Ghosts of War: Restless Spirits of Soldiers, Spies, and Saboteurs

By Jeff Belanger
Illustrated, bibliography, index, softcover, 235 pp., 2006. New Page Books, P.O. Box 687, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417, $14.99 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Blake Magner
Blake A. Magner is the Book Review Editor of Civil War News. He makes his living as an editor, writer, cartographer and photographer of Civil War history. He is author of At Peace With Honor: The Civil War Burials of Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Review:
Here we go again with another book on spooks that is pretty much like every other book published on the subject. This volume is interesting in that it covers haunted areas in different time periods beginning with the Gempei War in the late 1100s and continues on to the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.

Of interest to readers of Civil War News are the chapters covering the spirits and apparitions of Valverde (sic), Antietam, Gettysburg, Kennesaw Mountain, Carnton Plantation at Franklin, Andersonville and Fort Zachary Taylor.

The author does not do a lot of slogging around the site; rather, his narrative is based on interviews. The sightings and stories are pretty much run of the mill. What they do provide are more sites for your list if you keep track of haunted battlefields.

While the chapters have some errors of fact and figures there is nothing to really detract from the overall focus of the volume. If the reader likes ghost stories I suggest you add Ghosts of War to your library.