In our house, it used to be that on Wednesday nights there was no debating what would be on television. Since the first episode, I’ve been a huge fan of the television show Ghost Hunters.  The show focuses on one of the paranormal investigation groups in this country, The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS as they have become known.  TAPS has gotten a well-deserved reputation for their work in the paranormal field.  This is largely because the way they approach investigating paranormal activity is to try to disprove it by finding reasonable explanations for the activity reported and they will only deem a location haunted if they can find no other explanations for the evidence they collect.

I was a bit underwhelmed by the first book written by the founders of TAPS, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson.  Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from the Atlantic Paranormal Society was a collection of stories from both before the television show began airing and from cases seen on the show as well.

The second book, Seeking Spirits: The Lost Cases of The Atlantic Paranormal Society, follows a formula similar to the first book, but has improved.  Almost all of the cases retold in this book are ones that will be unfamiliar to those who religiously watch the show, like me.  That was the one main issue I had with the last book and by eliminating the cases seen on television, it really feels like I’m getting more bang for the buck.

Seeking Spirits: The Lost Cases of The Atlantic Paranormal Society is told mainly from the perspective of Grant Wilson, with input from Jason Hawes.  This is the reverse of the last book.  This allows Grant to tell the story of the paranormal experience(s) that motivated him to get into paranormal investigation.  The story is an intriguing one and defies explanation in many ways.  It also leads to the crux of how you will approach this book.  If you believe Jason and Grant and find them credible, the stories will seem like true tales of the paranormal.  If you’re someone who thinks it’s all a gimmick, I doubt there will be anything here to change your mind.

Micheal Jan Friedman, a name familiar to those who are science fiction fans, is also listed as an author.  I credit him for the terrific flow of the book as I found it to be an easy read and devoured it waiting in an airport and on the plane home.

The cases in the book run the gamut from those easily debunked to the ones that are a puzzle.  Some have a paranormal angle and others have another, more earthly explanation.  It’s interesting to read how they approach a case and try to decipher what is happening if there is a logical explanation for it.  Sometimes even figuring out the explanations for things when they are paranormal is interesting as well.  There’s a case with a woman who is seeing a little girl in a house she grew up in.  Although the way it was written, I had an idea what was happening before it was revealed in the book, I am sure it was something that took a good deal of figuring out on their part.  There’s a case where a man is hearing voices and the way they methodically try and figure out what’s happening is really interesting.

Other paranormal cases run the gamut from residual haunting where it’s like a tape player is playing over and over again to cases of possession.  There are many cases that seem to be solved by conducting a cleansing of the home and it really surprised me to a degree.  The investigations rely on scientific evidence and although they might talk about how they feel in a location, they usually refrain from using feelings as a basis for deciding a place is haunted.  Instead of paranormal activity raising more questions about faith, it seems to actually boost belief that there’s more that happens after death than we realize.  Life energy seems to be a force that we genuinely don’t understand and it would seem that groups like TAPS are making inroads into gaining more knowledge as well as making contact with these energies lurking around us.

I liked the way Seeking Spirits: The Lost Cases of The Atlantic Paranormal Society also seemed to coach people who are interested in conducting investigations for themselves.  I have a couple of groups I’ve gone on investigations with locally, and this part speaks well to anyone who’s new to the field or looking to break into it.  They discuss the instruments and how they function much more than the repetitive sound bites I’ve seen on the television show.

Included in the book is a section with pictures.  I wasn’t tremendously impressed by them although some are interesting and left me scratching my head.  There’s a number of The Spalding Inn, an Inn in Whitefield New Hampshire (not far from where I live) that Grant and Jason have purchased.  In that respect, the way the book closes might seem a bit self-serving, but it’s the only case in the book that will be familiar to those who have seen the television show.  The rest are cases that haven’t been publicized before. I imagine many of the names and other identifying details have been changed.

If you’re someone who’s intrigued by the paranormal, I think you’ll really enjoy these, particularly if you enjoy the television show as well.  People who don’t believe will see the stories as just ghost tales and over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s little that can be done to convince them, short of them having a decisive experience for themselves.  I felt the book was well-paced and gave good descriptions of the cases to give the reader a feel for what the investigations were like.


4 1/2 stars just cause the pictures were disappointing.