This book started me on a long and fascinating love of "real" folklore. I'd read stories about ghosts and knew who Dracula and the Wolfman were, but this collected stories of practices I had (in my tender youth) never heard of before. Like burying suicides at crossroads. Or scattering rice around the grave of a vampire, or the Lambton Worm, or Shuck. Read and reread many times
A very good encyclopedia for little cryptozoologists/ufologists/ghostbusters. Well, just for lovers of the mysterious and creepy. As a child, I couldn't tear myself away from this book and reread it at least three times. It was also very pleasant to reread it in adulthood, in the process a wave of emotions and memories from childhood came flooding in.
My favorite section has always been "Ghosts". Most of all, I was impressed by the legends about sea ghosts and animal ghosts. I also liked "Monsters", it was especially interesting to read about water monsters, as well as about monsters from legends of different countries and peoples. But I've never really liked UFO stories (except for the section where the authors fantasize about what aliens might look like).
I am very pleased that in this encyclopedia, in addition to stories in the spirit of "inexplicable, but a fact", there are really interesting and mysterious legends. And at the end of each chapter, the authors offer various rational explanations for all mysterious phenomena, as well as theories, both scientific and fantastic. This encyclopedia has taught me to question everything, even what I want to believe.