Mark Nesbitt's second volume of Gettysburg ghost stories -- aptly titled More Ghosts of Gettysburg -- impressed me less than his first. The problem is his decline into bloated, florid prose in an attempt to sound, I suppose, more "literary."

While the first book was related in a more matter-of-fact tone, as befits the observations and anecdotes recorded by a Gettysburg park ranger, this one tries to convey a sense of atmosphere that smothers, rather than builds, the spooky atmosphere Nesbitt was going for. So, you get stuff like this:

And so it is that in human combat on the glorious field of battle, man's (and now soon woman's) mortal experience is reduced to the basest of all primary elements, and those reduced even further: earth, fire, water, air, rock, blood, dust, smoke, life, death.

...on the one corner of earth where a great nation's destiny was decided and its beloved boys were hideously harvested for death's abundant feast.

...enjoying sleep's viler sister, death.

It goes on like that.

Without the overabundance of intrusive language, I'm sure I would have enjoyed More Ghosts as much as I did Ghosts. The stories are just as interesting, spooky and thought-provoking as his earlier collection. While most of the book focuses, as you'd expect, on the battlefield and its immediate surroundings, there are also stories pertaining to the campus of Gettysburg College and the sprawling home of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, both of which are nearby.

Anyone who has even a passing interest in supernatural phenomena has to wonder what still lingers at the site of so much horrific death. Nesbitt taps into a wealth of material here; now he just needs to rein in his presentation style.

This book was later reissued as Ghosts of Gettysburg II, presumably because Nesbitt wrote several more volumes in the series.