A KNOCK IN THE ATTIC

A set of paranormal stories from the life of a psychic.

In this memoir, West Texas native Russell writes that he saw his first ghost at the age of 5, when he awoke to see a man standing in his bedroom—one who mysteriously evaporated after the author started screaming. His parents didn’t believe his story, but he says that the incident opened his eyes to a whole new plane of existence: “He was only the first of many ghosts I would come to see,” writes the author, “the harbinger of the beginning of my psychic, mediumistic, paranormal life, a life lived at the edge of the Veil which separates the seen and unseen worlds.” In this book, Russell offers accounts of some of his interactions with the spiritual realm, from his sightings of unidentified flying objects in the sky above his childhood home to his apparent ability to heal others’ ailments. He tells stories of haunted places—an attic, a stable—and haunted objects, including a toy camera that would spontaneously click its shutter. He also tells of filming a pilot for the History Channel about spirits and psychic energy surrounding the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and of meeting his hero, celebrity psychic Uri Geller. Russell’s prose has the practiced, rhetorical quality of a skilled storyteller, as in this passage, about a dog toy that has somehow escaped a grave: “There had been no digging, no evidence of any kind of disturbance of the soil whatsoever. And yet here sat that frog toy, so distinctive in appearance, having somehow been teleported through…several feet of densely packed soil.” Russell clearly expresses confidence in his spiritual and psychic perceptions, although one doesn’t get the sense that he feels the need to convince readers of their veracity; as such, skeptics will likely remain skeptical. Also, the overall tone is more like a memoir than a series of ghost stories, and some may find its lack of scares to be slightly disappointing. Still, the book offers an intriguing window into the life of someone steeped in the supernatural.

A sometimes-intriguing but low-key supernatural remembrance.