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Your Neighborhood Gives Me the Creeps: True Tales of an Accidental Ghost Hunter

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Do ghosts really exist, or is "ghostly phenomena" just strange stuff that gets blamed on dead people? Giving you the real story, professional ghostbuster and skeptic Adam Selzer of Weird Chicago Tours delves into a mysterious death at a former funeral parlor, nightly ghost sightings at Hull House, and more. Proving that not all ghost hunters are kooks (some are just geeks gone wild), Selzer showcases true spooky tales worldwide, a history of hauntings, the art of ghost hunting, and cool evidence of paranormal phenomena and the supernatural. These ghost stories will make you want to investigate that cemetery down the road to see if it's haunted―or just dark and creepy.

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2009

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About the author

Adam Selzer

56 books196 followers
Adam Selzer blocked Goodreads on his computer for years but now he's on here, so let him have it. His first book was HOW TO GET SUSPENDED AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE (now available in a "Now With More Swearing") edition, his next one is PLAY ME BACKWARDS (for satanic young adults), and his best known is probably I KISSED A ZOMBIE AND I LIKED IT, a Twilight satire that was not marketed as a satire.

He also writes the SMART ALECK'S GUIDE series and has published a bunch of Chicago history/ghostlore books.

You can also find him under the name SJ Adams, the name he used for SPARKS: THE EPIC, COMPLETELY TRUE BLUE (ALMOST) HOLY QUEST OF DEBBIE, which won a Stonewall honor and made the YALSA popular paperback list.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
Profile Image for Andrea.
728 reviews20 followers
August 16, 2012
[This review originally appeared on Andi's Book Reviews.]

Your Neighborhood Gives Me the Creeps by Adam Selzer is a book that actually gave me the creeps. Not only is it full of ghost stories, primarily set in Chicago, but these are recorded by a self-proclaimed nonbeliever.

Adam Selzer is a skeptic who accidentally ended up doing ghost tours around Chicago, after he couldn't find a different "real" job and needed the money. While he is usually able to dispel ghost stories or explain away bizarre phenomena, such as orbs in photographs, he will admit to having a few of his own unexplained adventures in the supernatural realm. Some of these occurred when he was yet a child. Honestly, a scientifically-minded person who gets scared in certain situations is more likely to convince me of the plausibility of a ghostly encounter than someone who routinely finds spirits.

Adam Selzer is good at telling stories, a skill probably enhanced every time he goes out on the bus with his company Weird Chicago Tours, founded in 2006. He has published numerous other books and has a degree in English. He is well-versed in the history of numerous supposedly haunted locations, and has thoroughly researched any story he shares. He tries to scientifically explain away sightings, but will admit when he has no explanation. Particularly creepy is the story of a ghostly encounter with a former coworker who unexpectedly succumbed to an early demise after receiving bodiless threats from voices in the walls.

Locations covered throughout the book are notorious in the Windy City. Odin Tatu (now Old Town Tatu) is a former funeral parlor that is now a tattoo parlor. The Biograph Theatre, a.k.a. "Dillinger's Alley" is where John Dillinger met his demise. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre site and the Eastland disaster site can boast numerous tragic and simultaneous deaths. And of course, there is Hull House, and the stopping point for Lincoln's funeral train, amongst several others.

At the end of the book, Selzer provides information for wannabe ghost hunters about different kinds of equipment available. He also outlines a few rules for ghost hunters. Most importantly, remember to be skeptical enough to look for the scientific explanations of the weird, yet open-minded enough to be open to any possibilities. And don't be a jerk.

It is a thrilling read for anyone who is remotely interested in ghost hunting and/or ghost stories. I recommend reading it at night for full effect.

