40 reviews for:

Chasing Ghosts: A Tour of Our Fascination with Spirits and the Supernatural

Marc Hartzman

3.57 AVERAGE

adriennethegozerian's review

4.0

funny informative mysterious medium-paced

sarahhatchet's review

4.0

informative mysterious slow-paced

carolibrary's review

3.75

dark informative mysterious medium-paced

myadventurewithbooks's review

2.0

fast-paced

shereadytoread's review

5.0

informative

hollywood's review

3.0

challenging informative mysterious slow-paced

horrorandscience's review

4.0

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I've read a lot of books about ghosts, death, the afterlife, and the supernatural and this one isn't anything new, really, but I did enjoy the way it was presented. It was written really well and included some fun photographs I really enjoyed. While I personally didn't learn anything new in this book, it would be a great book for those just getting into the topic and a great learning tool.

Thank you to NetGalley, Quirk Books, and Marc Hartzman for the chance to review this advanced copy. Chasing Ghosts releases on September 28th.

megandherbook's review

4.0

informative fast-paced

ceallaighsbooks's review

4.5

informative medium-paced

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“Where might we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater with our overzealous desire to make everything controllable?” asks Joanna Ebenstein, an author and the founder of Morbid Anatomy, an organization that explores the intersections between art, medicine, death, and culture. “This phenomenon still exists. We can doubt the veracity of the reports, but they didn’t just go away. We didn’t become rationalists and suddenly there’s no ghost sightings. It continues on… I often think, looking at the past, and the bulk of historical record, what are the odds that we’re the ones who are right and the whole rest of human history was wrong?… I see a lot of arrogance with people thinking that we’ve proven [ghosts] don’t exist. But we haven’t proven they don’t exist. We’ve only proven we can’t prove they exist. We don’t really know what the world is. We don’t know shit, and I love that.” 

 

TITLE—Chasing Ghosts: A Tour of Our Fascination with Spirits and the Supernatural 

AUTHOR—Marc Hartzman 

PUBLISHED—2021 

 

GENRE—nonfiction 

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—ghosts, death, human cultural history, psychology, pop culture, Western science, Spiritualism, haunted places 

 

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

PRESENTATION OF MATERIAL—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

BONUS ELEMENT/S—For a survey-type book, I found literally every sentence very interesting and thought that the balance between summary and a more in-depth exploration of various topics was really well done. 

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

 

I checked this book out from the library just for the bit on seances and then I ended up reading the whole thing. 😂 There are lots of great brief overviews of tons of information about humans’ relationships to and understanding of both ghosts and death through history, including ancient times, Spiritualism, and ghosts and technology. Then there’s a section on legendary haunted locations too that includes the Winchester House and the La Laurie Mansion *shiver* and others—even Gettysburg! 

 

Hartzman’s writing style was really good considering the sensationalist nature of the topic. I thought he tread the line between objective researcher and true believer incredibly well, bringing up a lot of really great points, and not trying to make any sweeping statements that he didn’t support with his process. The one hiccup was that I thought that the discussion of shamanistic practices of world cultures using 1) the part tense and 2) a definite mocking tone was definitely no good, but other than that I thought the author’s treatment of the material was very thoughtful and reasonably and clearly presented. 

 

“I have found in my experience that learned scientific men are the most easily duped of any in the world.” — Dr. Richard Hodgson, 1897 

 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 

 

TW // a somewhat disrespectful discussion of shamanistic practices (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!) 

 

Further Reading— 

• From Here to Eternity, by Caitlin Doughty
• Ghostland, by Colin Dickey—TBR
• Ghostland, by Edward Parnell—TBR
• Ghost Stories of Gettysburg, volumes I-VIII

bookfay's review

3.0

informative mysterious medium-paced