This book is an account of what happened in the house occupied by the Dunam family, where a young girl talks to someone no one can see in her bedroom, where the father finds himself increasingly able to discern figures walking through the house before him, where the mother struggles to hold her family together in the face of an unexplainable paranormal threat. The landlord who previously lived in the house refuses to leave his car when he comes to collect the rent.

It is no surprise that the Dunams welcome the Research Group because they think they’re going nuts. But over five-months, the researchers are able to confirm the family’s claims. They hear footsteps, audio tapes pick up voices and noises that are not being produced by anything physical, and upside-down rainbow shapes are seen howering over the house which, Dusty discovers, Native American tradition labels as gateways to other dimensions. Numerous examples of paranormal activity are logged.

There is no pat ending to the story. The ghosts are not sent on to their reward in the end by Zelda Rubernstein nor are they banished by Max von Sydow. Despite the expense they can not afford, the Dunam family flees the house when the struggle peaks with the videocamera discovery of what the family’s infant daughter has been exposed to.

But the case is fascinating reading, in the medieval sense of the word. Smith’s attention to the group’s efforts to find a more mundane explanation, Dusty’s discussion of procedure, the efforts to document, all provide a revealing picture of what goes into the task of ghost-hunting.

Highly recommended.