Reviewed by Ciaran Farrell
This large and well produced coffee table style hardback opens with an atmospheric and spooky foreword by the broadcaster Danny Robins who made the Uncanny series about the paranormal. The Atlas of Paranormal Places is written by travel writer and paranormal psychologist, Evelyn Hollow, who has been a psychology lecturer, and holds a Master of Research degree in Paranormal Psychology. She went on to become a consultant on the paranormal, and a broadcaster in her own right. She has appeared recently in a number of programs about the paranormal including, The Battersea Poltergeist, and Uncanny, as well as Spooked Scotland and its counterpart, Spooked Ireland. Evelyn is also known for the talks she gives on paranormal history, and for being the creator of the Baer Archive of street photography. In addition to all this, she has won awards for her writing which is very much in today’s up to the minute style of direct presentation and informal grammar.
The Atlas is written in this style which is open and very modern with a relaxed informal tone that would not be out of place in a travel brochure. The book is laid out as a series of travelogues divided into six different sections: Haunted Places, Witchcraft, Sacred Sites, Myths & Legends, Strange Nature, and Cryptids & Creatures. A useful and handy world map is included with all thirty-eight sites plotted on it for interest and reference.
Evelyn has written up her visits to the thirty-eight special places she reports on which may include more than one specific location within any given site. Therefore, she covers fifty individual locations which she incorporates within her thirty eight sites of special interest. In each of her intrepid adventures she provides a good map or diagram of the site together with photographs of the site’s main features. She then provides a detailed account of her investigation of the reported phenomena the site has to offer. Evelyn also adds in her own personal experiences and the results of her research into the history of the site to provide an integrated profile for each and every one of her target locations.
The Atlas’s first chapter contains reports on Haunted Places, and Evelyn tackles an interesting and diverse suite of eight cases ranging from the well-known Bannockburn House in Scotland as well as Charleville Castle in Ireland. She also investigates the L’Ossuaire Municipal, the underground Catacombs of Paris, France, and on a similar mysterious note, The Chase Vault, in Barbados, with its intriguing accounts of moving coffins. These form some of the highlights of her reports of haunted places, although there are many other absorbing reports to be read in her opening chapter, as well as though the course of the Atlas itself.
The second chapter delves into the dark subject of Witchcraft and covers five cases including the notorious Pendel Hill witch trials. In addition to this she covers the witch market known as El Mercado De Las Brujas in La Paz, Bolivia, South America, where all kinds of artifacts to do with witchcraft and consultations can be found and purchased. She also takes a dive in the spooky history of Rose Hall Great House in Montego Bay in Jamaica with its dark colonial past and mysterious hauntings. Evelyn works into her accounts a variety of theories about the operation of witchcraft, as well as the belief systems of the local people who know about such customs and practices. She also includes the perspectives of those who practice witchcraft to provide a well-rounded account of the sites of interest and the subject.
The third chapter is on Sacred Sites and involves a further five investigations, and therefore visits to such places as La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and its well attested hauntings and dark history, as well as the enigmatic Hanging Coffins of Sagada, Luzon, in the Philippines. Then there is her report on the magnificent ancient Egyptian Temple of Luxor.
The fourth chapter is devoted to Myths & Legends which are contained in a series of six case studies that explore paranormal themes that intertwine with the paranormal. Here we find the case of the Cachtice Castle, in Slovakia, with its dark social and political history of the ‘Bloody Countess’ Elizabeth Bathory and vampirism, which she explores. Then she turns her attention to the Satanic cults in rural Spain and they come under Evelyn’s critical gaze at the Courtijo Jurado, as does the ghost of a young woman with a tragic history in the Burg Eltz castle in Weirschem, Germany. The photographs of the exterior of the castle give it a fairytale appearance, but inside it is more reminiscent of a Hammer horror film. Then there is Dragsholm castle in Zealand in Denmark which boasts a hundred ghosts.
The fifth chapter is given over to a further set of eight case studies on Strange Nature, and features the weird and melancholy Aokigahara Forest of Yamanashi in Japan, which is known as the “Sea of Trees” which stands upon a strange volcanic rock formation which is infamous for its myriad spirits and tragic suicides. Evelyn integrates a great deal of her own research and provides a great deal of intriguing information about the different types of Japanese spirits and their nature into her detailed report on the forest. Then there is a case report of Evelyn’s exploration of the well-known Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, in the USA, as well as two other strange and mysterious places which are also remarkable. They are Gunnuhver Mud Pool in Iceland, which is reputed to be infected by the spirit of a deranged criminal, and Turkmenistan’s Door to Hell, in Darvaza, Turkmenistan. This contains an infernal crater that has been burning for half a century. Evelyn also visits Australia’s answer to the notorious Area 51 UFO mystery site in Nevada, in the USA. This is Wycliffe Well, which is situated in the Northern Territory of Australia, near Alice Springs.
Evelyn dedicates her last and final chapter of the Atlas to a series of six explorative case studies of Cryptids & Strange Creatures. In this chapter we meet the weird creatures of myth and legend in such places as Bhutan, and encounter the nightmare animals which reputedly haunt the Qui Mansion in Shanghai, China. There is a return to the exploration of vampire themes that also feature in some of Evelyn’s other case studies. In this case it is in the form of the site in which the grave of a legendary dwarf-turned vampire is meant to uneasily reside in Slaghtaverty Dolman, in County Derry, in Ireland.
In the Atlas, Evelyn takes us on a unique and dark journey around the world almost in the manner of a darkly mystical Phenious Fogg, to guide us to. I have learnt quite a bit by taking that dark and satisfying as well as enjoyable tour with her, and I hope you will too. The Atlas is not a book written primarily from a scientific point of view, or aimed at the dedicated psychical researcher or paranormal investigator as a reference work. It is however, a considered and thought-provoking book which embodies an integrated approach to writing up case studies using maps, diagrams and photographs accompanied by text which produce a series of well rounded and grounded case reports that are organised into a themed volume.
I also think the Atlas would be a good book to use as the starting point or foundation for further study into a wide range of topics involving the supernatural, spiritual and paranormal as it contains well-known and curious examples of each of them, and the way they can often intertwine with local folklore to produce myths and legends about a place. With the Atlas, one can research the phenomena, or the place they may be found in the world as there is a useful and handy index located at the back of the book.
What I really like about the Atlas is that Evelyn covers many of the well-known spooky paranormal sites across the world, and she draws you in to explore the ones that you do not know, or have not heard of. I would recommend her book as a good read, and one that I think will prove to be a good companion on a dark journey through the supernatural, the spiritual and of course, the paranormal.