📚 Finished reading Ghost Hunter by Hans Holzer.
Hans Holzer was a parapsychologist and a ghost hunter. As well as a prolific author, having written over 120 books on this kind of subject. Perhaps most famously, he was involved in investigating the “Amityville Horror”, which of course there are more than a few films about now. He also hosted the TV show “Ghost Hunter” at one point.
This book sees him chronicle a few of his adventures into ghost hunting. The typical set up is that he’ll hear of some unexplained ghostly type phenomena; a person living in a home with weird noises or other more disturbing occurrences, that type of thing. He’ll go recruit a medium, and off they set to visit the location in order to hold some kind of seance.
The medium invariably falls into a trance whilst he, via the medium, tries to communicate with whatever ghostly presence. The hope is to resolve whatever the problem is that’s causing the spirit to feel inclined to annoy or scare the living humans around them. In general he reports being successful at this.
He wants us to believe he’s doing this in a scientific way, although some of his peers were sceptical. I don’t think it’s a book that’s going to change anyone’s mind about whether ghosts or ghostly experiences are “real”. But nonetheless it’s a fun series of somewhat spooky short stories, along with some commentary on his methods and the tremendous value he puts on mediums during such activities.
