Welcome to the land of danger and intrigue, where individuals are legion and non-conformity is the norm. Join me as I explore the many facets of humanity and meet the scum of the earth and its angels incarnate.
Welcome to the land of danger and intrigue, where individuals are legion and non-conformity is the norm. Join me as I explore the many facets of humanity and meet the scum of the earth and its angels incarnate.
That said, on to the review!
Hawai'i's culture has been influenced by the cultures that accompanied each wave of immigrants, from the original Polynesian settlers to the Asian plantation workers to the contemporary influx of tourists from around the world. But perhaps no one culture has so heavily affected the Hawaiian cultural system of myths and superstitions quite so much as the Japanese system of folklore and legends. Author Glen Grant realizes this early on as he identifies how quickly and how easily the idea of "obake" has established itself in the fiftieth state. At least, he has uncovered more stories about Japanese hauntings in the islands than any other culture's and done more research on the connection between Japanese ghost stories and strange and unusual happenings in Hawai'i than from any other angle.
What impressed me most about this book isn't so much the stories themselves--interesting though the narration and presentation might be--but the fact that there is so much going on in Hawai'i that the general public, even life-long residents like myself, have little or no inkling about. For example, I've heard stories about ghosts haunting just about all the schools I've ever attended, from elementary all the way to college. I've listened to warnings about not taking raw meat up to the Pali Lookout. Yet as interested as I am in the supernatural, nothing that I've ever read or reviewed for Tomes of Shadowstalking has ever given me such a severe case of goosebumps--chickenskin--as this book did, especially because it drives home the fact that what we might consider superstitious beliefs in this modern day and age may well be a part of natural, daily life for others. Just read "Don't Step on my Grave: A Journey into Asian Terror" and "Kanashibari: An Encounter with a Choking Ghost" and you'll know exactly what I mean.
Reading Obake: Ghost Stories in Hawai'i has made me almost desperate to read Glen Grant's other books about ghosts and hauntings in Hawai'i. If you really want the full chickenskin effect, then don't do anything except read this book late at night when the house is absolutely quiet. I read this book for another reason and it gave me chickenskin during the day in an extremely well-lit room with people coming in and out! Now that's storytelling!
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