The Unholy Silence – A True Account of a Haunted Idaho Home by Doug Owen
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Non-Fiction, Paranormal, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by AstilbeThe Unholy Silence is a harrowing true account of one family’s descent into spiritual warfare after moving into a seemingly ordinary home in Idaho. What began as a fresh start quickly spiraled into a nightmare of ghostly apparitions, shattered mirrors, demonic voices, and eerie manipulations that targeted their children, faith, and sanity.
Told with raw honesty and emotional depth, this memoir follows the author—a devoted husband, father, and Catholic—as he battles unseen forces that twist reality, test his beliefs, and slowly dismantle the life he built. From a terrifying mockery of his daughter to unholy rituals discovered in the shadows, every chapter peels back another layer of haunting.
But perhaps the most chilling aspect of all is the silence—the silence of the Church, of friends, of reason—and the silence that falls when the attacks stop… after he gives up fighting.
This is not a tale of victory. This is a reckoning.
Evil can find a foothold anywhere.
I was impressed by the amount of documentation Mr. Owen had collected about the haunted house he and his family lived in. It was organized neatly and included detailed information about the multitude of ways that experience traumatized not only him, his wife, and their two young daughters but a long list of visitors who had the unfortunate experience of visiting that property. Their stories repeatedly corroborated each other and often added new layers of meaning to what the Owen family already knew or suspected about their beautiful but menacing property.
This book would have benefited from another round of editing. I noticed multiple sentence fragments, run-on sentences, punctuation errors, and compound words that should have been written as two individual words. It was distracting and sometimes produced phrases or sentences that I had to reread in order to understand what the author was trying to communicate. As enticing as the storyline itself was, these issues happened frequently enough that I didn’t feel comfortable giving the higher star rating I would have otherwise chosen.
It was so unnerving to learn about the spirits in this house that I was only able to read this tale in broad daylight. This was not a case of someone jumping to conclusions after hearing one strange noise at night without investigating what caused it. The primary entity the author described was intelligent, dangerous, and chillingly methodical in the steps it took to attempt to destroy everyone who crossed its path. Few things are more horrifying than true life experiences with something evil, after all.
The Unholy Silence was terrifyingly scary in a good way.
