by J.B. Doyle

Created on: August 05, 2009   Last Updated: August 09, 2009

I'm a fan of both Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International. Many of the places the teams go are historical, and interesting in themselves. New and interesting equipment is utilized in searches for paranormal activity. I like watching the latest technological advances I see on the show. Thanks to these folks, there are now ghost hunting groups everywhere. I've even considered contacting one of the local groups to observe a ghost hunt first hand.

Are you eager to take a dip in the ectoplasmic waters of ghost hunting? Or are you more interested in brief rehashings of old episodes of Ghost Hunters? I'm afraid the latter is all you'll get from Ghost Hunting by Jason Haws and Grant Wilson. Well, that's not quite true. You will get to read a wee bit of information about why the duo got into ghost hunting, and you'll read plenty of Hawes bashing former TAPS member Brian Harnois.

The writing is rather bland, but the good news is that each chapter is so short that you won't fall asleep reading it. The first chapter explains a little about the equipment used on the show and the philosophy behind the methods they use. From that point on, Hawes sums up previous cases in a couple of pages, and Wilson gets a paragraph or so at the end of each chapter.

Ghost Hunting could have been a better book, had the episodes been explained more fully, and gone into depth about the equipment used, had the events that were edited out of the final cut been covered more extensively, and had we been given the history of the places that were investigated. What you get are short three to five page outlines of what happened on earlier Ghost Hunter episodes. There are a few pages covering investigations that weren't on television, but not enough to make purchasing the book worthwhile.

I just can't bring myself to recommend the book to any level ghost hunter or reader of supernatural non-fiction. There's not enough detail on equipment to learn anything about their use in ghost hunting; the vast majority of cases were more thoroughly covered on the television episodes. Other than realizing that Hawes harbors resentment towards Harnois, don't find out much about the individual members themselves. You can be the biggest Ghost Hunters fan in the world and still be disappointed in this book. Not one of the avid fans I know has been happy with the book.

If you want something with the TAPS name on it, skip the book and buy a t-shirt.

Sorry Grant. Sorry Jason. I still love the show.

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