The Haunted Encounters Series

• Haunted Encounters: Departed Family and Friends by Dorothy McChonachie
• Haunted Encounters: Real-Life Stories of Supernatural Experiences by Dorothy McConachie (ed.)
• Haunted Encounters: Personal Stories of Departed Pets by Mitchel Whitington
• Haunted Encounters: Ghost Stories from Around the World by Ginnie Siena Bivona (ed.)

There are ghost stories in my family. After my mother’s Aunt Bessie died, my mother got a phone message from the receptionist. My grandmother had called. My mother asked the receptionist if she were sure. The receptionist said yes, the person asked for her and said it was her mother. The message was "everything is fine." My grandmother had been dead over 30 years.

My mother, not usually one to be interested in the supernatural, relayed this story to me very matter-of-factly. Her mother had called to tell her Aunt Bessie was there in the afterlife and fine. Another 20 years later, my daughter asks how I am so sure that she will be ok when she dies, and I tell her the same story in the same matter-of-fact way.

The stories in these four books are like that. While a few have too pat a tale to feel "true," most of them are the types of ghost stories people experience: short unexplained happenings that seem to be a ghost. Sometimes lights, sometimes shadows. While a skeptic could debunk many, if not all, of them just on the facts given, they make for good reading and the occasional shiver.

Each book is a collection of stories by different writers. Each writer has a bio and a picture at the end. Many of them have websites through which the reader can access more of the writer’s work. This touch puts the collection above many others in the genre. Not only does it provide an introduction to writing otherwise unknown, it brings the writers to life, adding to the believability of the tales.

Article Author: Justene Adamec

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