In the past, I have often found that many books and anthologies on unexplained phenomena and bizarre events are either sensationalized accounts with vague descriptions and no concrete details, or dry and inspirational regurgitation of other source materials with more footnotes than original material. So it was with great pleasure that I discovered Robert Damon Schneck's book The President's Vampire.

Schneck's approach is far from exploitational. His attention to detail and devotion to searching out the truth behind the sensational and unverified leaves no doubt to the author's curiosity or credibility. Exhaustive and well-documented historical research is devoted to every subject, even when possibly debunking an even more remarkable aspect to a story. But neither is his writing boring or overly-clinical. Schneck's academic yet personal approach to his subject matter does not hide an almost uncontainable passion for the unusual and unexplained phenomena he writes about, and more importantly, it does not detract from how fun and compelling his writing is.

Most chilling and disturbing is the final chapter, Bridge to Body Island, an examination of a friend's recollected close call with a supernatural bogeyman. Many authors would present the tale on its own with perhaps a few embellishments for dramatic effect. Schneck, however, tells the story (which is genuinely creepy and unsettling) and then proceeds to examine the possible explanations for the events that took place, including research into possible real-world connections. His historical and scholarly comparisons and explanations are as captivating as the story itself, and do nothing to prevent readers who have used a Ouija board in the past from losing sleep.

That is where Schneck's approach to such Fortean tales as God Machines and Presidential Pardons for Vampires is a step above other authors in the field. He might not hold a flashlight under his face while leaning over the campfire to tell a spooky story, but that is because more often than not, the facts are far more disturbing. Robert Schneck delivers them, and thankfully so. ( )

While you could tell this book was meticulously researched, the writing and stories themselves failed to 'pop' for me. ( )

Dear Mr. R. D. Schneck, author of 'The President's Vampire',

You seem to be a great and true anomalist and Fortean - I, too, have the shelf of old childhood paperbacks about strange things and weird happenings, only mine has grown to fill an entire bookcase and well beyond. Your book was great - I was so happy to see an anomalist book that covers in-depth stories I'd never seen in anything but passing mention. The story about the Springheel Jack of Southwest Baltimore was an excellent thing to read in the middle of a Baltimore heat wave! And thank you so much for doing the original research and being willing to say it, outright, when a beloved Fortean case comes to nothing - too many people working in Fort's tradition want to skip the 'verifying facts' step, and your chapter on the Vampire was almost a case study in how it should be done. We need more Forteans like you writing, in general.

But I do want to let you know that on the list of things that will never, ever be interesting from a Fortean point of view (along with "things I found out through past life regression" and "metaphysics as explained by a TV psychic") is "things that happened to my friends while they were playing with a Ouija Board." There were some interesting things in the story - the question of how the board works, and who it works for, and trying to get verifiable (or provably false) data from it, and the psychology involved - but all of that stuff is only peripherally related to Forteana, and it certainly didn't justify "things that happened to my friends while playing with a Ouija board" being the longest section in the book. If it had been paperback rather than hardcover, I would have done what I've done to several other books on my paranormal shelf - slit the binding, removed the useless section that was most of the book, and then re-taped the binding.

This is disappointing mainly because the rest of the book was as close to a perfect Fortean ouvre as I've encountered in ages. Keep writing! Just leave out the Ouija boards next time, okay? ( )

http://yoyogodreviews.blogspot.com/2006/05/im-back.html ( )