Haunted Land: An Investigation into Ancient Earth Mysteries and Modern-day Phenomena: Amazon.co.uk: Paul Devereux: Books

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Product Description

From the earliest times people from diverse cultures have felt the landscape to be teeming with spirits and spectres. Here Devereux aims to marry mysteries of the past with eerie unexplained phenomena that still haunt us, looking at "ghost lights" and medieval "death roads" among others.

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intriguing journey, 11 Jan 2002

By A Customer

The evocatively titled "Haunted Land" perfectly complements Paul Devereux's previous book, "The Sacred Place". Different in both format and content, the "Haunted Land" nevertheless touches on a number of themes from the previous book, but from a very different perspective. While the former book explored the subtle interface between human beings and the places they inhabit or revere as being sacred, the "Haunted Land" shifts focus to pay closer attention to the invisible (and occasionally visible) denizens of the spirit pathways and trackways that conjoin the world of everyday reality. Devereux ranges widely over a vast terrain which encompasses the passage of spirits and the flight of shamans in the Americas; vampires, werewolves, and witches in Old Europe; death roads and funeral paths; and hooded figures, spectral animals, corpse candles, and phantom vehicles in the present and recent past in Britain.

This is not an academic book, and as such Devereux is not constrained by the normal cautions of academic writing. This is both a strength and a weakness of his writing. It is a strength in that it gives Devereux free rein to build his argument on the foundations of stories and descriptions gleaned from a variety of different cultures and historical periods. It is a weakness insofar as it doesn't provide Devereux with the scope to pay due attention to the controversial nature of some of the academic material that he uses to construct his argument. This is particular true of his use of the work of the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg on the origins of European witchcraft, and extends also to his discussion of archetypes and what he conceives as an archaic shamanic substrate that underpins many of the traditional practices he writes about. The beauty of Devereux's writing, though, is that even when one doesn't agree with all of his conclusions, the reader finishes the book feeling they have learnt something new, and something wholly in keeping with Devereux's unique understanding of the world...

Accompanying Devereux on his journey into the "Haunted Land" will lead to an enhanced appreciation of the (apparently) empty spaces of the imagined places we inhabit. Fascinating in its detail and provocative (if a tad speculative!) in its conclusions, this is a book to 'think with' in the best sense of the term.

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Haunted Land or just Sussex and USA?, 30 Mar 2009

By	Doris1952 (The Fens, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Haunted Land: An Investigation into Ancient Earth Mysteries and Modern-day Phenomena (Paperback)

Barely a token gesture towards any hauntings around East Anglia - we have so many around Peterborough - go to the Museum and see for yourself on a Candlelit Tour, or join one of the Ghost Walks around the city!

I'm still not absolutely sure what the purpose of the book was...