Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from The Atlantic Paranormal Society (Book Review)
Plot: The Atlantic Paranormal Society, also known as T.A.P.S., is the brainchild of two plumbers by day, paranormal investigators by night: Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. The duo can be seen on SciFi’s Ghost Hunters. Here you can read the stories of some of their most memorable investigations. Featuring both cases depicted on Ghost Hunters and earlier T.A.P.S. adventures never told before now, this frightening collection will challenge everything you thought you knew about the spirit world.
My Review: I don’t really review books much. But after reading this I really felt I had to say something. So, here is a reprint of what I recently wrote on Camp Blood’s Forum.
The first few chapters are a little interesting, they tell of different haunted locations that were not featured on the show, but its only 2-3 pages per case. I suppose for some there isn’t too much to go in depth with, but in a few of the stories they don’t continue on with the obvious…such as chapter 5.
Chapter 5 tells the story of a high rise apartment building that seemed very haunted – most likely from one apartment with satanic writing on the walls and floor. Residents of the 10th floor complained of many things. But one of the weirdest things was that golf balls would fall off the shelf in one apt. and form a perfect arrow pointing towards a bedroom. They tell the landlord not to follow the arrow. Then they go investigate, and the arrow forms before their eyes. They never say if they followed it or not!
A few times in the book they mention possession, and things like that, and the way its written and the things that they did or “think” just doesn’t seem to be the Jay and Grant from the show…Had they been this way on the show from the get go I’m not sure I would have believed them as much as I have. Its just some really weird stuff. I guess they’ve never spoken about stuff like that on the show, so I never thought they believed in some of these things. I guess you’d have to be there to really really believe right?
For instance. Jason and Grant have always said something major happened to them when they were younger, to get them into this field, but they wouldn’t talk about it. I believe Jason started to open up about it a little on the show, but he tells the story in the first chapter of this book. He was practicing Reiki and after 6 months of it, he started seeing ghosts. Sure, I don’t really know what that involves…it sounds a little like the film Stir of Echoes..but thats not the strange part. The strange part was then he meets a complete stranger who just walks up to him and tells him to eat olives to cure it. It just seems a little out there. But hey, if its the truth cool I guess.
Grant does not go into what happened to him to get him into the paranormal but he does in their next book (Seeking Spirits: The Lost Cases of The Atlantic Paranormal Society) and thats another “out there” story that makes me ask a lot of questions like #1 being where is all this evidence you captured, why not share it with the world…I’ll leave that for my review of that book….
One thing I did notice while reading, and thought it was rather odd, was that they used motion detectors, but never used them in the show. Also they go into the relationship with Brian a LOT. They don’t really fill us in too much about all the other members, mainly its the trouble with Brian.
Overall: Overall the book was sorta a dud. It featured mainly cases from the show. Why read the same stuff when you can watch it and see the evidence instead of reading about it? The longest chapters were towards the end…chapters that dealt with episodes from the show. So, you’ll probably only want to pick this up if you are a die hard fan of Ghost Hunters….or if you haven’t seen the show at all and enjoy ghost hunting books.
[rating:2.5/5]
