I was extremely excited and eager to dive into this book. Why you may ask? Because I was part of the "Team" who helped Mr. Lee investigate many of the 13 haunted sites which are included in Mysterious Minnesota. What he failed to mention in the book, by way of a disclaimer, is that for many of the sites that were investigated by the team, Mr. Lee was not present. Because of some legal glitch, airport security, via homeland security, kept him in England for all of 2010.
Since he was not here in Minnesota with us, we were asked by him to be his "eyes and ears". All of us honored his request and we spent hours documenting the investigations in writing and I even video taped several investigations and interviews so that he could get a "sense of place" to help him write his book.
One place in particular sticks out in my mind: The Old Jail and Saloon (B&B) in Taylors Falls Minnesota. My wife and I and several other team members made the trek there during a bitterly cold winter day in early 2010. It was a very interesting investigation and I had my video camera on to record much of it. (go to[...] to see a You Tube video- will be up soon.) Under "Investigation", for that chapter, Mr. Lee writes: "I decided to set up a trigger-object experiment on the rocking chair by placing three wooden sticks in various strategic places." The huge problem I have with this is that the person who actually documented and wrote this is not given credit for actually writing what Mr. Lee is claiming is his own words. I was told during several meetings before the publishing of the book, that we would all be given credit for whatever writings he used in the book that were ours.
In his Acknowledgments- In the 24+ people that he said had "supported" him in the book he never mentioned their writings (or their video support) and my name was "mysteriously" not mentioned- even though my wife "Lou" was listed as a "very committed investigator". It seems that my wife and Mr. Lee had become closer than I thought- but that's another story.
In ending- this book had a lot of promise. The people who worked hard on this project of Mr. Lee's deserve much better than what they got. But an ego got in the way and ruined all credibility. When we go out to investigate- we investigate the FACTS. Mr. Lee avoids a true representation of the facts in this book and taints all of it to his own liking.
I am very disappointed and disgusted.
I can also add to this by actually letting you see what I wrote on an investigation of the St. James Hotel and what he wrote.*Almost* word for word but you can clearly see that he took MY words and changed them so the reader thought they were his- and again- he wasn't present on the investigation.:
I wrote: "When the door to 310 was opened, immediately I was surprised by how cold the room was. The portable thermometer that Kate held showed 57.5 degrees at the direct center of the room. I attributed this extreme low room temperature as an act of the staff to save energy and to the rapidly falling Minnesota January temperatures that were sweeping over the area outside."
Adrian Lee wrote: "I became instantly aware of how cold it was when I first walked into Room 310- my portable thermometer showed a reading of 57.5 degrees Fahrenheit. I attributed the low room temperature to the hotel's energy-saving policy for unoccupied rooms and the rapidly falling Minnesota winter night temperatures."
This is clearly plagiarism - for which I will be taking legal action against Mr. Lee. His publisher has decided to stand by the "plagiarism", calling it "paraphrasing".
