NH Book of the Dead

This little volume about NH cemeteries has some interesting facts neither Tracy nor I knew.  But a primary motive seems to be an excuse to talk about ghosts, witches, and unexplained phenomena around graveyards. The evidence is rather slender, and delivered in that breathless but faux-objective tone "Some local residents say that there are unexplained lights when one approaches Mary's grave, and others claim to have seen a small child reaching out to visitors..." If spirits did lurk around the places of disappointing or unfair death - the Otherworld seems undecided whether one should haunt the death site or the burial site - then hospitals and nursing homes would be full of them. One would think the night staff of an older city hospital would be unable to move without bumping into four or five wraiths per room.

It is standard in current writing to complain at how slight the evidence was for some poor soul to be accused of being a witch or other consort of the dark, unseen forces. Ironically, the amount of evidence needed now to make the suggestion that they linger on as spectres is even less. A rumor, a whisper, a doubt, is enough.  We remain a gullible people, eager to believe.

The author has done similar works about other states. I don't imagine I will be seeking any of those out.