| BOOK REVIEW (This review has also been published at www.701.com) |
| GHOST STORIES OF ALBERTA - BARBARA SMITH Book Review by Diane Wells |
| Wow - it looks like they could use a "Ghostbuster" or two amidst the Badlands! If one is to believe this proliferation of tales alleging the presence of supernatural entities, it would not be unreasonable to expect hordes of people to be either moving toward or away from this particular Canadian province to alternately embrace or escape from the phenomena. What has always eluded me is the reason why people are so fearful of ghosts (and corpses, too, for that matter) in the first place. After all, the former may "appear" animated but do not have a physical body to inflict damage, while the latter definitely have physical bodies but are not animated. So, what it all boils down to is how we, as people of the land of the living, react to each of them. That being said, while I have personally never seen or felt the presence of a disembodied spirit, I am not prepared to discount the theory that some people are more "receptive" to these encounters than others. Just as billions of people staunchly believe in the existence of an eternal deity without having any concrete scientific proof, who is to say these ghosts were/are not just as "real"? I have certainly had enough psychic moments to make me wonder whether there really is another astral plane of existence that has barely been tapped in terms of scientific research. Extraterrestrial encounters also seem to be too widespread to be completely ignored as well. The stories themselves (62 in all) are mercifully brief and concise and are categorized mostly by city (Edmonton and Calgary, in particular), but there are naturally several with an aboriginal slant to them, due to the common perception of ghosts arising from desecrated native burial grounds. There isn't really any single phantasmagoric occurrence that stands out from any other, as most of them are "territorial" hauntings - locations where they were reputed to have worked or resided during their physical existence. In truth, to a skeptic like myself and one who has never visited or lived in Alberta, the accounts become quite tedious and predictable early on in the book. To readers who have already confirmed their belief in the spirit world, this testimonial collection will certainly reinforce that belief and, no doubt, lead to other regional accounts. If I were reading about hauntings closer to home, in the Toronto, Ottawa or Hamilton area, my curiosity would have been more highly piqued, perhaps leading to a personal investigation. |
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