As someone who grew up in a haunted Massachusetts home built in 1788, I can admire the authors' appreciation of the value that the Cape Cod community places on preserving its historical and generational traditions. The authors, Dan Gordon and Gary Joseph, have captured the local flavor of this unique heritage quite well.

However, while the local lore is enjoyable and I appreciate the authors' lack of embellishment, several of the stories failed to hold my interest for long. Although I liked that the stories are first-hand accounts of ghost encounters, rather than another book of rehashed tales from the past, some of the storytellers ramble a bit, and several of the stories could have done with a more selective editing job.

Cape Encounters does have its strong points, and some of the more pithy stories are page-turners. However, overall, I found Mark Jasper's Haunted Cape Cod & the Islands a more engaging read.