Title: The House Where Evil Lurks
Author: Brandon Callahan
Genre: Non-Fiction, True Haunting, Ghosts
Age Group: Adult
Rating: 2 stars
Purchase: Amazon
This is not a Hollywood tale; it is a true account of the most malevolent home that Brandon Callahan and his team have ever investigated. A former funeral parlor, the demon-infested property had a dungeon and a sinister past that included murder, suicide, and vile rituals.
When Brandon Callahan answered the homeowner’s plea for help, he had no idea what he was getting himself into. A monstrously tall entity in a dark-hooded cloak moves through the embattled home it considers his domain. An expressionless phantom follows one of the investigators home. Innocent bystanders and paranormal investigators alike are plagued by physical attacks and bleed-through phenomena: inhuman laughter, bloody scratches, disembodied shrieks and growls, horrific nightmares, and escalating threats. The House Where Evil Lurks is Brandon Callahan’s terrifying true story.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from The House Where Evil Lurks. The description seemed a little over the top, but I’m a huge fan of true haunting books, so I gave it a shot anyway. This is supposedly the author’s most terrifying case to date. It failed to scare me, though.
Let’s start with the book’s first major flaw – it focuses too much on the author, instead of on the house and on what’s happening. Instead of focusing on this one investigation, we get more info about the author’s journey, how he became a paranormal investigator, and so on. By the time we get to the actual meat of the story, any potential fear is gone.
The writing is dry, dull, repetitive, and could use another thorough edit. Now, this is an ARC, so a lot of errors can still get fixed by the time the book is released, but for now, the writing is distraction. I kept having to reread sentences. The story lacked continuity as well – sometimes it jumped from one chapter to the other, without making much sense, or without the two chapters or hauntings connecting in any way.
Overall, I wasn’t scared. I was, in fact, bored. We find out next to nothing about the history of the house, the investigators believe every answer they get through EVP (although the general consensus on EVP is that it can’t always be trusted as a resource), the house doesn’t seem all that scary, and there’s no solution at the end. Now, this is real life, so I understand some things can’t be solved. But they don’t even try. In the end, they decide to leave the case open, just because.
To say I’m dissapointed in this book would be an understatement. With a title like that, I expected a lot more.
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