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by Hans Holzer 
Good introduction to Holzer's work on supernatural entities
This book contains cases published elsewhere, from the beginning to middle portions of Holzer's career. Many have criticized Holzer for his breezy style, his flair for dramatics, and his love of the spotlight, but in truth he is a dedicated investigator of the paranormal who used the tools available to him to investigate haunted places, and help free those souls trapped on this side of the veil. Not incidentally, he also brought peace to those who were unwilling hosts to these unhappy creatures. Mediumship, his preferred method of interacting with the spirit world, has been attacked as lending itself to forgery or misinterpretation, but Holzer is sincere in his efforts, and combines his love of history and his passion for the paranormal to verify, as best he can, that the ghosts he claims to have encountered do indeed walk the earth. His methods were the most objective available at the time when Holzer began to study the phenomena in the 1950's. There is no new material here, the book's contents having been culled from his previous works, but it does provide the reader with an understanding of Holzer's scope and approach. The book is flawed in that it misses out on the opportunity to have Holzer speak on these particular cases after all this time (most of them are from books published in the 1960s)--do the ghosts of Whaley House still walk, for example? Revision and new commentary on works previously is the most important reason for the republication of works, after all. This collection comes across as if neither the editor nor the author knew the purpose of its publication: neither did the public, apparently, judging by the numbers of them one finds at used bookstores. Still, Holzer is the Carl Sagan of his field, making his subject matter accessible to the educated layperson. Future generations will look back on his work as we do on the works of those earlier scientists who made observations on material they could not completely analyze, for lack of proper equipment or paradigms; his works will also provide a rich resource for those who wish to go ghost hunting themselves. This book, then, is recommended for those who are just beginning to study the paranormal: the cases he studies here are classics of the field, and his bright conversational style is sure to entertain even as it informs. |
