birth_date: 1917-10-24 00:00:00
avg_rating: 3.83
name: Arthur Myers
about: Arthur B. Myers, of Wellesley, freelance writer, journalist, investigative reporter, editor, college writing instructor, and in his later years, author of a number of books and articles about ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, died April 8, 2006. He was 88.He was the author of 21 books and more than 150 articles and stories in magazines and other publications for both children and adults, including Saturday Review, Coronet, Ladies’ Home Journal, Sports Illustrated, Collier’s, Women’s Day, Cricket, Boys’ Life, and American Girl. Mr. Myers also wrote a number of articles and stories for remedial reading guides published by Random House, Houghton Mifflin, and Educational Development Laboratories.“My favorite books are several I have writte Arthur B. Myers, of Wellesley, freelance writer, journalist, investigative reporter, editor, college writing instructor, and in his later years, author of a number of books and articles about ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, died April 8, 2006. He was 88.He was the author of 21 books and more than 150 articles and stories in magazines and other publications for both children and adults, including Saturday Review, Coronet, Ladies’ Home Journal, Sports Illustrated, Collier’s, Women’s Day, Cricket, Boys’ Life, and American Girl. Mr. Myers also wrote a number of articles and stories for remedial reading guides published by Random House, Houghton Mifflin, and Educational Development Laboratories.“My favorite books are several I have written on the occult,” he was fond of saying, acknowledging his interest in the unknown. “They are serious investigations of hauntings, cases of possession and other such phenomena.” Those books were generally timed for publication around Halloween, and he enjoyed being interviewed by local and national personalities. His first of five books about ghostly goings-on, The Ghostly Register: Haunted Dwellings, Active Spirits – A Journey to America’s Strangest Landmarks, was published in 1986. It described incidents throughout the United States and Canada. Some chapters involved Massachusetts cases, such as the reported ghost of author Edith Wharton at her mansion in the Berkshire Hills, several incidents at the Colonial Inn in Concord, and reports of a ghost at the former John Stone’s Inn in Ashland who supposedly put five-dollar bills in the tip jar on the bar, and many others. Following its publication, Mr. Myers was invited to speak at the annual Boston Globe Book Fair. His topic was “Ghosts and the Extreme Likelihood of Their Existence.”Once, after being interviewed on Larry King Live, Mr. Myers overheard the notoriously tough and skeptical host of the national television show say to someone backstage, “You know, I really believe this guy!” He wrote four other books on ghostly subjects, including Ghosts of the Rich and Famous (1988), which detailed supposed sightings of the ghosts of John Wayne and Natalie Wood among others; and The Ghostly Gazetteer: America’s Most Famous Haunted Landmarks (1990).Mr. Myers was born October 24, 1917, in Buffalo, New York, the son of Edward A. and Isabelle (Baker) Myers. He graduated from the Buffalo public school system and from Hobart College in 1939 with a B.A. degree in English. He served in the U. S. Army for four years during World War II.His first book, published in 1966 by Random House with law professor Jeffrey O’Connell, was entitled, Safety Last: An Indictment of the Auto Industry. When Mr. Myers’s investigations began to disturb people in the automobile industry, he sought counsel from then-editor at Random House, Bennett Cerf. He was reassured by Mr. Cerf: “If you’re sure you’re getting at the truth, then carry on, my boy, and don’t worry!”During an adult life devoted to writing, Mr. Myers served as assistant city editor of the Washington Post, contributing editor of Coronet magazine, executive editor of the Berkshire Sampler, and in various editorial and reportorial posts at the Rochester Times-Union, the Berkshire Eagle and the Bergen (NJ) Record.His last published book was Communicating with Animals: the Spiritual Connection between People and Animals (1997), which explored the ability of humans to “speak” telepathically with animals, and vice versa. Mr. Myers said then, “As time went by, I had the urge to expand my work into wider and deeper aspects of the human spirit. I have written many books, newspaper articles and stories on unusual subjects. I’ve written articles on spiritual groups such as the Sufis, dowsers, etc. I felt that I was meant to write books that open up human awareness of the afterlife, the before-life, and in-between spiritual life.“I suspect that the world is moving toward a greater awareness of ...more
death_date: 2006-04-08 00:00:00