Pleasanton, California is a peaceful city that is nestled between rolling foothills of Northern California. I drove through this town everyday for two years, on my way to work in neighboring Dublin. Sometimes, I would get to venture out of the office to eat lunch or go shopping. In all appearances, Pleasanton seemed to be quite ordinary and suburban. I wasn’t aware of its rich history until I read an article about Gloria Young, a Northern California ghost hunter who founded Ghost Trackers in 1992.

“It’s very unusual,” Young said. “Urban legends are usually just that — urban legends.” After an early visit to Gay 90’s, Young was looking through still photographs and found a picture taken of an old mirror. It reflected an image of herself, a male team member and Ghost Walk coordinator Rebecca Bruner. What was surprising, however, was the image of a woman with camel-colored hair, also reflected back from the mirror. There was no one else with them that day who looked like that additional image.

Young’s five-week investigation of Pleasanton will be released in early 2008 as a documentary, entitled Ghosts of Pleasanton.

Source: Inside Bay Area and Orange Moon Films

Vera H-C Chan from Yahoo Search compiled a list of the top 15 searches for the supernatural yesterday. I have to admit that I was a bit surprised to find that UFOs didn’t make the list, given all the sightings reported this year as well as France’s launch of their infamous UFO case report website. I figured that the term would have made it to the top 5, at the very least. Who knew.

As a fan and writer of ghost stories, I was pleased to see that the term “ghost” made it to the top this year. Thanks to shows like “Ghost Hunter” and “Ghost Whisperer,” I anticipate that this term will remain in the top 10 until the end of 2008.

1. Ghost
2. Dragon
3. Vampires
4. Bigfoot
5. Loch Ness Monster
6. Godzilla
7. Chupacabra
8. Monsters
9. Dracula
10. Unicorns
11. Zombie
12. Frankenstein
13. Sasquatch
14. Werewolf
15. Mermaids

Source: Yahoo! Search

This is a two-part review, as I read both the book and watched the movie this week. I’ll start off with the book. The story is narrated by Robert Neville, who starts off by telling us how he avoids the vampires that try to break into his house every night. As the story unfolds, we learn more about how this situation came about and how he is the only survivor of this cataclysmic event. What I found interesting was how Neville became immune to the vampirus germ.

Matheson wrote this book so well that I almost felt as though I was there with Neville as he drinks himself into a stupor each day in order to deal with the pain of his losses and the utter isolation he feels because he is the only human being left alive on the planet. Although there are several horrific moments in the story, I felt that I Am Legend was more poignant and literary. The reader is taken on a tour of this man’s psyche as he tries to understand what happened and if he can “cure” the vampires.

Because I Am Legend is a novella, the publisher decided to tack on several short stories, which I thought were completely unrelated to the main theme of the book. For instance, there was a short story about a woman who was attacked by a rare “hunter” doll. It didn’t matter to me that these stories were well-written; I was expecting a continuation of the main story, or, at the very least, a vampire theme. I returned the book to my bookcase, content that I had read what I had set out to read. Despite that quibble, I highly recommend this book because it not only makes you feel, but it makes you think.

The Movie

Hollywood almost always hacks up the author’s stories to suit their audience. That’s a given. What they did with I Am Legend was modernize it. The story begins with an interview with a doctor who discovers the cure for cancer in 2012. This “cure” proves deadly to the human race. Robert Neville relives the night he lost his family as he washes his dog, when his stop watch goes off to alert him to board up his house, etc. In the book, he was a plant worker who teaches himself how to use a microscope and to distinguish the characteristics of germs and viruses. In the movie, he is a military colonel who is also a scientist. During the three years of the aftermath, he tries to develop a cure for this condition so he can revive the human race from near extinction.

Will Smith performed excellently in his role as Robert Neville. One particular scene that almost made me cry was when he was standing in a movie store, trying to hold a conversation with mannequins. This scene accomplished the sense of total isolation very well. There’s plenty of action in this movie, as Neville is constantly having to watch out for the rabid vampires, who reminded me of the caricature of Pink Floyd’s The Wall–huge, gaping mouths with beady little eyes. To say any more would risk spoiling the movie. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, go see it.

Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a brilliant scientist, but even he could not contain the terrible virus that was unstoppable, incurable and manmade. Somehow immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and maybe the world. But he is not alone. He is surrounded by the Infected’s victims of the plague who have mutated into carnivorous beings who can only exist in the dark and who will devour or infect anyone or anything in their path. For three years, Neville has spent his days scavenging for food and supplies and faithfully sending out radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. All the while, the Infected lurk in the shadows, watching Neville’s every move, waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Perhaps mankind’s last, best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using his own immune blood. But his blood is also what The Infected hunt, and Neville knows he is outnumbered and quickly running out of time.

My husband and I saw the previews of this movie on TV a couple of weeks ago and agreed that we want to see this film. Because of Christmas holidays, we haven’t had time yet. The movie preview I read makes me want to see it all the more, as does the trailer on the Official Website.

Who knows, I might pick up the book, which as been sitting on my “To Read” pile for the past decade just so I can compare it with the film.