Ghosts Of War [Paperback]

Jeff Belanger has an excellent ghostly web site and has written some very good ghost books but I'm afraid that this is not his best effort. His books are usually filled with first person eyewitness accounts and stories of ghost sightings that have occurred in the last few years that send cold chills up the reader's spine. There are stories like that in this book and those stories are excellent but all too often the author has decided to include stories that are just old legends and folk tales and in some cases where the ghost or ghosts have been sighted recently there are no first person accounts but instead just a passing and very vague note about ghostly sightings. This book would have in fact been much better if some of the chapters were left out altogether and among those are the chapters about the Gempei War, the Ottoman Wars, Edgehill Battlefield, Biggin Hill and Cassionbury Park. Unfortunately there are also other chapters that leave a lot to be desired but these five are among the worst.

Belanger usually does a superb job of imparting the history of the haunt without overdoing the history and forgetting the ghost and that balance between history and haunt is one of the things that normally make his books so good. Once again, there are stories in this book on which the author does a wonderful job of providing this balance but in too many instances he has let the history overwhelm the haunt. I realize that when one is dealing with locations as steeped in history as the locations chosen for this book it would be very hard to limit oneself when trying to write about what happened there but in one instance the story was all history with no ghost whatsoever and that is just uncalled for.

There are certainly good stories to be found in this book and many of the chapters are written with this author's usual talent for this kind of book. The stories about Fort Zachary Taylor, Andersonville and the Battle of Franklin for example are as well written as any ghost stories that I have ever come across. There is a reasonable amount of history and some very good recent eyewitness accounts in all three of these stories and that is the kind of documentation that I am used to finding in books from Jeff Belanger.

Despite its flaws this is still an above average ghost book. There are to be sure several really bad chapters but the really good chapters go a long way toward making up for the bad ones. This is not the work that I have come to expect from Mr. Belanger but then again I have come to expect near perfection from him and I don't suppose that that is fair. I have read ghost books that were far better than this one but then again I have read a lot of ghost books that were much worse.

This book can't make up its mind as to whether it is a book about ghosts or a book about military history. There are lots of details and descriptions of famous battle, which would be good as a separate book, but few of the historical battle have any tie in with first-person ghost experiences. There are a couple of good stories in the book, but most of them are vague references to "I didn't see anything myself, but people who worked here say they saw this......." Not boring, but not what it advertises itself to be. I'd read the other books in the series.

This book is incredible. I am not surprised since everything I have read from Jeff Belanger is awesome. If you have not had the opportunity to read any of Jeff's books, I would definately say its a must for people interested in the paranormal.