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Ghostly Tales: Poltergeists, Haunted Houses, and Messages from Beyond
A firsthand witness to an uncountable number of paranormal events, author Billy Roberts tells absolutely true stories that will leave you touched by otherworldly fear. Filled with poltergeists, murderers, and hair-raising spirits, Ghostly Tales is possibly the most frightening book you will ever read. Some of the spine-chilling stories included in this book are gruesome. Some are horrific. All of the stories will chill you to your very bones. A dead man lurks in the land of the living, mystifying his family at his own funeral. An unassuming family, caught in the grip of a misbegotten crystal ball, becomes haunted by deplorable scenes of hellish atrocities. A cloven-hooved card shark interrupts a weekly poker game and terrorizes the players with evil foreboding. The dozens of stories in this book are absolutely true, and they all transcend the bounds of the imagination in a way that will have you afraid to turn out the lights.
216 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2014
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38 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 28, 2015
Meh...I'm saying meh because Honesty when i brought this book i was over the moon when it came. But as soon as i starting reading i just wasn't impressed at all. There's noway some of these tales are True. I'm not in the line of paranormal work. But i really think this Billy Roberts is taking people for a ride. It's a shame because people have paid good money for his book i personally think He's one of "Those medium's" who give others the real one's a bad name. In this book he seems like he pissed off the team of Most haunted.
Then made a big scene in a new York Hotel to get an other Room. He just screams total issues to me. I know most real mediums have issue's So do sensitives too. But i dunno as i read the book i just got this vibe the author's not the real deal. He probably believes he is, but Yea... Don't buy this book cause you'll just be helping him and his wife live a deluded life...
The two stars are for the ghost's in this book that might be real and got sadly pulled into this book lol!
Then made a big scene in a new York Hotel to get an other Room. He just screams total issues to me. I know most real mediums have issue's So do sensitives too. But i dunno as i read the book i just got this vibe the author's not the real deal. He probably believes he is, but Yea... Don't buy this book cause you'll just be helping him and his wife live a deluded life...
The two stars are for the ghost's in this book that might be real and got sadly pulled into this book lol!
February 25, 2014
As usual I paid nothing for this book but instead received it for free in exchange for a review. Despite NetGalley's kindness I give my scrupulously honest opinions below.
This book is pretty simple. It's just a collection of haunting tales. You could have guessed that by the title alone, I'm sure. But what it is NOT is any attempt to analyse or explain anything. It's just straight-up campfire-grade spooky stories.
To the positive side, I give the author credit for just getting down to it. There is a bit of an introduction but not much and the stories just start right up without excessive preamble. Our tales of horror are divided into handy categories and were all sufficient to raise a bit of gooseflesh on me though I did prime things rather well by laying abed by myself in the dark before reading. It wasn't enough to keep me up but it did keep me thinking.
To the negative, I'm not going to make any comments about whether you should believe any of these stories because, let's face it, you'll believe what you want to. However, these did seem to all fall along pretty common lines and you could place each story in some movie or some TV show of the past. I picked out a couple of Twilight Zone plots pretty easily and I'm sure most of these either have their roots in or have inspired some fictional retelling along the way. As I said, it's up to your belief system which way that pendulum swings.
In summary, this is a nice, tidy collection of hair-raising tales that are either just nice stories or real-life accounts of encounters with the supernatural. Which is it? That's your decision.
This book is pretty simple. It's just a collection of haunting tales. You could have guessed that by the title alone, I'm sure. But what it is NOT is any attempt to analyse or explain anything. It's just straight-up campfire-grade spooky stories.
To the positive side, I give the author credit for just getting down to it. There is a bit of an introduction but not much and the stories just start right up without excessive preamble. Our tales of horror are divided into handy categories and were all sufficient to raise a bit of gooseflesh on me though I did prime things rather well by laying abed by myself in the dark before reading. It wasn't enough to keep me up but it did keep me thinking.
To the negative, I'm not going to make any comments about whether you should believe any of these stories because, let's face it, you'll believe what you want to. However, these did seem to all fall along pretty common lines and you could place each story in some movie or some TV show of the past. I picked out a couple of Twilight Zone plots pretty easily and I'm sure most of these either have their roots in or have inspired some fictional retelling along the way. As I said, it's up to your belief system which way that pendulum swings.
In summary, this is a nice, tidy collection of hair-raising tales that are either just nice stories or real-life accounts of encounters with the supernatural. Which is it? That's your decision.
July 18, 2014
Poorly written
April 10, 2014
Book Review originally published here: http://www.iheartreading.net/reviews/...
Ghostly Tales wasn’t what I expected at all. I request almost any true haunting book I can get my hands on, because I love the genre. But for this one, I’ll make an exception. It doesn’t sound like a true haunting book at all – and that’s my major issue with the book. The stories in here are just stories. There’s no claim to the truth of the stories, we don’t even know if they’re real, or if the author just made them up. The stories are short, we feel no connection to the people mentioned in the stories, and in general, they could just be campfire stories, rather than real life accounts by a ghost hunter.
Some of the stories are downright ridiculous. I remember at the start there was a story about a man who’d passed away and visited his own funeral…yeah, and how would you know that?
