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AmySea

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Laura Joh Rowland

Spooked in Seattle: A Haunted Handbook

Spooked in Seattle: A Haunted Handbook - Ross Allison Truthfully, Spooked in Seattle probably doesn't quite measure up to a three-star rating. The book is rife with typos (I lost track of how many times "were" was spelled "where"), sentence and paragraph structure was frequently awkward, and frankly, the evidence provided for some of these sites being haunted was a bit, shall we say, thin.

Still, I liked this book! Yes, the haunted bit could have been more robust, but I thought Spooked in Seattle excelled at presenting the history of Seattle in an interesting, intriguing, and exicting way. I got shafted with a very poor teacher when I was required to take Washington State history in high school, so the most I ever learned about this state, let alone Seattle, was that swap meets were held every other weekend in Everett. I got nothing out of that class (other than a filled graduation requirement), and nothing sparked my desire to learn more about where I now live. Spooked in Seattle taught me that Seattle's history just brims over with colorful characters and interesting events, and this book even got me interested in the architectural history of Seattle. It has encouraged me to learn more.

While I can't call Spooked in Seattle a great ghost book (although it's fine as a tour book if one has a desire to visit supposedly haunted sites in the city), it did more for me than my Washington State history class. That just has to count for something, even if "were" was seldom spelled correctly, and even if many of the "ghosts" were probably just the wind.