necrophiles have bad skin and an incapacity to laugh

It's amazing, and quite sad, that she gets paid for writing such crap.

I'm not familiar with her work, but judging by this pile of tripe, she's taken a minority that most people will have little sympathy for, and written what amounts to a collection of spiteful stereotypes, in the knowledge that she'll get away with it because no real necrophile is likely to stick his or her head above the parapet and challenge her rubbish.

It's cowardly and childish. I'd like to hope that the majority of people will be sensible enough to see it for what it is, but sadly the general public seem to enjoy demonising an easy target. The tabloids have known this for a long time.

Katherine Ramsland is an author who has published 37 books and over 900 articles, most of which are in the genres of crime, forensic science, and the supernatural. She holds graduate degrees in forensic psychology, clinical psychology, and philosophy, and teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University. She has written on the subjects of serial killers, CSI, vampires, and ghosts.

She is recorded as a significant reference on the matter of clinical vampirism and is seen on the US cable channel "Investigation Discovery" on an October 30, 2010 cable broadcast segment on the program "American Occult" on the matter of John Brennan Crutchley, also known as the "Florida Vampire Rapist".

Sadly she generally seems to take the stories or topics and sensationalize them and make them appealing to the masses by twisting things and portraying people or things in the light of a bogeyman-esque manner and seems to make things as terrible sounding as possible and make everyone believe these people are right next door.

I think she likes the shock factor.

Ironically she is supposed to be a serious forensic psychologist but loves to write on vampires and ghosts and such. No real forensic psychologist person would risk their career by mentioning vampires, ghosts and the supernatural let alone make a career out of it.

Her books read as crime fiction rather than true crime.

She's a tabloid/comic writer.

The sad thing is, these people actually have some influence.

Actually I do remember reading one of her books. It was given to me by a friend who was a book dealer. She is a medochre writer, perhaps better suited to writing harlequen romance novels.
When it comes to crime writing I found the books of Ann Rule and Bob Kepple more complete and likable.

-- Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:01 pm --

And I agree ubergonzo, you are totally right about this author and her use of the bogey-man shock value to sell her drivel. well said.
love your avatar by the way. Im a big Hunter S. T fan too.

Graveyard wrote:She's a tabloid/comic writer.

The sad thing is, these people actually have some influence.

Quite a bit of influence in some circles. Many believe her to an authority on many topics especially serial killers and "vampires".

I do find her writing quite tabloid like actually. She takes a bit of fact and a lot of creative license and turns out books quickly and half assed. Sadly she's made best seller lists.

"Katherine Ramsland began her career as a writer with Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice. She had a bestseller with The Vampire Companion."

The fact that she began as a biographer of the writer of The Vampire Chronicles [Better known as Interview with a Vampire and Queen of the Damned as mediocre movies.] speaks volumes.

HaxX wrote:Actually I do remember reading one of her books. It was given to me by a friend who was a book dealer. She is a medochre writer, perhaps better suited to writing harlequen romance novels.
When it comes to crime writing I found the books of Ann Rule and Bob Kepple more complete and likable.

-- Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:01 pm --

And I agree ubergonzo, you are totally right about this author and her use of the bogey-man shock value to sell her drivel. well said.
love your avatar by the way. Im a big Hunter S. T fan too.

I appreciate the compliment.

I have only read one book completely of hers which was Piercing the Darkness: Undercover with Vampires in America Today. It was painful to read but having bought it foolishly on rave reviews from acquaintances, I felt compelled to finish it.

It was a lot of pseudo-psychology, generalizations about subcultures and very tiny amounts of supposed true information on various anonymous indiviuals with aliases. It read like a cheap fiction novel at a supermarket.

I've paged through others but find it painful to read after a chapter or two. She is harming the true crime genre, in my opinion.

Hunter S Thompson writes far better and even though it is gonzo journalism at least he is honest about it and is quite entertaining. Ramsland on the other hand takes the worst of journalism and the worst of fiction and tries to form a gonzo-esque style but fails epicly and horribly.

I'm a huge Hunter S Thompson fan and have read all his books. I've also seen the movies and I have to say that I was surprised at how well Johnny Depp did portray Hunter S Thompson.

