COEUR d'ALENE - Bruce Raisch is an all-around colorful character who can tell a story a minute. He's also a writer, adventure-lover, historian, photographer and a veteran of the first Gulf War.

The author of three books about ghost towns, Raisch is in town this week promoting his fourth and most recent written project, "Haunted Hotels of the West."

The Jameson Hotel in Wallace, with its legend of the ghost of Maggie, is one of the many haunts featured in the book.

"She was a prostitute who fell in love with one of her clients. He struck it rich and moved back East, and he was going to set up a house and send for her. Well, he never sent for her," Raisch said. "She got tired of waiting and she got on a train. Supposedly she died of a broken heart on the train, but her spirit came back to the hotel."

A light goes on or off, or a piano plays by itself, and Raisch said they blame Maggie.

Raisch will be signing "Haunted Hotels" Saturday at Hastings on Appleway Avenue from 1 to 4 p.m.

His official residence is St. Louis, but he's not there very often.

He's either traveling the West, or as he puts it, "writing in the Ozarks in an old farm house at the end of a dirt road, with coyotes howling outside and a fire in the fireplace," and he's usually drinking tea from a cup that says "Redrum" that he bought at a gift shop at The Stanley Hotel, another place featured in his book.

"I've got a wisp in the bridal suite and an orb on the staircase in the Stanley," Raisch said, pointing to pages with a pair of pictures. He takes his own photos using 35-mm film.

That's the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, the place where Stephen King wrote "The Shining."

Raisch's other books, include "Ghost Towns of Wyoming," "Ghost Towns and Other Historical Sites of the Black Hills," and "Ghost Towns of Idaho: The Search for El Dorado."

In his first three works, Raisch's focus wasn't ghosts, but rather those collections of often see-through structures, crumbling chimneys and foundations, the abandoned remnants of economic bursts, booms and busts that litter the American West.

He shares the stories of these places - their legends, secrets, crimes and any other local lore he uncovers.

"I'd also throw in any legend they had of ghosts," Raisch said. "My readers liked it, and they said, 'Give us more ghosts.'"

So that's what he gave them, and he did it by exploring haunted hotels.

He started writing about ghost towns after spending about 10 years as a writer without a publisher. Then he traveled to the Black Hills of South Dakota, a trip he took to clear his head and think about a good book subject.

"I was sitting on a pile of miner's waste on a nice spring day in a ghost town by the name of Mystic. You know, hands locked behind the head, the grass in the teeth," Raisch said.

His thoughts were bouncing back and forth between, "Boy, this place is neat," and "I wonder what else I can write about."

Between those thoughts, he noted that the ghost town book he was using as a guide was more than 20 years old.

"I guess my guardian angel hit me in the back of the head with a snow shovel and the light bulb went off," Raisch said.

In that moment, Raisch's favorite pastime - rock climbing, hiking, horseback riding, white water rafting, canoeing and camping all around the great Western outdoors - became one with his vocation.

He became the Ghost Town Hunter.

In the four years since he began writing and publishing the ghost town books, Raisch has sold about 12,000 of them.

He knows John Grisham isn't worried about the competition.

"I'm in the Library of Congress and I'm in my high school library. I didn't think I was going to ever be in either of those when I started this," he said.

The haunted hotel book includes, in addition to the ghost stories, some local history and travel advice.

"It's not just a boo book," Raisch said.

His books are published by Missouri-based Donning Co. "Haunted Hotels," and the others are available through his website, www.theghosttownhunter.com.