The most recommended books on ghost hunting

This chronicle of a doomed reality TV show taping feels the most like a modern found-footage movie of any epistolary novel with its addition of instant messages and video footage to diaries and emails. The converging of different media corroboration adds a high level of realism to the story—an impressive trait that’s often lacking in cosmic horror.

Further, I’m impressed by the breadth of subjects Di Louie covered (Hindu mythology, occult mysticism, 1960s/1970s pop-culture references) and the way he expanded the haunted house trope beyond my expectations.

This book captivated me so much that I was more interested in reading it than in sightseeing while on my vacation.

This is an “episode”; three episodes make a “season”. Yep, this series is patterned off of a tv show. What else would you expect from a series that was inspired by two different monster hunting shows: Supernatural and Scooby-Do?

Humor. Epic levels of teamwork… and drama in the team. A revolving door of baddies. Moments that make you want to just wrap our hero/heroin up and hold them forever.

The Hunter Chronicles series has all of that. This first episode is an excellent introduction to Val and all of her guys… Some of whom aren’t human. The whole team’s delightful.

And sexy. Don’t forget sexy.

These shorter stories—that make a much longer one—are like rich little snacks that I love to savor.

RH: Monster Hunters

I can't believe it took me so long to read this book; it's a longtime favorite of my mom's. My daughter is an undergrad at Bennington College in Vermont, and I visited her in October 2024. I'd been to Bennington before but not the music building, Jennings Hall. When my kid casually noted "by the way, this is 'Hill House.' Shirley Jackson was living down the street when she wrote that book," I realized I needed to get the original novel off my "read this eventually" list.

Jackson's rich descriptive sensibility and the weird dread and dissociation the book evokes are magnificent. And it's a decidedly late 50s-early 60s sensibility, which I adore... it was a more formal and somewhat more repression-forward moment in our culture, which is honestly gold for novelists who want to play with the often vast differences between someone's public facing persona and their suppressed /… show more.

This Picoult novel, written close to the time I began to shape my book, asks whether we can love across time. While the theme is much more grounded in practical and natural circumstances, the fact that the question is teased out in this novel helps shape the same question my character, Adelyn, finds herself embroiled in. Is Innis capable of breaking the barrier using the strength of a first love?

A recent addition to the horror genre, this excellent debut novel excels in creating a surreal narrative drenched in dark atmosphere. To Break a Covenant centers around a terrifying, fractured faux-documentary about a town under control of a sinister presence. I dare you to read creepy descriptions of ‘found’ footage and not feel a chill as this mystery unfolds. 

While many readers would cite John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies as the definitive account of the late ‘60s cryptid sightings in West Virginia, I have a strong preference for Wamsley’s books on the subject. He has reprinted vintage newspaper articles (yes, Mothman sightings were the subject of mainstream local news articles back in the day). He also publishes transcripts of his interviews with witnesses, and photographs of these witnesses. You get to see them and read their accounts, in their own words. They sound credible.

He also makes sure to reprint news articles that offer natural explanations for the sightings. (Was the Mothman just an oversized bird, the sandhill crane? A giant owl? Experimental weather balloons released by a high school science club?) 

Good stuff!

A story narrated by a ghost––Yesss!

This tale of hauntings in a small coastal town was so convincing that I found myself avoiding the mirrors in my house, mirrors being the place where the spirits of the dead take refuge, patiently waiting to wreak havoc on the living in revenge for the injustices of the past.

The novel begins with the most vivid and chilling scene I’ve read in a long time and stayed true to its promise of delivering a gripping story with creepy Gothic overtones.

I loved how the tragic events in long-dead Emma Rose’s past bled into the present-day life of the town, creating eerie connections and unexpected moral conflicts for the ghost hunter who’s been sent to wipe her out.  

This book by real-life ghost hunter Peter Underwood is an amazing attempt to demystify some of the most famous haunted sites across the globe, seeking out evidence, personal and witness experiences in an attempt to explain the inexplicable. In many cases he comes up with possible answers, often using the excuse of mental instability in those witnesses to prove his argument. For me, many of his conclusions were not convincing enough, this paucity of believable truth inspiring my own research and desire to debunk the whole concept of ghosts and hauntings. From it, I have learned that though most occurrences can be explained away, there is still much in this world that defies rational logic.   

Charles Fort was the o.g. paranormal investigator. One hundred years ago, he made a sweeping study of all the weird stuff mainstream science refuses to examine. Even now we use the word “Fortean” to describe the study of ghosts, bigfoot, ufos, ESP, etc. Steinmeyer’s biography reveals the complicated man behind the adjective. 

Was Fort a kook? Not really. Steinmeyer reveals him to be more of a gadfly, playfully thumbing his nose at science but never investing too much belief in his own eccentric theories, either. For Fort, the real and the unreal were two sides of the same coin. His quarrel was with those who insisted the quarter only had heads and refused to investigate the possible existence of tails.

Stan Gordon has spent the last fifty years investigating the paranormal in Western Pennsylvania. He’s observed the locations where events allegedly occurred. He’s interviewed witnesses. And, in Silent Invasion, he documents some of his stranger cases. 

How strange? Well, in the early seventies Gordon received reports of bigfoot being observed alongside landed UFOs. I love this book because it is so damned weird (but, at the same time, so well-documented). That’s not to say that I find all of Gordon’s anomalies anomalous. (The “metallic droppings” he found out in the woods in 1972 look to me to be Brillo pads.) But many of his other reports are not so easily dismissed.