bookheaven | Entries tagged with true hauntings

The Van Meter Visitor: A True and Mysterious Encounter with the Unknown by Chad Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book for several reasons but first and foremost, they're willing to admit that this could be a hoax and looking for scientific reasons vs the paranormal (in spite of other reviews claiming the opposite) They present some other theories (the ultraterristrial is interest). They provide many of the original news articles from 1903 including the ones originally attempting to debunk the Visitor.

The Visitor was a man sized creature with bat like wings, a horn and let out a glow. The men of the town took shots at it. It hung around for a week give or take. Was it an alien? Was it from the mines? Was it a mutated animal (highly unlikely) Was it a hoax?

There isn't enough to say (as is often the case with these cryptid types) one way or the other, especially given the date of the event. It had Mothman like elements.

I got this from the authors at the Mothman festival. I'll stop by this year to see them again if they're there.

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Willows Weep: The Beginning by Dave Spinks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I met the author (I want to say it was at The Mothman Festival but it could have been one of the other paranormal cons I go to). Anyhow, Mr. Spinks is well known in the paranormal investigation realm and this book is about his investigation and current ownership of a particularly dark haunted location. His plans (as of this book) is to open Willows Weep to investigators as a sort of research lab.

The beginning of the book is the history of the house and its former owners and then the rest of it is about his and many other people's investigations, many of them seeming to corroborate each other. I don't want to go into all that happened there but I will hit a few things, some of which were a bit confusing to me (especially as someone who has been involved in paranormal investigations since the 80s)

I wanted to know more about what the former owner's plans had been for this house especially in the light of the history of the home. It has an unusual design and it also has an odd space under the home with a 'child's arm bone.' What bothered me here is why put it back and how do we know it belonged to a child and was there any investigation done?

The other bizarre (to me) thing was there was a suicide in the home and the man bled out in a chair and that chair is still there because the man's son sold the house lock stock and barrel to the former owner Mr. Spinks bought the place from. So what was her plan for it that she left a blood soaked recliner in this house?

One of the upshots of all of these investigations was the house might be a portal and there could be something demonic. I've never been here so I can hardly say but that was a topic of conversation at the last talk I was at how suddenly those two things are super popular as explanations. Have I ever encountered something I've felt wasn't a human haunting? Yes but in 40 years of doing this I can count those experiences on one hand. I'm not saying it's not but I am saying there is more investigation needed which is good since that seems to be the plan for Willows Weep

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A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts by Leanna Renee Hieber

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you're looking simply for a book on true hauntings and nothing more, I'll stop you here. This book isn't that. Yes, it has ghost stories some that could be true (such as that word applies to haunted places and ghosts) and others are most likely urban legends or made up out of whole cloth to cash in on the ghost tourism market. Instead this book looks at those stories through two lenses, one of historical context and the other a feminist context and this is what sets it apart.

At the end of the day, there a countless stories of women in white, cry baby bridges and women who have either lost a baby or killed it themselves, lost a love or destroyed it. They make up the bulk of the stories told in true haunting books and on ghost tours. I should know. I've been on so many across the world and read even further aboard than I've been able to travel. This is a fascinating look at why these stories impact us, why do women have a voice only after death in so many cases and the tricky line we toe using women's pain (and people of color or truly anyone's pain) as we commercialize the afterlife.

It's broken into different ghostly tropes, the mother, the fallen woman etc and looks at a few specific cases across the country, looking at what was happening with those women at that time and how/why these women were immortalized after death.

It was well worth the read. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC

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Entries tagged with true hauntings

The Van Meter Visitor: A True and Mysterious Encounter with the Unknown

Willows Weep: The Beginning

A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts

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