You remember the brutal crime, don’t you?
Maybe you read about it on Twitter.
Maybe a friend sent you a news clip. Maybe you saw it on an episode of Spectral Journeys that night you were flipping through channels, unable to sleep.
Maybe after reading the true story, you won’t ever sleep again.
On June 1, 2017, six people were killed at a Burger City franchise off I-80 near Jonny, Iowa. It was the bizarre and gruesome conclusion to nine months of alleged paranormal activity at the fast-food joint—events popularly known as “the Burger City Poltergeist.”
The story inspired Facebook memes, Twitter hashtags, Buzzfeed listicles, Saturday Night Live sketches, and more. But the case was never much more than a punchline…until bestselling writer Daniel Kraus (The Shape of Water, The Living Dead) decided to head to Iowa to dig up what really happened.
Presented here is the definitive story of “the most exhaustively documented haunting in history,” including—for the first time ever—interviews with every living survivor of the tragedy.
The employees of Burger City were a family. They loved one another. At least, at the beginning.
But love can make you do unspeakable things.
With such a bright cover and an intriguing premise, of course I was interested in reading this book, so I want to thank Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi and Raw Dog Screaming Press for sending me a copy.
I actually got stuck into this a few weeks ago and reached the halfway point before I was derailed by other writerly things. So, it was nice to get back to it.
Although everything that's laid out about the Burger City Poltergeist, what happened before and on that fateful night of June 1, 2017 appears to be based on real events, this is actually a fictional story that puts the author in the middle of a very freaky investigation...
Well, that was a bizarre little tale of unexpected darkness.
The thing I found really intriguing about this book, is how Daniel Kraus fills your head with what (at the time) appears to be too much information. There seems to be a lot of irrelevant details packed into each page, before getting back into the meaty parts. But in fact, you need to pay close attention to every single piece of information.
Also, as detailed as the interviews were, there was so much more going on when he was setting up the scene than when the people were speaking to him. So clever!
This is definitely one of those stories that sets out the situation, places all the key players on the board, vividly describes the location, and for a long while, they're all nothing more than small pieces of a much bigger puzzle that don't seem to fit together.
Then, when you least expect it, everything and everyone's role clicks into place.
I won't say more about this creepy tale set in a unique location where we don't usually expect hauntings to take place, but it was very entertaining.
There's a lot to like about this story that is so well written you often forget none of this actually happened. But that last section was my favourite. I loved every second of it, and the ending was perfect. I didn't see that coming, but it was wickedly cool.