I picked up Ghost Hunting by Loyd Auerbach at the library the last time I was there. It looked like a fun book to read for the Halloween season. It is a non-fiction book giving advice to potential ghost hunters out there.

I learned one thing about this book: ghosts don’t exist.

Loyd Auerbach believes ghosts exist, but his admonitions throughout the book tell a different story. Almost every chapter has a sentence or two about fraud. The ghost hunting business is fraught with fraud. Restaurants and hotels desperately want to prove that they have ghosts to increase business. People play pranks on one another. People even subconsciously cause some events because they want a ghost to be in their home so badly. Psychics even give false readings at times and can’t be trusted. With that much fraud going on, the logical conclusion is that there are no ghosts.

Sorry, Loyd, the ghosts that you feel you HAVE found are just frauds that haven’t been uncovered yet.

I was kind of hoping for a bunch of scary stories in this book and would have even been alright with them being fictional, but unfortunately, the more Mr. Auerbach tried to convince me that paranormal activity could be measured, the more he warned me about family dynamics and interpersonal relationships that can cause unstable activity in homes. It’s not about the ghosts. It’s about the living people.

The skeletons that we have in our closets are far more interesting than any ghosts that could be lurking in the woodwork.