Paranormal Intruder: The Terrifying True Story of a Family in Fear

Reviewed by Eric Renderking Fisk | January 6th, 2017

From the publisher:

Caroline lives with her husband, four children and two dogs in a pretty village on the coast of Essex. Born in Ireland, she moved to the UK ten years ago with her husband Neil. In 2010 Caroline and her family encountered true paranormal activity from an unknown entity in their home. A writer at heart, Caroline documented her experiences and wrote a book of their paranormal activity in the hope of helping others. Please visit www.caroline-writes.com for further details.

In my never-ending eternal quest to find the next great thing to share on The Metaphysical Connection, (my weekly exploration into the realm of the paranormal with Walt Schnabel,) I’ll read any book on any of the subgenre’s so long as it has a decent rating. If it doesn’t have a decent rating but is very controversial (because it’s unbelievable?) I might still read it if it has something I can talk about in a future episode.

“Paranormal Intruder” is such a book, it’s highly rated by other readers and it’s controversial in the sense that some of things in this book is hard to believe. Sure, you can claim that this is the most researched and investigated paranormal case investigated, and you can point to the fact that the author, Caroline Mitchell, is a trained investigator herself in the realm of law enforcement.

Sure, Ms. Mitchell is a former police officer, but she’s also a fiction writer.

Does that mean that she has less credibility than someone else who lived in a haunted house but never wrote a book in her life? Well… maybe because there was a switch flipped in my head between when I started the book and read it on its face value, to the moment in the middle of my book when I found out that she has also written various other fictional books on the supernatural.

Could any of the details in “Paranormal Intruder” be embellished because she’s already a sensational writer? That’s a question I can’t seem to get out of my head while reading the rest of this book.

As for the story, itself, it’s something right (or ‘write’) out of stories about other famous hauntings like “The Amityville Horror.” Mom and Dad find a cheap house for this family to move into. The house is a great deal, it’s a dream house that the parents can easily afford and it never seems to bother them that nobody else has snatched it up. They never bother to ask themselves ‘could this be too good to be true?’

Come on… it’s not like this house was built on an ancient burial ground, or was the location where black magic, satanic rituals or witchcraft were practiced? Just because the house is cheap and there are weird sounds coming from the ceilings, walls, and basement doesn’t mean the house is haunted!

Crap… all those things did happen on that plot of land? The location of where this house was built had a dark reputation. A dark, sinister reputation that all the neighbors knew about after they themselves investigated the happenings in that house because nobody has lived in that house for very long.

The other aspect of this book that’s important to share is that there are some people who are simply attractive to undead spirits. There are some people who have strange habits or activities that cause spirits to be attracted to some people or objects. There are a handful of chapters in this book that confirm my concern (or downright fear) about Ouija boards. These are harmless little toys or games until they’re used ONCE, and after that they might serve as conduits for dark spirits from the other side to come and go as they please. As demonstrated with in the text of this book, a spirit that’s conjured in one location might show up in another if the owner of that Ouija board brings it from one location and uses it in another.

This book also serves as a lesson to people on who not to trust. Caroline and her husband trusted a friend of theirs who said “hell, no… I never dabble in that stuff,” when in fact some of the spirits highlighted in this book were conjured because this friend turned out to be a liar who actually did dabble in the dark arts consistently. It’s not hard to imagine that he brought ‘something’ with him to this location where the house was built that was already susceptible to spirits ‘crossing over.’

“Paranormal Intruder” also serves as a cautionary tale… if there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? Well, not the local Catholic church if you’re not a frequent member of their parish and a good tither. Not in the parish where this story takes place, anyway. Sure, men of the cloth will run to where angels fear to tread, but not for just anyone in the neighborhood. For them to get involved, you must be a member of this Shepard’s flock!

“The power of Christ compels you!” to find help elsewhere.

This book captures exactly what I imagine what a haunted house must feel like when it’s possessed by demonic forces. It perfect captures what it must be like when such a spirit lures you in to trust it by first masquerading as the spirit of a deceased loved one, or the spirit of a kind stranger who has unfinished business in this world only to discover it’s a demonic entity with nefarious goals in mind.

… And I can imagine that the feelings of being trapped, confused and helpless that are described in this book are exactly what it must feel like to be in a house you’re still paying for but can’t live in. And I’m sure that if my house was haunted, my in-laws would get tired of my family crashing there every time there’s a loud noise that goes ‘bump’ in the night. Or, pushes a child up against the celling after midnight.

Not even until the very last pages are the conflict resolved and they ‘live happily ever after’ in this house, and it’s not clear if the dark spirits have left and the ‘good spirit’s’ remain. Like most good horror movies or books like this one, the horror remains. The reader like myself is left scared because it might not be over and something terrifying remains.

With all of my reservations about this book, “Paranormal Intruder” is still one of the best books I’ve read on the subject of hauntings. It’s a great story about what happens to a family when something like this happens and serves as a great example of what not to do when you think your house is haunted. It’s an entertaining jaunt and perfect for Halloween specificly; if you want a book to scare the hell out of you, look no further.

It’s also a great house warming gift to give to people who are moving into a creepy old house that they bought for pennies on the dollar.

Amazon: Paranormal Intruder: The Terrifying True Story of a Family in Fear