Richard Estep

An editor would have done wonders here. The amount of commas in some sentences was alarming and made sentences hard to read. An editor would have also removed mistakes like “[how did this revert to visibleink.com? argh]” or why the book title kept showing up in read and the name kept changing from part 1 to part 8. The overuse of commas, the incomplete sentences, the random punctuation, and random line breaks make this book so difficult to read.

The format of this book also bothered me. In the PDF version, it made sense why there were knives between sections, boxes with what I assume was supposed to be dripping blood with highlights, and line breaks. When I read it on my kindle, all of that formatting was changed. The blood images were just random and line breaks were off. Each chapter began with one letter and then the rest of the word would be two lines below.

The biggest thing that bothered me about the format was the random images of almost unrelated things. Like if the killer had a dog, there would be a random picture of a dog. If there were tire tracks at a crime scene, there would be a random picture of tire tracks. If the killer used a phone, there was a random picture of a phone. It reminded me of a bad tv documentary. None of these pictures were from the real event. I did, however, like when the images were of the real person or from the actual case.

As for the stories themselves, I felt like I was just reading some Wiki Pages. I feel like a written book should have more information to learn than this book had.… (mer)

Richard Estep is a very engaging writer with a fascination for the paranormal and ghosts. In this book he makes several visits to Villisca, Iowa, to research and ghost hunt at Axe Murder House where eight people were murdered in 1912.

The House has a reputation for being quite haunted, though the level and type of activity varies from day to day and person to person or group to group. Even Mr. Estep gets different results each time he visits, which says a lot about ghost hunting - it's never consistent.

To make the point obvious, though I doubt that was Mr. Estep's intent, he watches and discusses several different shows of other groups* who've visited the house through the years, each with unique results. I wondered if he was aware of the irony of that fact.

On the whole, this book is an interesting look into how history and the present interact in weird ways. The house itself is a sad place, a place that draws the morbidly curious and historian alike. Though there are theories and ideas about who the murderer was, most definitely a mass murderer (though not gone into much depth, there is discussion about a number similar crimes which were committed along railroad stops before and after Villisca), no one know who actually slipped into the house one night and took an axe to the two adults and six children who slept within or why.

On the whole, an interesting read.

… (mer)