Let me start by mentioning something that I have discovered. It’s one thing to read a scary novel before you go to bed. It’s completely different to read a non-fiction book before you go to bed that has to do with scary stuff. I have a crazy-wild imagination, but with novels I can keep reminding myself that it’s fiction. I cannot do that with non-fiction. I mean, this book didn’t even get into ghostly hauntings and whatnot, but…

I don’t know what I expected from this book, but it certainly wasn’t this. As a non-fiction book, I guess I may have thought it would be a bit drier than it was. I had also hoped that there would be at least some focus on the hauntings, but it focused on the search and trials for Small. Hence, I’m not sure how completely it counts as an RIP novel, but I’m going to count it anyway.

For those who are unfamiliar with the story of Ambrose Small…

Ambrose Small and his wife Theresa owned a lot of theatres in Ontario, Canada during the early 1900′s. On December 2, 1919, the day that Ambrose sold his theatres to a company in Montreal, he disappeared and was never seen again. To this day, no one knows what happened to him; the search lasted years, was reopened a few times, but no real evidence as to what happened to him was ever found.

What the book didn’t get into is that Small haunts the theatre in the city I grew up in. I grew up with stories about how the theatre was haunted, though never really knew much about the man whose ghost haunts it until this book. Rumour has it that he occupies one of the boxes on opening night of every play, and various cast, crew and other people who frequent the theatre have seen him.

It’s crazy what a missing person can do to a whole community. Small’s sisters never liked his wife, and swore revenge on her at one point and made her life after Small disappeared very difficult. It came across to me that the sisters just liked being in the public eye. As well, all sorts of people involved in the case somehow went disappearing at some point – Small’s secretary/assistant Doughty, as well as Doughty’s second wife.

What struck me as most interesting in the whole case was that the police officer investigating used numerous people with ESP in order to try to discover what happened to Small. I cannot see people finding that an acceptable means to solve a case in todays world.

I definitely enjoyed reading this book, and knowing a bit more behind the ghost of the Grand.

(And yes, I’ve completely deviaed from my RIP list already, and it’s just going to go further in that direction of deviation…)