Basically this reads more like an anthology of scary short stories than a non-fiction book. I’m not convinced at all that any of the stories mentioned here are true, since there’s no, or little, research, and some stories are very farfetched. Not impressed.
Ghostly Tales wasn’t what I expected at all. I request almost any true haunting book I can get my hands on, because I love the genre. But for this one, I’ll make an exception. It doesn’t sound like a true haunting book at all – and that’s my major issue with the book. The stories in here are just stories. There’s no claim to the truth of the stories, we don’t even know if they’re real, or if the author just made them up. The stories are short, we feel no connection to the people mentioned in the stories, and in general, they could just be campfire stories, rather than real life accounts by a ghost hunter.
Some of the stories are downright ridiculous. I remember at the start there was a story about a man who’d passed away and visited his own funeral…yeah, and how would you know that?
Basically this reads more like an anthology of scary short stories than a non-fiction book. I’m not convinced at all that any of the stories mentioned here are true, since there’s no, or little, research, and some stories are very farfetched. Not impressed.
February 21, 2014
Ghostly Tales: Poltergeists, Haunted Houses, and Messages from Beyond by Billy Roberts contains a large collection of varied ghost stories that are both informative and entertaining. There were a couple of stories that seemed a bit ridiculous to me, but for the most part I really liked this book. Some stories were touching, others were geniunely creepy, and others were actually pretty amusing. Overall, there's a little something for everyone.
October 3, 2019
Roberts clearly has a lot of paranormal experience; I just think that he should have picked the stories differently for this book. He separates the tales by categories - The Unexplained, Love, Ghosts, Poltergeists, and Hauntings - and the stories all have something to do with their respective category, but sometimes it leads to a jolting change in storytelling. In the first three categories, Roberts is not afraid of using stories that aren't told from his perspective (sometimes it seems as though he's just repeating a legend to which he has no personal connection), but especially in the last two categories, most of the stories come from his own personal experiences. Having two different styles like this sometimes makes it more difficult to actually enjoy the stories, since you are either skeptical that no personal information is being given or you are skeptical that the personal stories are actually true because there are so many of them versus stories that Roberts was not present for/only researched in an academic sense. I understand that the categories were probably to help him decide which stories to use; I just wish it had been done more effectively, since some stories were really good, and just dragged down by others.
August 30, 2018
I don't know why I read books like this. I never believe then. I guess I want to believe, but everything in books like this is always so far-fetched I always come out even more of a skeptic than I was going in. I have to say though, the stories were creepy, and though I took them mostly as fiction, I enjoyed reading them. This is more a three star book. But I did think the first half was good, and it was really imaginative, although I have no real belief that any of the stories really happened, they were the kind of stories one would tell around a campfire, and were nice and creepy, and enjoyable because of that.
July 11, 2019
I got this book out of the library. It was an ok read, I think the style of writing just did not gel with me. There are a couple of good stories though.
March 7, 2014
I received this book from Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Netgalley.com, to Llewellyn Worldwide, and to Billy Roberts.
I really enjoyed this book. The first half of the book was a collection of short ghost stories that were mostly accounts told to the author from third parties. These are perfect "around the campfire" sort of stories - Short, sweet, and mysterious. Most of these stories were perplexing and typically not malevolent. Although fun, these were not the type of stories I was expecting.
My favorite part of the book was the second part where the author tells the tales of poltergeists and haunted houses. These are the type of stories that will scare the wits out of you. The author touched on almost every possible manifestation of hauntings. There is possession, conversations with the deceased, furniture being tossed about a room, and the author being violently thrown against a wall at one point. This part of the book was excellent. All of the stories are very short and to the point. There is no attempt to analyze what happened - only an eyewitness account.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in paranormal phenomenon.
I really enjoyed this book. The first half of the book was a collection of short ghost stories that were mostly accounts told to the author from third parties. These are perfect "around the campfire" sort of stories - Short, sweet, and mysterious. Most of these stories were perplexing and typically not malevolent. Although fun, these were not the type of stories I was expecting.
My favorite part of the book was the second part where the author tells the tales of poltergeists and haunted houses. These are the type of stories that will scare the wits out of you. The author touched on almost every possible manifestation of hauntings. There is possession, conversations with the deceased, furniture being tossed about a room, and the author being violently thrown against a wall at one point. This part of the book was excellent. All of the stories are very short and to the point. There is no attempt to analyze what happened - only an eyewitness account.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in paranormal phenomenon.
May 31, 2014
I was underwhelmed. Bit of a dry read, the first part was more shared stories while the latter part seemed to be personal "case files" so to speak. One or the other would have been preferred. It seemed to be rather stripped down to bare bones (no pun intended from the subject matter). Not that I wanted to highly embellished and sensationalized ones that are shown on TV. I'd rather actual stories, not "Did you see that?" over a cameraman knocking over a soda can.
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August 6, 2016Review to come soon
April 27, 2014
Wasn't scary
July 10, 2016
An interesting collection, more culturally thought provoking than spooky.
August 22, 2014
I did enjoy reading these ghost stories....especially the authors more personal ones I the second half. Not written to on scare you more to tell you what he experienced.
January 11, 2016
Some of the stories were quite cliched. And true or not, the narrative was lacking a proper storytelling air.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews