Maureen Wood

I'm FINALLY finished with this book and I can say I couldn't be more glad.

Sorry to the authors, but I felt like this book, to me, was a big disappointment. It also goes to show that one should not, literally, 'judge a book by it's cover'. I picked up this book because of the way the cover drew me in, promising '365 True Tales of the Spectral, Supernatural, and... Just Plain Scary!'. However, I can say that the 'scary' and 'interesting' stories were such a select few, I could count them on one hand. (Or maybe two hands. Maybe. I can't really remember, to be honest.)

I had been hoping to give myself a good scare, but it had been mediocre at best. And that, coming from me, should definitely be saying something; coming from a person who has sworn off zombie movies (and practically any horror movie, to be honest) after watching 28 Days Later in the cinema.

From a personal opinion, it may be because almost all the stories involve speculation, and not personal experiences (there was only one story in which author Maureen Wood personally experienced, but even that was not given a detailed account). All of the stories involve mere hearsay, and though I don't doubt that some of them just may be true, it's just not enough to pique my interest. I daresay that the only reason I even finished it was because I don't like reading books and abandoning them halfway through.

On the bright side though, if you're someone who's looking for some not-so-scary ghost stories, this just may be the book for you.… (meer)

This book covers a range of ghost stories from the distant past to a few modern day occurrences such as Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, and David Carridne. The stories in this book are only a page or so long if that. There are a few that the book goes into more detail with, but even those are not long. Due to this format this is more of what I would call a “coffee table” read than anything else. I found plenty of interesting stories but ended up wanting more information on most of them. Also due to the short length of the stories after awhile I noticed that the book tends to refer to most ghosts as the grey lady, the white lady or the man in black or something along those lines. It’s not really a bad thing it just gets annoying after awhile and makes it seem like quite a few stories where added for padding.
This is not a bad book by any means; it kept me interested enough to finish it in about two days. There’s a good chance that if you have heard about it on TV it’s in here somewhere. Bobby Mackey, the Haunting in Connecticut, The Amityville Haunting, the presidents ghosts, The Bell Witch Cave, The five Diablo’s of the Alamo and many more. Like I said it’s a good book if you are looking for some ghost stories to pass the chilly autumn nights with or just like to read books about ghosts. Just expect that you are going to be doing some googling if you want to find out the whole story.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good ghost story book or those that like their ghost stories to the point without a whole lot of detail. m.a.c… (meer)