Sunday, January 24, 2010

Things that go bump in the night


Slogging through this book was an unhappy incident, but one unfortunately of my own choosing. I decided to read Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession by Ed and Lorraine Warren as part of the background research I was doing on werewolves for my unfinished attempt at a literary classic retelling with monsters. Since my classic monster tale never even really got started, I was quite sorry to have wasted time reading this work.
Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession is supposedly the story of Bill Ramsay, a Brit who seemed to be under the impression that he was turning into a werewolf. The authors of the book, the Warrens, claimed to be expert "demonologists," and became involved with Ramsay in order to tell his story and attempt an exorcism. The Warrens were also involved in the more famous Amityville Horror, which was penned by a different author, and I can only say that perhaps they should have done the same for this tale because it was one big confusing yawn.
The Warrens refer to themselves in the third person, strange enough, but they also extol their own virtues as experts in exorcism in the third person, without the slightest hint of self-awareness or irony. There were tense problems too which added to the confusion and the story of Ramsay as the werewolf never really solidified. There were some silly old black and white photographs reported featuring Ramsay mid-transformation during the exorcism, but little else of interest.
This book was set to be discarded, but it was suddenly recalled for a hold and placed back into circulation.
On the cheap thrills scale, this book ranks a 1 out of possible 10 -- better than shaving someone's back hair, but more boring than staring at the DVD cover of The Amityville Horror. Recommended for: weirdos who are into this stuff, older kids bored of reading the "Goosebumps" series.

2 comments:

  1. Cool book. Though i'm 25 and STILL not bored of Goosebumps. :D

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  2. That's ok :) We have secret meetings on Wednesdays behind the gym, bring your old VHS tapes for trading!

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