Haunted Arizona: Deadly Graveyards

In this offbeat debut survey, paranormal historian Blanch details 13 deaths in cemeteries across his home state of Arizona, many of which he purports have become hot spots for supernatural activity. The most engrossing chapters concern grief-stricken Phoenix real estate agent Julian Holmes’s 1954 suicide at his wife, Margaret’s, grave; Holmes shot himself after laying flowers beside her headstone. Blanch also describes victims of freak accidents on cemetery grounds and graveyard employees who died of natural causes on the job, including security guard Barry Brutchey, who was found dead in his truck less than an hour after completing a patrol of the Glendale Memorial Park Cemetery. As Blanch runs through his list of cases in brief, photo-heavy chapters, he occasionally details efforts by amateur ghost hunters to communicate with the deceased at the sites of their death, but the book’s ghost hunting through line is thin. Still, Blanch’s concise recollections of human tragedies are affecting. For true crime obsessives, this is worth a look. Photos. (Self-published)