as well as a restaurant. A ghost haunts not only the establishment, but nearby neighbors, especially those living next door. The object of interest is called Monkey Boy, believed to be the spirit of a deformed child trapped in the building's attic. He is often seen through a window by next door neighbors.

One of the most fascinating revelations of Rule's book is the story of famous Philadelphia forensic sculptor Frank Bender. He has supplied the FBI and numerous American police agencies with sculptures of victims in instances where corpses found long after their death need to be identified. She recounts the incident when Bender, with very little to work with, provided uncannily accurate facial details of a woman who had been killed by her husband with assistance from the victim's sister. The man had taken out a large life insurance policy on his ultimate victim. The murderers believed they had succeeded until Bender provided the necessary information to determine that there had been a homicide and the body discovered was that of the victim. While Bender explains his uncanny detail work in the frequent face of at best scant supportive physical data as intuition, Rule wonders if something more is not involved, in that ghosts have been known to have worked from the great beyond to provide information as well as communicate verbally in certain situations.

Rule's book harkens back to the successful "Unsolved Mysteries" program narrated by Robert Stack. That show provided a slant that was both reportorial as well as folksy, attempting to take viewers into the world of the paranormal and the individuals reporting their experiences with rich and vivid details. The same applies to the journey Leslie Rule takes her readers on in "Ghosts Among Us."

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rule Number Two, January 19, 2005

By	Dennis Phillips "The Book Friar" (Bulls Gap, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I was well pleased with Leslie Rule's first collection of ghost stories and in this her second collection of paranormal stories she has again hit the mark. Once again she is aided by her very pleasing writing style and her convictions about her subject. Her stories are crisp, clear and very believable however some of her stories are still a little bit short on details. The little snippets about "Ghosts in the News" are entertaining but I would rather have done without them and had a few more details in her other stories. I also ran across a few typos but these are the editor's fault rather than the author's.

On the positive side, Ms. Rule again visited the places she wrote about and included some wonderful photographs she had made during her visit. There are also numerous recent eyewitness accounts to be found in this book which also helps to lend a great deal of credibility to the book. I was also very impressed with the range of stories in this book. All too often writers in this area tend to use only secondary sources and just basically re-tell the same old stories over and over again. One ghost book author I have run into tends to tell his stories almost word for word like previous authors and gets by with it by crediting the previous author in his bibliography. There is none of that with Leslie Rule and very few of her stories deal with the famous and well-worn haunts that tend to show up in book after book.

I was particularly impressed with the stories emanating from the Ted Bundy killings. These stories were a little skimpy on haunting details but extremely interesting nonetheless. Given that the author's mother was a friend of Ted Bundy, Leslie would seem to be the perfect instrument to research and maybe publish an entire book dealing with any hauntings left by Bundy's rampage.

No matter if it deals with Bundy or not, I am looking forward to future ghost books by Leslie Rule. She has the talent and zeal to become one of the foremost writers in this field.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not great, not bad, October 7, 2005

By	Curious1 (Auckland NZ) - See all my reviews

The title says it all really. Not as much depth as some books, and makes good first time reading for anyone just starting out on this sort of thing. Each story gives a general overview, some witness accounts and maybe a picture. I've read worse and the writer is genuine in their research...I just wish there was more detailed information given. For people wanting some more indepth stories I'd recommend Brad Steiger's Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places or Eddie Burks and Gillain Cribbs Ghosthunter.