This is a common question and it feels right to address it in this new edition. I was born with an interest in the paranormal. I started my ghost-hunting career in the early 1990s and I immediately became frustrated with the lack of information. There were almost no credible sources on the subject. I decided to start writing personal journals to document my ghost-hunting experiences. Those original journals were the blueprints for what would eventually become my first book. In the early days, I kept notes on everything — my ideas, theories, questions and experiments. I examined what experiments worked, which failed and I sorted out the significant theories.
By the mid 1990s, I had over a dozen notebooks crammed full of firsthand experiences. I considered these notebooks my “Bible,” but the notebooks were becoming increasingly disorganized. The time had come to sort out the useful information and get rid of the rest — a process that continues to this day. I began to write a new journal. This new journal was a compilation of the other notebooks. I did not realize at the time but this journal was the first raw edition of The Ghost Hunter’s Bible.
In 1998, I decided to print copies of my finalized journal and pass them out to my fellow ghost hunters, hoping for feedback. I never planned to print a book, but I concluded that it would be easier and more cost effective to print the journal in book format. It was not long before I had two thousand copies of the first edition of The Ghost Hunter’s Bible sitting in boxes packed from floor to ceiling in my bedroom. It was an exciting time. The first edition was a good first effort, but it was not a perfect book. The book could have been better, but overall the book’s release was met with an encouraging response. I received positive feedback, constructive criticism and hate mail — all of which help me craft better versions of the book.
The Ghost Hunter’s Bible is an evolving process. It is a guidebook for people like myself who want to search for ghosts and experience the paranormal. I started writing the foundations of this book almost twenty years ago and I still hope to be publishing versions of this book twenty years in the future. Even if you disagree with sections of this book, I hope you enjoy the book and appreciate the years of work that went into crafting this current version. I wish the best to every ghost hunter in their search.
Sincerely,
Trent Brandon