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Ghostland

An American History in Haunted Places
Nov 04, 2018VaughanPLMichael rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
This book followed the trend I noticed with The Toronto Book of the Dead. Although it talks about hauntings and Ghosts across America, its real goal is to dispel the mystical and introduce the cultural and historical realities of the landscape. In some ways, this works, in that it provides context to the myths and legends of these places, but in other ways this also becomes a bit of a bore to read. Picture this: You're at a party and you're telling the story of this haunted house you heard about as a kid. You've got a captive audience, many of whom have even heard of the house themselves, and once you're done the story you're ready to hear other people's experience with the house. Before anyone can add their own two cents about the house and their experience with it, this guy comes over and tells you how you're wrong about the house, how the house never even really existed, and how he's done all this research to show how the tale was made up because of a racist family. It's important information, and makes for an interesting point, but when I came into the conversation, I was hoping to talk about Ghosts and Hauntings. Not to be 'well, actually'ed to death. So overall, I would have given this book a much lower score than 2 stars, but because the information was interesting, and it was fun to see how many of these stories came to be, I feel the author was too set on showing his own grey mater than really talking about the origin of the story. I would have liked a bit more on the mythos of these stories and how they grew, instead of how they're inaccurate. Skip if you're hoping for a spooky romp through America's history or their haunted places. Definitely read if you love conversations that get interrupted with an 'Well, Actually..."