M. L. Woelm

Llewellyn Books continues in their fine tradition of offering a book contract to every slightly daffy woman who has ever heard something go bump in the night. This book was the paper equivalent of listening to a beloved but long-winded aunt discuss the ghost she thinks lives in her attic, though that is sort of unfair because our beloved aunt would not sit there and read from her diary in which she recorded the events of several decades worth of very understated haunting.

Marlene has a husband Paul, who reads like an utter jerk of a human being and whose continual dismissal of his wife wore very thin after 10 or so pages, a cruddy house she lived in for decades, and a couple of kids. She was also haunted by what she thinks is the ghost of a little boy who died in the house. 276 pages of what can only be described as the occasional mist, unexplained noise and objects moved around from time to time. Really. The haunting was about as scary as living with a few cats.

And Woelm's storytelling technique of regurgitating every tiny paranormal event does not help the tedium. In all candor, I just began to scan around page 100 because this book was less interesting than a series of blog entries from a young woman who is certain that the noise she hears just cannot be the wind.

So, yeah, this book is in keeping with the trend of low-quality reads that Llewellyn has been cranking out for the last five or so years. I also hate panning this book because the author photo for the book shows the sort of woman whom I would prefer to hug than dismiss. Her and her little dog. She just seems adorable, you know? So this sort of hurts.

Though, perhaps you should read this book because if nothing else, it will make you appreciate the doctored narratives of hauntings, like The Amityville Horror. Woelm's excruciatingly honest story may have been startling to her, but it doesn't translate into the sort of fear-inducing page-turner that justifies publishing an entire book about one family's very mild, mostly uninteresting haunting.… (plus d'informations)