Eagle-Eye Ernie

The Spooky Sleepover by Susan Pearson, 1991.

A couple of weeks before Halloween, Ernie decides to have a sleepover party for her friends. The kids enjoy scaring each other with ghost stories, and a thunderstorm adds to the spooky atmosphere.

Michael, in particular, keeps insisting that an old witch called Mrs. Maloney used to live in Ernie’s house with a bunch of cats. When spooky things happen during the course of the evening, Michael says that Mrs. Maloney and her cats have returned to haunt Ernie’s house. The kids try to stay up until midnight because ghosts are supposed to appear at midnight, but there’s no telling what they might actually see.

The kids fall asleep, but they wake up around midnight when they hear a crashing sound from the basement. Although they are afraid, they take their flashlights and go down to see what it is. Will they find a ghost?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This is one of those stories that has a pretty simple explanation, but the adventure seems bigger to the kids because their imaginations run away with them. I remember liking this series when I was a kid, and I think this is one of the books I read back then. I liked the creepy-cozy atmosphere of the story. Even though the kids have been scaring each other with ghost stories, they’re still just at a sleepover in an ordinary, safe house, and there’s nothing there that is harmful. It’s that kind of safe scariness that Halloween represents to young kids. They can enjoy the spookiness, knowing that there’s a logical explanation for everything. Adults and older kids will figure out pretty quickly what’s really going on.