by Brad Steiger
Anomalist Books ? 5150 Broadway #108 ? San Antonio, TX 78209
2006, 166 pages, $12.00 ? ISBN: 1-933665-17-3
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
Brad Steiger is the master storyteller extraordinaire when it comes to true tales of the supernatural and of unexplained occurrences. This prolific and highly acclaimed author truly has no real equal in this branch of the literary field. Strange Guests is a genuine early Steiger classic about legendary poltergeist cases like the Bell Witch, Slawensick Castle, and many other haunting tales that should definitely send innumerable chills and shivers up and down your spine!
Originally published forty years ago, and with an introduction by Ivan T. Sanderson, we learn in Brad?s updated Afterword many fascinating behind-the-scenes details of how this book came to be written, and the very significant and supportive role that the noted zoologist and Fortean Ivan Sanderson played in its production. Sanderson?s original introduction is also included, along with a new foreward by noted author and cryptozoologist Loren Coleman. Coleman recalled how Sanderson had years ago told him that out of all things psychic, the energetic poltergeist phenomenon stood the best chance of being proven to be real.
Even after all of the years that have passed, the theories and data presented in this intriguing book remain as thought-provoking, insightful, and relevant as when it first rolled off the presses in 1966. It covers the theories and data very thoroughly, from psychoanalyst Dr. Nandor Fodor?s conception of the poltergeist as a ?bundle of projected repressions? in the form of powerful and uncontrolled bursts of psychic ?energy,? to a large collection of blood-chilling accounts from all over the world, of violent and disturbing assaults on helpless victims of the invisible fury known as the poltergeist. It may even be that the famous Salem witchcraft hysteria initially came about as a result of a poltergeist outbreak reported by young girls who feared that they had been bewitched. Most often these manifestations are associated with the presence of a teenager, more often a female than a male, and often around the age of puberty.
Untapped psychokinetic potentials of young minds? Or are they the powerful intrusions of evil or mischievous ?spirits? forcing themselves upon vulnerable and usually young and immature victims, as family, friends and the curious gather around to helplessly watch?
Read and ponder for yourself this deep, complex and most challenging mystery as only Brad Steiger could have presented it.
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