Book Review: Holy Ghosts by Gary Jansen

Holy Ghosts or How a (Not So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night by Gary Jansen

Gary Jansen is a writer and publisher in New York who had an extremely colorful year in the 2000s when he finally decided to deal with a problem in his house. The house is over a hundred years old and his parents bought it when he was five. It was a fixer-upper that had a lot of creaky parts and some colorful history. He lived in the house all the way up to his marriage in 1999. He wound up buying the house, somewhat reluctantly, a few years into the marriage. It helped his parents and got them out of her parents' house. In 2007, he started experiencing weird phenomena, especially in his son Eddie's room. He'd feel an electric shock go up his spine, as if he stepped on an exposed wire. The house still creaked. Occasionally he and his wife would see things out of the corners of their eyes. Soon, Eddie didn't want to sleep in his room. With an increase in odd activity and a flood of memories of childhood oddities, including his mom's instance that there was a woman in the front room, he started researching ghosts both in secular writings and in Catholic theology in an effort to figure out what to do. 

His story, which is true, is full of odd and spooky moments as he relates his predicament. It's also a nice look at people who take the existence of ghosts seriously (both Catholic and non-Christian), a group Jansen did not initially belong to. He writes well and gives a lot of history of his area and his family, making him a very sympathetic person. Plus, who doesn't worry for a family plagued by odd events that can't be explained rationally? The resolution is unexpected and a bit anti-climactic, but very satisfying.

Recommended. This is no sensationalistic diatribe, just an honest story.