Karen G. Harvey

This short book held a lot of sparkling potential when I looked at it's title. I haven't been to St. Augustine for over ten years now, but the memory of it never leaves you when you visit. In fact, when my friend was itching for a new vacation spot years ago, I encouraged her onto this small town with it's rich history, and now every year she has her heart set on going back, again and again to relive.

This old city is filled with legends, ghost stories, and tours. I never took a tour - my parents weren't into that and they are who I traveled with before, but my best friend jumped that wagon big time and has tons of pictures and stories to show for it.

While the book held a lot of potential, it was only average in its telling. Instead of chapters filled with history and details about particular ghosts or scenes, it's broken into paragraphs - sometimes only a few sentences, from ghost stories, kind of like a checklist of whatever the author could think of to quickly jot down. The inconsistent telling of the sometimes misbehaving apparitions fell a little short because of this.

Some of the chapters catered to themes, such as Spiritual animals, which read less believably than the rest and not as interesting as I figured. An actual solidified chapter following a small group and different theories existed in 'Spiritualism', which told me some stuff I never knew about these kinds of things.

There is even a chapter on smell, and one on sounds, all relating to haunted experiences around St. Augustine. I was hoping the book would feature scenes in the tours and stories about them, but I think it could have done more there. I am going to loan this to my friend, who enjoys going when she can, as she'd probably recognize some of these locations.

There aren't any color photographs (that would have been great), but there were some creative enough drawings, and one or two black and white photos of spirits caught on film.

I've never seen a ghost, so I won't claim they exist (or don't.) But either way, a book like this is interesting enough, especially if it's set in such a glorious town that I myself can't wait to set foot in again. Long live St. Augustine.… (meer)