Visit Adam Selzer's websites at AdamSelzer.com and WeirdChicagoBlog.com.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
Profile Image for Meadow.
965 reviews13 followers
November 4, 2013
Not the books fault, but it was unreadable on my phone. I would get halfway into a chapter and then ZING! back to the beginning. Possibly my phone gives him the creeps. What I read was okay but not great. Not great enough for me to make the effort to download to my actual Kindle.
Profile Image for Melissa.
1,157 reviews1 follower
September 23, 2021
Very amusing take on Chicago's paranormal scene by the author who runs ghost tours. I read some of this book while in my public library, and it had me laughing out loud. Do I believe in ghosts? Well, sure. I was raised in house that was built in 1891. My mom heard...and smelled ghosts. My sister and I were scared of my parents' bedroom, because we heard noises when no one was in it. My sister left a tape recorder on in the room, and we heard voices. My parents are gone, but I moved back here, and oddly enough, I often smell cigarette smoke when I'm in my windowless centrally located bathroom...in other words, it's not from the outside, and it's not from the inside. My late husband heard people playing cards coming from the basement. I could go on and on, but everyone believes their house is haunted(at least according to the author.) If ever a place was haunted, it was/is this house. Anyway, someday I'd like to be part of one of his ghost tours(Bachelor's Grove was mentioned in this book, and back in the '70s, my late cousin saw the ghost house.) But anyway, this is a great book. I HIGHLY recommend it!
Profile Image for Carol.
3,790 reviews137 followers
August 10, 2018
The thing I really liked about this authors writing was that he didn't try to sell the reader on the idea of the existence of ghost. I guess he really didn't have to since the "ghost Tour" business that he and a partner run in Chicago will attract customers regardless. Some will believe and the rest are there for the entertainment. The man's stories are amusing and entertaining...perfect for a dark night around a campfire or a Halloween party. I don't know if ghosts exist and Adam Selzer really doesn't know either but he still doing his tours of supposedly haunted places with an open mind.
249 reviews
January 11, 2025
Adam Selzer is first a historian and then a ghosthunter, and I love and respect that. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I like how he understands that people want to believe in ghost and the afterlife, but he's a sceptic who, at least at the end of this older book, had experienced only 2 unexplainable incidents. However he also knows what is expected of him as a tour guide.

Selzer is informative and funny and writes with ease, just like he most likely runs his tours. He's a natural storyteller. I will definitely look to check out more of his other, newer books.
Profile Image for Karen.
860 reviews11 followers
July 29, 2017
3.5 stars. Adam Selzer ran ghost tours in Chicago. This is a quick, entertaining read about his experiences giving the tours. I used to live in Chicago so I recognized most of the places he talked about, which made the book interesting to me. If you want some light reading, this will do.
Profile Image for Anne Jordan-Baker.
92 reviews5 followers
February 21, 2021
A smart and fun book on the unusual topic of ghost tours and ghost hunting. Semi autobiographical, this book tells the story of Selzer’s beginnings as a tour guide in Chicago. Even handed and smart alecky in the best Adam Selzer way, it’s a great read.
Profile Image for Joy.
99 reviews7 followers
August 22, 2020
So funny, I laughed out loud. Good book.
1,211 reviews
January 10, 2010
Adam Selzer is my guy. Totally. There's nothing floofy or flippy about this book. Selzer isn't some dude that smells like incense and wears MC Hammer pants as a ruse to look like a dime store Romani. He's just a guy that happened to be in the right place at the right time and found himself giving ghost tours and wandering around supposedly haunted houses. Now that's my idea of timing.

The only slightly negative thing I had to say about this book was the writing itself. Not that it was really bad, it just felt rambling in some parts, kind of redundant in others. Other than that, Selzer told a pretty compelling story about his ordinary-turned-creepy life.

What really got me hooked on this book was that Selzer is just like me. Despite all of my run-ins with ethereal beings and my psychic tendencies (including but not limited to seeing people die, one, very unfortunately, came true while the other I was capable of saving), I'm still a skeptic. Yeah, I have orb pictures, which are some of the most fallacious pieces of ghostly evidence out there. Yeah, it could be dust. But how do you have mountains of dust or water droplets on one side of a room and not the other with people walking all around? Yeah, I have a photo of a ghost standing in an abandoned building in broad daylight. Yeah, it could be something reflecting from the inside (although it was dark in there) or it could have been something on the negative (but not really) but it certainly looked like a white-formed faceless woman in a corseted bustle dress to me.

What's cool about this is the debunking and the phenomena within all of Selzer's debunking. Yes, 90% of ghostly occurrences can be explained away by something but the rest . . . it leaves people coming up short. That squeaking is a cat or the door opening on its own is hanging unevenly. Total buzz kill but it makes those few moments of unexplainable phenomena all the more fantastic.

Selzer doesn't pretend. He doesn't blow smoke, he doesn't sugar-coat anything, he just tells it like it is - for the most part, not ghostly. Rightly in history, maybe, and that could be leaving the vibe. But ghostly? Probably not.

That's why I liked this book so much. Because of the skepticism. It grounded the fantastical. It made it seem more realistic, if that makes any sense. It's like how Tim O'Brien wrote in The Things They Carried that the soldiers had to make up the more mundane stuff in order to balance out the real shit they had to go through. A book full of floofy ghostly spooky gets kind of "alright, enough" but a book full of skepticism sprinkled with stories that shake even the skeptic's resolve makes believing in the supernatural all the more real. There is something there that we can't explain. Maybe science doesn't have an explanation for it yet. Maybe it's something beyond our scope of reasoning. Whatever it is, it sure is cool!

