BOOK REVIEW: Haunted Long Island (2005) & Haunted Salem & Beyond (2001) by Lynda Lee Macken (Black Cat Press)

Review by Scott Lefebvre

     I located the book “Haunted Long Island” online while doing a search for books that addressed haunted happenings on Long Island in preparation for a book that I was commissioned to write addressing that subject.

     I contacted the author to obtain a copy of her book for research and review.   The author was most gracious and sent me two of her many books about regional paranormal activity.

     The author’s style is admirable, successfully exhibiting readability similar to Alvin Schwartz’s “Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark” series.   The stories are brief, often consuming no more than three pages and the ease of readability, accessible to readers of all ages, is still interesting enough to capture the interest of adult readers.

     The author is amazingly prolific, seeming to aspire to present a collection of short paranormal stories for each of the fifty states, sometimes providing more than one volume for an area or a particularly well-populated region, as exhibit by her New Jersey series including “Ghosts of the Garden State”, “Ghosts of the Garden State II”, & “Ghosts of the Garden State III”.   Not surprising, considering the author’s mailing address is listed as being in the “Garden State”.

     The author’s short stories lend themselves to easy, casual reading, often encouraging the reader to read several in a sitting, but allowing the reader to easily put the books down at the end of a tale.

     Although I am not yet an expert on paranormal happenings in Long Island, the author seems to present a more than fair cross-section of the paranormal history of Long Island.   The author also admirably presents a fair cross-section of the witch-crazed history of Salem, Massachusetts, venturing beyond the usual coverage of the history of the witch hysteria of 1692 to address folklore and legend surrounding the city from its inception to modern times.

     The books are printed in a clear and readable typeset, and contain many photographs and illustrations, accompanying the stories.   The photographs are mostly well composed, but some of the spot illustrations seem to have been culled from a standard graphics package.

     Priced at $7.95 (for Salem) and $8.95 (for Long Island) these books are affordably priced and even though it sounds like a trite advertising standard, they probably would make an excellent gift for anyone you know that is a fan of the paranormal and lives in one of the many regions covered by the author.