From Book to Video

Wow, did I ever get some fantastic news! My little book has moved into video!

Some resourceful guys (plus a girl and a dog) have made actual videos of a few of the places I wrote about in my book Ghosts of Southeast Kansas. The main producer seems to be Alexm141, and in both of the videos I found, the intrepid investigators risk life and limb to venture into restricted and/or dangerous territory to find signs of what the stories in my book discuss. Here's one of the videos:

My photographer friend Cherilyn, who also took the fantastic photo for the book's front cover, found this video on YouTube and its counterpart. Thanks Cherilyn, and thanks to Alexm141, too, for the publicity. My book is shown at the beginning of each video, and I could not be more pleased! They even rescue a turtle off the highway in the video about Lover's Leap. So brave!

Who knew others besides myself would find the history and hauntings of such a rural area so compelling? I'm kind of sad I don't live in Kansas anymore, after seeing the two videos. I really adored researching that book, meeting all the eyewitnesses, investigating all over the countryside...

I'm so glad I found this! I hope Alexm141 produces some more videos just like it, too.

Thoughts about Ghosts?

I'm writing a press release today for a new book I'm planning to research, one on ghost stories of Western Washington (State)... but several glassy-eyed responses lately have left me wondering: Is there a huge gulf between people who love ghost stories (obsessively watching "Ghost Hunters" or "Haunted History") and people who would rather act as if ghosts couldn't possibly really exist and who believe that all the people who've seen them are really just insane?

One particularly religious friend told me he believed that ghosts were the signs of demonic possession. A person, while alive, became possessed by a demon, and when that person died, the demon remained to haunt the house. So, if your grandpa haunts a house you now live in, that's a sign that your relative was possessed by a demon while he was alive, and his soul was destroyed. And that demon is now sitting around, waiting to possess you too. I can see why he'd think my stories were creepy.

What do you think? Would you read a book about ghosts, or do they give you such a high level of heebie-jeebies that you couldn't stand to hear a ghost story at a campfire before you go to bed? Are they just bunk to you? Stupid? Too frightening? Too sinister? What do you think they are? Would you be tempted to read it? Tempted to burn it? Tempted to read and then burn it?