Book Review: The Haunted Southland: Ghosts of Southern California by Richard Senate

The Haunted Southland: Ghosts of Southern California by Richard Senate

Richard Senate and his wife Debbie have been hunting ghosts in southern California for decades. This book tells tales from their research and from personal experiences at real places. Sometimes they feel cold spots or uneasy feelings, occasionally they hold seances which are recorded in the book. The stories bring out the interesting and colorful history of the area from the time of the Spanish missions up to the present day. In 1855 the Federal Government brought a bunch of camels to the Mojave Desert to improve transportation. The camels were unruly and one soldier was dragged off into the desert by a camel he was tied onto to "help" him to ride. They were never recovered and there have been reports of a ghost camel and rider in the desert!

Like most honest paranormal investigations, there aren't any really terrifying or dangerous moments in the book, nor is anything so ironclad that it will convert a skeptic into a believer. If you're in southern California and interested in checking out haunted places, this is a good resource for locations and what to expect. And it has a lot of interesting, obscure stories from southern California's history.