Ghost Hunting

Title: Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from The Atlantic Paranormal Society
Author: Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Michael Jan Friedman
Original Publishing Date: 2007
Genre: Paranormal
Rating: B


While you have to take most ghost stories or ghost hunting books with a grain of salt, this one is completely different. Not only is it written by the founder of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) and therefore carries more credibility with that fact alone, but it is not written with the intent to thrill or scare the reader like so many other ghost related books. Instead, it presents the facts of each case, the homeowners' complaints, the research conducted by the TAPS crew, and the findings. Each case is presented in a well constructed scientific manner (with a little of the group's antics thrown in for entertainment value).

Jason and Grant, whom you may know from the Scifi Channel's Ghost Hunters, founded TAPS on the premise of trying to debunk the bogus claims of ghosts and other paranormal activity, while documenting and analyzing legitimately unexplainable phenomena. As Jason explains in the first couple of chapters, they do not buy into the theories that doors opening by themselves or bumps in the night automatically mean that a place is haunted. They go in to an investigation armed with common sense, sophisticated equipment and intuitive problem solving skills and try to figure out what natural forces could be causing the unusual activity. Many times they are able to point to an unanchored pipe or a loose door frame as a possible cause for the so-called ghostly activity and therefore dismiss it away with an alternative explanation. Other times, after testing every possible theory they can think of, they are left with no explanation for what could be causing the activity. Even then, they are reluctant to label the activity as "paranormal."

The book opens with Jason giving a brief synopsis of the personal experiences that eventually led him to found The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS as it is more commonly known. For anyone who is a fan of Ghost Hunters, this is particularly interesting considering Jason and Grant have both been very tight lipped about their experiences before TAPS. Whether or not Jason gives us the whole story is still unknown, but he certainly has opened up more in the book than he ever has on the show. He then goes into describing how he met Grant and how and why the decided to found TAPS. The next chapter is devoted to explaining the TAPS bylaws, their crew, theories, and equipment. Once the reader has an understanding of what they are trying to do (in case they didn't already know), the book dives into a chronology of cases that the TAPS crew investigated both on and off the screen.

I found most of these cases interesting and well written. There were a couple that left me wanting to know more, however. Jason is the primary "voice" in the retelling of these fascinating cases, but Grant throws his take in at the end of every case, just so we get an idea of what was going on in both of their heads. One of the things that I found exciting was that not only were we able to see cases that TAPS had investigated pre-Ghost Hunters, but Jason was able to tell the readers a little bit about what took place off-camera on the cases that were aired on Ghost Hunters.

I scored the book a B, because even though I would probably read it again and still enjoy it, I did feel like there could have been a bit more written about each case. Jason seems to rush through a lot of them. I would have liked to learn more about the clients, the histories of the buildings and homes they were investigating, the evidence itself, etc. Maybe there wasn't more to each case and anything that could have been added would have just been boring filler, I don't know. I just got a feeling like some of them were rushed. Other than that though, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the show and is a fan of TAPS.

I only hope that they decide to write a sequel, including a lot of their more recent cases! How fun would that be!