With the sheer number of ghost hunting shows that are littering the television landscape these days, not to mention in the movies, its nearly impossible for this book not to exist. It was only a matter of time. That being said, there is no doubt a need for a book like this in the market. While not a die hard Ghostbuster myself, the genre is part of my chosen areas of speciality. Also, as it was produced by a local small publisher and had several of my favorite authors – several of which were local – the choice for me to pick it up was an easy one.

The strongest element of this anthology in my opinion was the writing. I knew I would enjoy it because the first story in the book was a short story revolving around one of the characters in Blood Groove by Alex Bledsoe. Blood Groove ranks as one of my top picks for contemporary vampire fiction, so my excitement for the story was a given. A with many of the great stories tied into a series, this is one that you can read without having read the novels without interfering with your enjoyment of the series.

Even though the first story was my favorite of the anthology, that didn’t stop me from continuing on with the other ten. This included an offering from Georgia Beaverson, a local author, that gave us a look at a non-traditional ghost hunter. In fact her young boy with skills at capturing ghosts gives us an offering that is somewhere between a middle grade and a young adult short story. It was also filled with darker tones without being too adult or too scary.

Without going into every story in the book, allow me to mention one more of the tales within its pages. Partially because the tone of this story is directly along the lines of what I was expecting from this book, and also because the author is an occasional contributor at our writing group and we support our locals. Bill Bodden’s story gives us a look into a group of paranormal investigators that is part Ghostbusters and part Paranormal Activity. The tone and suspense of the tale does more than tell the reader a story, after reading it twice and sitting in on a public reading in Madison once, it really took me on a trip. I felt the anxiety the characters were with each reading, which made me care about them and the outcome of the story.

Having described three very different types of stories, I come to my next point of praise for the book – the editing. This mainly is attributed to story order. While nothing can ever be truly perfect, story placement wasn’t a spot you could note for improvement. Each tale flowed along a path in a sense of a natural progression, an evolution of sorts. It all gave it a rather organic feel.

The organic nature of the story order gave me a rather stark contrast to my main criticism of the book – the introduction. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why they included in an introduction from a Milwaukee based paranormal investigator, but the nature of the essay at the front of the book gave me a much different vision of the book than I had after reading it. The focus of the essay was more along the lines of a background of ghost hunting and where it’s going in the future. I think for me the tipping point was the part of the piece that described the “effect on legitimate paranormal investigators.” This struck me as odd as the tales contained within were works of fiction, not legitimate investigations into the paranormal. For my part I feel that the introduction would have been better with a bit more editing to keep the content on track, keeping with the history of paranormal investigation and it’s sharp rise as a result of fiction, and how the fiction is now being affected by this surge in the interest with the paranormal.

That said, the introduction was in no way jarring enough for me to not fully suggest the book to readers. Personally I don’t think its possible for an introduction to be that off putting. Also, each and every story makes this well worth the price. Since my purchasing of it, the book is now available as either an ebook or a trade paperback. For those of you who own an ereader but still have a love for the printed page, when you purchase the trade paperback from drivethrufiction.com, right now for a dollar more you can get the ebook version of it in multiple formats.

The stories, the variety and the value all together make for a great read or a great gift for the horror or ghost enthusiast in your life. Overall, I’d give it four and a half restless spirits out of five – the half spirit is really a poltergeist, but don’t say anything. They can be so damn touchy.