Don't hold your breath for seeing Selzer or any of his co-workers joining the ranks of show hunters on TV. They don't do it for the spectacle or the money (since they really don't make any). They do it for the history. This is a book about some of the most grounded and realistically-based ghost hunters I've ever seen. No demons. No portals to Hell. No Warrens. No show-offisms. It just is and it's worth the read because Selzer has some good stories to tell. It'll also make you look at your own experiences in a different light and help you to explain something that might not have been explained before. The pseudo-science they dabble in is also interesting.

Really, don't miss any of it!
Profile Image for Cornerofmadness.
1,964 reviews16 followers
January 31, 2011
This is a different look at the usual ghost hunting books. Not only is it through the eyes of a skeptic, the author, but also it’s more about the running of a ghost tour than it is about the haunts. The author is very sarcastic and if you’re the type running around with your crystals, orb photos clutched in a tight fist convinced they are NOT dust (and hey some very well might not be) you are going to hate this. I believe in ghosts but am skeptical and always look for the scientific explanation first and even I wanted to go take this tour just to punch him after a few choice snarky passages.

I did like the skeptics point of view in this and looking in what it’s like to a) work for a ghost tour b) build your own ghost tour company was interesting. Though, in many ways I would rather have had a few more of their haunts highlighted with the skeptics’ eye than here for the 100th time how much of a douchebag his former boss’s husband was and how he ruined the first ghost tour company once he got out of jail. That went on a bit overly long.

I also liked that Selzer went over what you need to go ghost hunting and how you can pretty much do this on your own without a lot of fancy equipment. While I don’t agree with everything he said in this respect, having worked with ghost hunting teams myself in the past, I think most of it is pretty straight up and usable. As he points out, the regular ghost hunter isn’t going to have TAPS’s budget to buy a thermal imaging camera that run several thousand dollars.

So while I liked the book over all, I don’t think I need to see another one like this again. It’s rather depressing to realize that a lot of ghost (and historical) tours just make crap up to sound good. Sigh.



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This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Laura.
1,936 reviews27 followers
August 9, 2012
I cracked a tooth. By the time I made it in to the dentist, I knew I was going to require some oral surgery. After visiting the dentist and receiving prescriptions for pain and antibiotics, I knew I was going to need some new reading: books which would allow me to drift in and out of them without a detailed plot. I went to Half-Price books and bought a few collections of ghost stories.

I wasn't going to choose this book because it wasn't really a collection of ghost stories. It's more autobiographical than that. It was really cheap, though, so I bought it. I'm glad I did.

I enjoyed his axioms. They made sense to me. They seemed to come from a decade or two of experience with ghosthunting and ghostchasers.

I wasn't aware when I bought the book but the author is a skeptic. He admits lying on some of his tours... but he also admits that he's experienced some things which were inexplicable. I guess I would classify him as an open-minded skeptic. His admissions of stretching of the truth to stretch time is both realistic and reassuring. It just makes sense.

The author refers several times to ghost photos yet provides none. It would have been nice to have more photos. He seems to take them regularly as part of his job as a ghost tour operator in Chicago.

I'm recommending the book to a skeptical friend of mine. It's a good clear read which explains some of the basics of ghosthunting. (One of his partners has created a ghosthunting manual which is used by Ghost Hunters, International.)

I would recommend this book to mature teens and adults. It does have references to drug and alcohol use and abuse and some sexual innuendo. It also has a wicked sense of humor and a dry turn of phrase.
Profile Image for Shazza Maddog.
1,375 reviews2 followers
September 25, 2011
Adam Selzer says in his short preface that he writes YA books about snarky kids. Yeah. It's quite obvious from the way he writes this book, too, about being a tour guide in Chicago for two different haunted tour companies.

Let me preface this by saying I want to meet this man. He's a geek. He keeps throwing in references to Star Wars and Harry Potter (he says he partially got the job working for one of the tour companies because, "Olga, he looks like Harry Potter!"). A self-defined skeptic, he works with a psychic and the man who wrote the definitive work on ghost hunting techniques. Adam says he's in this for the science and because it's better than working at Starbucks, which is where his English degree got him.

Stories? Yes. He tells them. Mostly about researching buildings for the tours, how the collective mind works on a ghost tour, what jokes fall flat and what ones work. Why he enjoys his job. He also writes about going on actual ghost hunts and a recurring building in the story, called Odin Tatu, a tattoo parlor run out of an old mortuary.

