Reviews: e-books and audiobooks on the paranormal, hoarders and heroic librarians
A level-headed sceptic questions and analyses every scrap of purported paranormal evidence; journalist and TV host Alison Stewart lifts the lid on America’s hoarders
The Evolution of a Paranormal Investigator
by Bill Heiland
Amazon Digital Services (e-book)
2.5/5 stars
It would be easy to ridicule Bill Heiland, ask him who he’s gonna call, and so on. With all the enthusiasm of the passionate amateur in a field overgrown with spoofs, frauds, confidence tricksters and Hollywood hams, he’d be entry-level target practice. But credit him with being a level-headed sceptic determined to question and analyse every scrap of purported evidence he finds to, in effect, give paranormal investigation a good name. Addressing the “personal journey and experiences” that have followed his own blood-freezing spirit-world encounter, Heiland describes numerous incidents that guarantee maximum spinal shiver: the singing of an unseen, ghostly church choir, voices distinctly heard in graveyards, an eerie green light in a basement where a mother and children perished, shady figures walking past mirrors. His fund of anecdotes from “haunted” locations seems limitless, but Heiland is not a desperate believer in search of his own TV show; so he surprisingly maintains that, despite having recorded and rigorously reviewed many hundreds of hours of video and sound files, he has captured “less than three minutes of footage and audio” he believes is beyond the ability of science to explain. So is the truth really out there?