House of Darkness House of Light Review

Volumes One and Two – Book Review

 

I just finished read volumes 1 & 2 of Andrea Perron’s House of Darkness, House of Light. This is a true story, first hand account, of her family’s ordeal living for a decade in a haunted farmhouse in Rhode Island.

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This kind of haunting is a paranormal investigators dream; and many showed up at the farmhouse to look into it. The most famous investigators were Ed and Lorraine Warren, the esteemed demonologists. Although they don’t appear until late in book two, the story is compelling even without their appearance.

 

I enjoyed reading Andrea’s tale for several reasons. In no particular order:

 

First, I’m a quote junkie and she has great quotes at the beginning and end of each chapter. Several of them have made it into my saved files to be shared out at later dates.

 

Second, she’s smart. She doesn’t just tell the tale of the spirits in the home, she delves into the philosophical aspect of life after death. In much of her story she questions the deeper meanings of all the experiences the family had with their ghostly encounters. She also uses a large lexicon. I enjoy writers who use words that I need to look up in the dictionary (I admit it, I’m a wordsmith).

 

Third, the positive and benign spiritual encounters were celebrated and highlighted equally alongside the scary events. I tell clients all the time that we all have deceased family members who visit us in spirit that are not evil. They don’t pose a threat. They don’t bother us. Andrea highlighted these kinds of gentle spirit beings throughout both books and I found it to be refreshing.

 

If you are seeking to understand how the spirit world interacts with us on a daily basis, these two books paint a well-rounded picture.

 

Spirit connection is celebrated as mostly positive, even though there were some scary events that took place. Her point of view is refreshing in this day and age of “scare and shock” ghost stories on TV and in print. I’ve noticed the scarier the story, the higher the ratings go. As I said, not all spirit is negative.

 

If you do decide to read this family’s tale, I advise you to start with book one and stick with it. If you begin with book two, there are many references to experiences in book one that will leave you lost and wondering. The other piece of advice I share is to push through when the tale seems to take a repetitive turn. There were several chapters that sounded familiar to those that came before. (A good sit down with an editor should fix this in future revisions.) However, it was not enough of a turnoff for me to put the books down.

 

In sum, I found this ghostly tale to be a refreshing, well written true account of how one family interacted with the spirit world as part of their everyday living for a decade.