Are ghosts real? Are there truly haunted places, only haunted people, or both? And how can we know? Taking neither a credulous nor a dismissive approach, this first-of-its-kind book solves those perplexing mysteries and more--even answering the question of why we care so very much. Putting aside purely romantic tales, this book examines the actual evidence for ghosts--from eyewitness accounts to mediumistic productions (such as diaphanous forms materializing in dim light), spirit photographs, ghost-detection phenomena, and even CSI-type trace evidence. Offering numerous exciting case studies, this book engages in serious investigation rather than breathless mystifying. Pseudoscience, folk legends, and outright hoaxes are challenged and exposed, while the historical, cultural, and scientific aspects of ghost experiences and haunting reports are carefully explored. The author--the world's only professional paranormal investigator--brings his skills as a stage magician, private detective, folklorist, and forensic science writer to bear on a topic that demands serious study.

Some said that the killer couldn't be a local. Others claimed that he was the wealthy son of a prominent Morgantown family. Whispers spread that Mared and Karen were sacrificed by a satanic cult or had been victims of a madman poised to strike again. Then the handwritten letters began to arrive: "You will locate the bodies of the girls covered over with brush--look carefully. The animals are now on the move." Investigators didn't find too few suspects--they had far too many. There was the campus janitor with a fur fetish, the "harmless" deliveryman who beat a woman nearly to death, the nursing home orderly with the bloody broomstick and the bouncer with the "girlish" laugh who threatened to cut off people's heads. Local authors Geoffrey C. Fuller and S. James McLaughlin tell the complete story of the murders for the first time.