“That’s ESP, and ESP is weird!”

I’m glad that Which Way Books developed more invested narratives since the first entry in the series, although there’s still a lot of wasted space on many of the pages that could have been filled by the author. CYOA’s strange little cousin presents us with a doozie of an adventure into the world of ESP, parapsychology, and ghosties.

We are being pawned off onto our Uncle John for summer vacation in Los Angeles, largely due to our family being fed up with how weird and psychic we are. Nevermind that the very talents they seem to fear and loathe once saved the family cat. You’d think they’d be more encouraging after that. Nope, off to the Land of the Hippies and two months with a relative we’ve never met.

Fortunately for us, Uncle John is neck-deep in paranormal investigations, which is right up our alley. And he wastes no time exploiting us the moment we mention our gift of ESP, basically hiring us on the spot as a paranormal agent, and offering up a variety of cases for us to sharpen our psychic teeth on / get ourselves killed in horrible, eldritch ways.

The narrative of Poltergeists, Ghosts, and Psychic Encounters (hereon referred to as PG&PE for the sake of my blood pressure–Which Way Books loved Mealoaf-length titles) really takes its time to set the stage: the first five or six pages are dedicated to our trip to LA and why we’re going, then meeting Uncle John and getting our Psychic Agent badge, before we are finally offered our first set of choices.

We get the option to help find a lost little girl, investigate a poltergeist, or go ghost-hunting. The first two choices each revolve around a single subplot, but the third gives us a handful of ghostly mini-events to explore.

This book isn’t as super-spooky as I would have expected (despite some of the artwork, but I’ll get to that in a minute), although it does provide a nice variety of paranormal phenomena: using clairvoyance to locate a kidnapped child, spending the night in haunted suburbia, investigating the captain of a 747 who thinks he’s still employed even after death, or checking in on a friendly ghost that has suddenly gone missing, among other cases.

So the book never gets boring, despite the varied quality of the book’s varied endings. Some endings suit the story well, and some are unintentionally funny…while others just sort of end with a baby fart instead of a bang.

Actually, a few stories end so abruptly I was left wondering why I couldn’t just consider them “case closed” and move on to another one. The book really would have benefitted from the narrative-connecting technique used in The Race Forever, where after the conclusion of one race you could simply move on to the next race, and go back and forth trying all the paths if you liked. Here it makes no logical sense that I would simply stop being a paranormal investigator after learning a certain ghost was just trying to be helpful.

The highlight for me, without a doubt, was the “spend the night in the haunted suburban home” subplot. Each night the ghostly events become more intense, and I’m given the option of spending another night to hopefully crack the case, or saying “NO WAY” and letting the professionals take over. Like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun, and got the most chilling game over in the whole book.

The artwork for that sequence really sells it, too. I can’t think of the last time a kids’ book gave me goosebumps. I can’t tell what that thing is, and I don’t care if I never find out.

The artwork as a whole is pretty stellar, whether it’s portraying a farm house with a water tower, a spooky flight of stairs descending into pitch blackness, or a horrific entity erupting from a computer screen. Joseph A Smith outdid himself with the illustrations in this particular volume. The book is worth having purely for the illustrations, as you can see.

Obviously I’m highlighting the scarier images rather than the mundane ones. Which would you rather look at, a water tower, or a screaming kid aging with fear before your eyes?

The Which Way Books are a mixed bag as far as I can tell, but I have a feeling this is one of the better ones. I would’ve preferred a scarier yarn overall, but I’m pleased with the wide assortment of supernatural whatsis featured in this volume. Which Way has a habit of cramming as many subplots into one book as possible, but in this case it works in the story’s favor, because it makes sense that a paranormal investigator would have such a host of cases to choose from.

If you find PG&PE, grab it, especially if you’re a kid who’s into spooks.

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out.