Lee Strong

Anatomy of A Haunting: The Nightmare on Baxter Road by Lee Strong
5 Stars

From The Book:
Imagine that you’ve inherited a house of spirits. Now imagine that the house wants you dead.

For Jon and Carlie Summers, the nightmare begins when they move into an inherited home in rural Iowa. Leaving behind their busy lives in Chicago, Jon and Carlie are dragged into a horrifying spiral of violent dreams, illnesses, and possessions. Uncovering a vast evil hidden for decades in crates of buried journals, show more Jon and Carlie are forced to relive the sinister history of the house and its legacy of abuse, denial, and obsession.

"Anatomy of a Haunting" is a terrifying true story about one house and its inhabitants who have been pushed to the brink of insanity and death. Through interviews and exhaustive research into the 150-year-old McPherson house, author Lee Strong delves into the history of the haunting and paints a nightmarish picture of one couple’s descent into supernatural madness.

My Views:
I am a sucker for a good ghost story or a haunted house tale. This one was supposedly non-fiction so it was all the better. Do ghost exist? I don't really know and I'm not at all sure, in spite of my enthusiasm for the stories, that I really want to know. The author believes it and I'm sure that Carlie Summers believes it as it seems did most of the small Iowa town close to Des Moines. What the book will do that I'm absolutely sure of is give you cold chills and make you sit with your back against a wall to read it. Don't look over you shoulder under any circumstances. I have always wondered why when/if someone encounters a situation such as the Summers did...why in Heaven's name don't they just get out? This book provided hours of enjoyment but also failed to answer my question. show less

I needed a quick dose of ERB and chose to reread, after many decades, BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR. This time, however, in the "Restored Edition" by ERB, Inc [2021]. The edition contains many fine extras for the ERB collector, including original maps, letters between ERB and astronomer Prof J.S. Donaghho regarding the plausibility of ERB's Omos Star system, and more.

I followed this with Lee Strong's first ERBverse sequel A SOLDIER OF POLODA, that I found a strong entry that, in many aspects, is show more arguably better and even more ERB-like than the original tales.
In essence, the tale is an ERB interplanetary romance and a military SF adventure story, incorporating the foundational elements of ERB's original two short novels, but expanding the geographical map, the histories, and the cultures of the nations and peoples of Poloda. There are cameos by old beloved ERB characters while the main tale remains focused on the new ones, bringing the story of the tragedy of "the planet of eternal war" to a satisfactory conclusion.

The only thing missing was an accompanying expanded map of Poloda. 😉 While incomplete due to the lack of precise geolocations for a number of the new Polodan cities Lee brings to life -- and death -- in his story, I was sufficiently motivated to quickly update the existing map with which we are familiar and offer it here [https://www.facebook.com/groups/erbnews/?multi_permalinks=9688215834576136&notif_id=1742156524103931&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif] show less

Lee Strong adds an enjoyable all-new story set in Pellucidar far from the familiar lands of the Empire of David Innes. Strong captures the beauty and savage wonder of ERB's hollow earth along with its prehistoric peoples and more ancient fauna, and he provides plenty of epic action sequences.

This story set in the 1920s proposes that Innes and Perry's discovery of Pellucidar is, unlike in ERB's stories of the Hollow Earth, not a guarded secret but knowledge shared (accidentally or no) with show more the outer world, and both Theodore Roosevelt of America and Stalin of Russia are staking and expanding territorial claims to the north of Innes' "Empire of Pellucidar."

While no direct conflict between these three powers occurs in this tale of a Russian scientist/soldier abducted by a bird-riding tribe that he then defeats, and, through a succession of battles, turns his defeated enemies into allies to create a small Empire of his own, the whole premise is sufficiently in variance to ERB's tales of Pellucidar and from our own outer earth history, that I consider this work an imaginative "alternate history" tale of Pellucidar.

I found the work entertaining, but the novel ends with numerous unresolved plot threads. I hope Strong will follow these up in a sequel, but it has been seven years (2018) since the work's publication. show less

whether the "based on true events" part is true or not, i don't really care. it was a well put together book that had a depth that crossed over centuries. the two main people are very engaging while they tell their tale. the main villain of the story is even understandable. a few things i find hard to believe, but either way it was a pretty good spooky read.