The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

Summary:
This book contains a collection of ghost encounters that span from the early 1900’s till the mid 2000’s. There are nine different categories that the author has separated the hauntings into. The first is a chronological collection of various ghost stories that occurred between 1900 and 2000. The stories in this section tend to be blurbs that don’t go into much detail but they do illustrate how the ghost story evolved over time.
The second section of the book covers the experiences of ghost hunters and goes into detail of their experiences and their efforts to expose those that were tricking the public. The third section covers aviation based ghost stories that mainly deal with events that happened during and after World show more War 2. The fourth section of the book deals with ghostly the encounters of journalists and much like section on ghost hunters, their efforts to reveal those that sought to deceive the public. The fifth, sixth and seventh sections cover supernatural tales from actors, authors, and those who had rather personal encounters with ghosts.
Section eight contains essays on the nature of ghosts and the final section, nine, contains an A to Z list of different types of entities along with various terms that are explained and defined.
My Thoughts:
This book was a little different than I thought it would be when I picked it up. This is not a book that really lends itself to being sat down and read in long stretches unless the reader is really interested in the subject. While the book is interesting and covers a broad period of time, quite a few of the stories are written very dryly. While this is the way they were written originally, by those that were trying to be scientific in their presentation, the style doesn’t really lend to a interesting read and can get in the way of the story. Good if you are hunting ghosts or are studying the paranormal.
Bad if the reader, like me, just wants to know the background of incidents and what happened during the different encounters. Despite that the book does a good job of presenting how the attitude toward the paranormal evolved over a century or so into what it is today. I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in learning more about the early modern history of paranormal investigation and how it evolved over time to how it is covered today. Just be prepared to drink some coffee when going through certain parts. m.a.c show less

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