The Field Guide to North American Hauntings: Everything You Need to Know About Encountering Over 100 Ghosts, Phantoms, and Spectral Entities

W. Haden Blackman itemizes over 100 haunted sites and their resident specters, focusing on haunted houses, haunted vessels, haunted cemeteries, and haunted sites in nature--from the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego (where Kate Morgan, killed on Thanksgiving Day in 1892, now appears in a black lace dress and makes strange choking noises) to Franklin's Haunted Orchard (where a foreign-born peddler was killed and buried under an apple tree in 1759, and where apple trees have continued to this day to produce blood-stained blossoms and blood-streaked apple pulp).

Blackman intends his guide, however, to be more than just another ghoulish anthology. If you want to find and interact safely with ghosts, you need to know where to go, what to look for, and how benign the ghosts are. For each site, along with a full narrative and supernatural history, Blackman includes its address and whereabouts, the number of ghostly residents, their identities, and the type of ghostly activities that have been observed. He tells what their demeanors are (their personalities; propensities for mischief, violence, or both; and attitudes toward the living), and the likelihood of encountering the spirit or ghostly phenomenon while visiting. A chapter on ghost hunting provides worthwhile tips for anyone wishing to avoid, cope with, or encounter a spectral presence, and the appendices--with sample questionnaires for ghost witnesses, sample questionnaires for ghosts, a glossary, and listings by state and province--round out the practical nature of Blackman's guide. But even if you haven't the slightest interest in searching out ghost haunts, the book is worth it for the sensational stories alone. --Stephanie Gold