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 New with Jeff Belanger

Tamara:  Your new book, The Encyclopedia of Haunted Places, is unlike any other compendium of ghosts in print. You’ve gathered tales from all over the world, and your contributors include paranormal groups, individual investigators, and other people actively working in this field. How was working on this book different than working on your others?


Jeff:  I know that directories of haunted places have been done before. I can also appreciate the Herculean (or Zenaian, if that's your preference... rawwwrrrrr) effort it takes to find out about these locations and then write on them with some authority. Many times these large directories end up filled with hearsay or other inaccuracies because of logistical and time restraints on the author. I knew that to do a directory like this right, I'd need to get local. I told my wife, Megan, I was going to sell our house, empty our savings, and trek off around the world like a nomad looking for the great ghostly legends that dot the landscape of almost every town in the world. I figured if I slept only on Tuesdays, and covered 20 miles per day, I could have the book completed by June 8, 2099 (only 95 years after my deadline). Megan, God love her, suggested that maybe this wasn't the best approach to a book like this. We argued for a while about the practicality of time travel and warp speed, then we argued about how she squeezes the toothpaste tube from the middle, then we got back into the warp speed argument again. Eventually I slept on the idea.

From years of running Ghostvillage.com, writing my other books, and meeting a lot of people who share this interest, I realized that there are paranormal investigators everywhere doing some really great work. If I could get them all on the same page(s), we'd really have something special. So I started with my friends, then networked out from there. We had over 100 contributors from all over the world writing about the locations they know (and often love, as was evident by the passion that came across in their writing) best. I'm really proud to have been a part of this project -- a real first for our field of study. And I only had trouble with two contributors... Tamara someone and Melanie somethingorother...

I hope The Encyclopedia of Haunted Places can inspire other investigators to network and work together as often as possible.


Tamara and Melanie: Well, we never. . .


(Stay tuned – more with Jeff on The Encyclopedia of Haunted Places coming soon!)