Paranormal Book Review Blog: The House Where Evil Lurks

The House Where Evil Lurks by Brandon Callahan revolves around him and his team squaring off with evil, one that is labeled as his, the author’s, “most frightening encounter.” I was drawn in by this claim and by the numerous positive reviews on Amazon. I am a big fan of the paranormal despite my apprehension in believing in supernatural forces, ala, ghosts. But, nothing gets in the way of a good ghost story whether it is true or not. My approach when reading “true tales of the paranormal” is to take them with a grain of salt, sit back (or lie down), and enjoy the story as a work of fiction. I had a hard time doing that with The House Where Evil Lurks.

First, I’ll say that I am no paranormal investigator, but I will also say that I have gone on more than a handful of investigations with different teams to be able to discern an opinion based on my experiences. A lot of these teams, while passionate about capturing that elusive evidence that would undoubtedly propel them to fame and fortune with the hopes that said evidence would earn them a slot on primetime television was, to put it bluntly, amateur. Others were more serious about their endeavors and had no interest in fame. Rather, they were more interested in getting a definitive answer to the question, is there life after death? After numerous hours and nights spent in the dark looking through the viewfinder of a camera using night vision as I documented these investigations, the answer I formulated to that question is a shrug of the shoulder and a scratch to the scalp.

The team in The House Where Evil Lurks and the antics perpetrated by Callahan and the investigators were of the former variety of investigators mentioned above – the amateurs. Again, I am not an investigator, but I can distinguish professionals from beginners no matter the line of work and Callahan’s team just wreaked of juveniles. For instance, this passage from the book when provoking the entity, “Well, asshole, what do have to say? Or are you scared of the two of us? … Jeremiah chuckled, and almost immediately something responded from the ghost box. “You’re fucked ass!” Or this, “While we were in the basement at this other house, Jared had this sudden need to take a dump. As he put it, this was not just any dump.” I’ll just let that sit here for a moment. They believed that when something supernatural was present Jared’s bowels were difficult to contain. Childish and naive for a serious investigation.

In one of the investigations I documented, one of the investigators on this particular got fed up with the routine, and I can only imagine being that there was a camera rolling he wanted to “up the ante.” He slapped his thigh, waking up his other team members who sat idly in the dark, waiting for something to happen, and shouted, “Ok, I didn’t want it to come to this, but you’ve left me no choice!” He then started to get aggressive, using colorful, some would say vulgar language, to entice some sort of paranormal activity. I looked over to another cameraman in the room, and because of the little light that escaped the viewfinder, he was able to see my mouth, “What the (expletive!)” The expression on his face told me that we were on the same page. My reaction and that expression are what came to mind when reading this book.

Second, having gone on the numerous investigations above to different establishments with purported hauntings, for the most part, nothing ever happened. Sitting in the dark, asking questions to the air was the most action that would happen on any given night. Not for Callahan and his team, however. No, paranormal activity seemed to be attracted to them because every investigation in the book resulted in a plethora of activity and, some would say, definitive evidence of the supernatural – sometimes on-demand. From EVPs to video, they got it all! I know that there would be no point in including those tidbits where nothing happened because that would not make for an interesting read but the impression I got from reading this book is that something almost always happened and this entity never let up. I was hoping that at the book’s conclusion, there would be a link to a website where we can listen to some EVPs, and see photos and videos taken during an investigation. But, nope!

Again, because of my approach when reading a book of this type, I took it all with a grain of salt and, for the most part, I am trying to get my kicks in by getting scared or creeped out. There was absolutely nothing scary about The House Where Evil Lurks. While there is ample time spent in the house, the author divulges way too much time on his journey, or calling, to help those in need. This last point couldn’t be stressed enough by the author that by the time I heard it for the umpteenth time, I was rolling my eyes. I applaud his vocation to help those in need of trying to rid evil from peoples’ lives, but aside from “talking to the air,” sometimes aggressively as he tried to provoke the spirits, and trying to take a “scientific” approach, there was not much that was done to help the homeowner. There was not a lot of information garnered about this “evil house”- no trip to the library in search of archives and microfilms to dig up the past, no interview with prior owners or the local historian – absolutely nada! Even some of the anecdotes he does provide are not referenced with its source leaving the audience to take the author’s word. There was little to no real investigation administered here, and it just seemed like Calahan and his team were having a grand old time in the house getting nothing accomplished to help the homeowner rid of this “evil” that tormented him to, you know, follow that vocation that he so proudly eludes too on well more than a couple of times.

Aside from the house, Callahan would often go on a tangent about another location he would like to thoroughly investigate, spending more time in that than was necessary. He also kept coming back to a reoccurring nightmare that featured his “nemesis” whom he conventionally calls The Nemesis. I began to get the impression that he was using these “tangents” as filler to meet some sort of book-length quota.

If you weren’t able to deduce my verdict on this one, let me spell it out – this book was bad. Not just bad, but very bad. There was nothing remotely scary about it and even the alleged “scary” moments were overshadowed by the bad writing and the ridiculous antics and showmanship of this paranormal “investigation” team. For the most part, I was bored and dozed off into sleepland more than a few times as there was nothing engaging about the story.
I commend Callahan, however, for tackling the arduous task of writing a book as that is not something everyone can do. He does mention that he always wanted to be a writer and I would say to him, mission: accomplished! There is no doubt that this feat deserves applause though I still cannot recommend this book to anyone.