A very fun look in the behind the scenes life of a ghost tour company, this book makes me want to head north and book a tour with Weird Chicago.
Profile Image for Sam.
7 reviews
May 10, 2012
Adam Selzer tells the story of how he became a tour guide on a ghost tour in Chicago as well as other events while on ghost hunts. While he tries to remain a skeptic, Selzer keeps an open mind to the possibility of ghosts and the paranormal. Towards the end of the book he gives advice on what to get for your ghost hunting gear as well as advice on using it.
The book read overall as fun and pretty engaging. Selzer's writing style is quirky and nerdy. He's definitely someone who enjoys what he does. I could imagine that hanging out with the guy would be fun. Though the book did drag in a few places and seemed to jump out of chronology which was a bit confusing. It's an easy and fun read for anyone curious about ghostly places in and around Chicago as seen through the eyes of a bit of a skeptic.
498 reviews40 followers
July 27, 2017
So this book was highly recommended by my aunt, whom I believe has excellent taste in ghost books, so I had pretty high expectations. Perhaps that was my first problem. This book was mediocre, luke warm. There was a couple cool things, but he tries to hard to pretend to be a skeptic and a historian. I believe he enjoys his job and his enthusiasm is there in the book. He has way too many cheesy jokes. He definitely repeats himself too much. I enjoyed when he would talk about some of the people he'd met on his tour. That would make an interesting book in itself.
Profile Image for Kate.
1,198 reviews23 followers
December 28, 2011
More skeptical about ghosts than I expected from Llewellyn Press, this is enjoyable narrative nf about Selzer's experiences as a ghost-tour leader and ghost hunter. There are some grinworthy personalities and ghost/nonghost stories, some mild morality-of-ghost-tour-work discussions, and some repetition regarding the company Selzer used to work for and the company he founded, centering around a crazy named Ray who doesn't seem like the type of guy you should provoke, even in print. Good light read with a Chicago connection.
Profile Image for Laurie.
1,520 reviews10 followers
August 2, 2011
This is a fun book about various haunted places in Chicago, and the author's experiences as a ghost tour leader and ghost hunter. He is pretty skeptical about ghosts, and also includes discussions on whether they exist or not.

Half of the time I liked the really informal, chatty, writing style, but the other half of the time the style annoyed me and seemed lazy. Still, if you want an engaging book about some Chicago history and ghosts, this is worth some time.

Profile Image for Lynn.
128 reviews10 followers
October 26, 2016
A few ghost stories are included here, but the book delves deeper into what "ghosts" might really be, and why we want to believe in them. The most entertaining part is Adam's stories about how he got into the ghost tours business and the inside stories from those tours. Very readable and very well done. Anyone who enjoys this genre will certainly enjoy this book.
Profile Image for Mitzi.
117 reviews48 followers
June 24, 2011
Amusing book written by a skeptic. He is co founder of Weird Chicago Tours, tells about some of the places they go, some of this history of Chicago. Anyone that's into hisory and/or ghost hunting would like this book. It is very well written.
Profile Image for Chris.
64 reviews2 followers
October 27, 2011
I really enjoyed it. I did find myself really wanting to know more of the authors experiences, instead of stories from local lore, but other than that, I liked it. Good read for this time of year! Happy Halloween!
Profile Image for Chris.
1,170 reviews13 followers
August 26, 2013
A very different type of ghost book. It's told with a heavy dose of skepticism and sarcasm, never taking things too seriously. It's an interesting perspective from this ghost tour operator. The skeptical tone of the book does make it a little light on the chill and thrill factor, though.
Profile Image for Heidi.
1,065 reviews34 followers
February 13, 2010
Interesting subject matter, lots of research. This book made me want to go back to Chicago to take the author's Weird Chicago tour. Not a must-read, though.
Profile Image for Katie.
96 reviews10 followers
March 3, 2010
Liked this book! Gave a real life look about ghosts/ghost hunting.
Profile Image for Jana Denardo.
Author 38 books37 followers
March 8, 2011
more about running a ghost hunting tour than the hauntings.
20 reviews3 followers
June 27, 2011
Not so much on the ghost story bit but entertaining author. Told more about the working as a haunted tour guide bit.

Profile Image for Kerry.
2 reviews
December 4, 2012
I liked it, it was a light, easy read. Not what I expected, but well written.
498 reviews
February 17, 2013
It was a fast read but did not go as in depth on the stories as I was hoping.
Profile Image for Tina.
36 reviews1 follower
October 8, 2013
The writing is terrible.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews

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