While not a book that would be of interest to everyone, I found Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories to be a wonderfully delightful collection of spooky stories set around the Civil War era. Each story was short and to the point, not relying on a lot of convoluted and unnecessary details and imagery to...enhance...the reader's experience. It's an interesting way of presenting this collection of ghost stories. In what comes across as a journalistic presentation of facts, as opposed to flowery story-telling, these tales are very hard to distinguish whether or not they are actually fictitious or not In fact, I've actually seen several of the tales (or those with identical motifs) presented in other works as works of non-fiction. I'm still confused as to whether or not this was a non-fiction collection or simply a collection of completely made up tales presented in a way as to come across as real ghost stories. Maybe its a mixture of both? Either way, I loved the collection despite it being slightly repetitive in some aspects ( I mean, how many reasons are there for a ghost to come back? hehehehe). The short length makes it perfect to read a story at a time, or to marathon read it on a dark and stormy night. If you appreciate classic tales of the paranormal, you won't be disappointed.