Just a quick check for those who have read the Nancy Drew books and might still remember some of them. Do you know if the mysteries ecountered by Nancy Drew often encompass some supernatural elements (e.g., ghosts, spirits, extra sensory perceptions) ?

Take Scooby Doo for example, the meddling kids often run into mysteries where real people use mechanial contraptions to trick others into thinking that there are ghosts and spirits. Anything like this in the Nancy Drew books?

Whoa. That's a trip down memory lane; I read those in the mid 1960s.

I don't remember supernatural contrivances, or at least don't remember them being a regular part of the books. I do remember Nancy and her friends doing investigations, unearthing clues, and piecing everything together to solve the mystery.

I loved those books.....fond memories....

I read all of the Hardy Boys books when I was a kid. In those any paranormal activity always turned out to have a logical explanation.

Nancy Drew mysteries did not have any ghosts or other paranormal stuff by the end of each book. Everything was human caused and explained in the original series, which in my mind is books 1 thru 25. I haven´t read many (any?) of the more recent pubs.


Great books by the way.

I LOVED Nancy Drew! Like Dan, I haven't read any of the more recent books. There were a lot of ghost/supernatural contrivances but they always ended up being explained away, just like Dan says.

I seem to recall that a fair number of them had supernatural elements, at least alluded to.

Thanks, folks, really appreciate your answers.

I have not read any Nancy Drew book myself. Just in case anyone is curious why I asked, it's because I have been watching the Nancy Drew TV series off late (freely available on the CWtv.com). The TV series seems to lay on the supernatural stuff real thick, and does not look like it's going to resolve into natural, logical explanations. So I figure I'd ask people who have actually read the books to see whether that's also a feature of the original material. Thanks!

My recollection is the same as the others who responded. There would sometimes be apparent spooky stuff, but it would always be explained, Scooby-Doo style.

I want to say that they was even one that featured magician (or magicians?), so there was sort of a double dose of they're-fake-no-they're-real-no-they're-fake.