I will always remember his writings and the sad day I heard news of his suicide.

The avi is a piece of art I took and removed the background .GIF'ed it and applied a halftone like pattern.[I oddly enjoy halftones like those found in comics.]

Come to think of it i HAVE seen a lot of her books in supermarkets. The name does ring a bell bringing up memories of the smell of floor wax, the flickering of neon lights and the bleeping of price scanners.

I would never call her a gonzo-esque journalist, that would suggest that she is capable of such things as willful irony, self mockery and humor. She strikes as more of a self styled ivory-tower expert on whatever unfortunate subject which attracts her attention.

I loved fear and loathing and found it to perhaps be Johnny Depps best role. I personally thought he should have been nominated for that one.

I also think its really funny that he shot H. S. T. cremains out of a cannon, correct me if im wrong about that.

HaxX wrote:Come to think of it i HAVE seen a lot of her books in supermarkets. The name does ring a bell bringing up memories of the smell of floor wax, the flickering of neon lights and the bleeping of price scanners.

I would never call her a gonzo-esque journalist, that would suggest that she is capable of such things as willful irony, self mockery and humor. She strikes as more of a self styled ivory-tower expert on whatever unfortunate subject which attracts her attention.

I loved fear and loathing and found it to perhaps be Johnny Depps best role. I personally thought he should have been nominated for that one.

I also think its really funny that he shot H. S. T. cremains out of a cannon, correct me if im wrong about that.

She is even more bizarre than that however compared to other ivory tower expert types...words defy Katherine Ramsland

I enjoyed The Rum Diaries as well also featuring Johnny Depp but while it was good it just didn't meet the level of Fear and Loathing. Not much can.

The scene where Hunter S Thompson makes a cameo appearance in the club was IMO epic.

There I was...
Mother of God. There I am.

Holy ###$.

Uh, clearly I was a victim
of the drug explosion... a natural street freak
just eating whatever came by.

The quote that always stuck with me however was:

There he goes...
one of God's own prototypes.
A high-powered mutant of some kind never
even considered for mass production.
Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

He was shot out of a cannon post-mortem. Johnny Depp help arrange the funeral and attended. Hunter and Johnny became good friends during the filming of Fear and Loathing which is how the rum diaries came about as film.

On August 20, 2005, in a private ceremony, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon to the tune of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" and Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."The cannon was placed atop a 153-foot (47 m) tower of his own design, in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button originally used in Hunter S. Thompson's 1970 campaign for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado. Red, white, blue, and green fireworks were launched along with his ashes. According to his widow Anita, Thompson's funeral was financed by actor Johnny Depp, a close friend of Thompson. Depp told the Associated Press, "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out."

Hunter-esque funeral in every way.

I love johnny's story on when he first met Hunter.

A fan of Thompson's since reading the gonzo journalist's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in his late teens, Depp jumped at the chance when a mutual friend asked if he wanted to meet him.

Depp was told to turn up at the tavern at midnight. Soon after, Thompson entered brandishing his cattle prod and Taser.

"People were hurling their bodies, leaping out of the way to try and save themselves from this maniac," Depp said in an interview. "Then he made his way to me. The sparks had died down, he just walked right up to me and put his hand out and said, `How do you do? My name is Hunter.'"

Thompson and Depp quickly discovered they both were born in Kentucky and shared many literary heroes, among them Ernest Hemingway and Nathaniel West. Around 2:30 that morning, they were at Thompson's house, where Depp admired a nickel-plated shotgun on the wall.

"'Would you like to fire it?'" Depp recalled Thompson saying. "I said, `Yeah. Great, man.' He says, `All right, great. We must build bombs.' So we built bombs in his sink out of propane tanks and nitroglycerin. Then we took them out back and he said, `All right, you get first crack.' So I leveled that 12-gauge and I blew it up – 80-foot fireball.

"I think that was my kind of rite of passage with Hunter. I think that was my test that I was OK."

Hunter was a true modern eccentric. And brightened my day with his writing which made me laugh my ass off.

I must admit, on reading the lists, the first thing that came to mind was goths, not necrophiles.