Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Shadow in Hawthorn Bay

Shadow in Hawthorn Bay by Janet Lunn, 1986.

Mary (or “Mairi,” they spell it both ways) Urquhart and her cousin Duncan had always loved each other.  They were always close as children, feeling more like two parts of one person than separate people, and they always imagined that they would spend the rest of their lives together.  Then, Duncan’s parents, Mary’s Uncle Davie and Aunt Jean, decided that they wanted to travel to Canada, while Mary and her parents stayed at home in the Scottish Highlands.  Duncan hadn’t really wanted to go.  He was only eleven, and he promised Mary that when he was older, he would work hard to earn enough money to come back.  However, Duncan never came.  He only sent Mary a brief letter about the dark forest where he now lives.  Mary feels like the Duncan she knew is gone forever.

Four years later, in 1815, when Mary is fifteen, she has a strange feeling, like Duncan is calling to her from across the ocean.  All of her life, Mary has had a strange gift for seeing into the future or reading others’ minds.  The “gift of two sights,” people call it, but Mary doesn’t feel like it’s a gift.  It makes her uneasy, and she can’t control it.  She hears Duncan’s calls to her through her “gift,” but she is afraid because she doesn’t want to leave Scotland.  She wants Duncan to come to her.

However, she is unable to resist Duncan’s calls.  She asks her parents for help with money for her passage to Canada, but they tell her that she is wasting her time and that, even if they sold their family’s most precious heirloom to give her the money, there would not be enough for the return journey.  A family friend gives her the money instead, and although Mary doesn’t really want to accept it and doesn’t really want to go, she can’t help herself.

The journey to Canada is miserable, and when she finally arrives at the place where her aunt and uncle live, alone and without money, she learns something which she thought she had sensed during the journey: Duncan is dead.  Duncan committed suicide while Mary was still on the ship to Canada.  Mary has arrived too late.  To make matters worse, one of the family’s neighbors, Luke Anderson, tells her that her aunt and uncle gave up the idea of farming in Canada and have already begun the journey back to Scotland.  Mary has no money to follow them, and they have no idea that she’s now in Canada, alone.

Luke takes Mary to Mrs. Colliver, who tells Mary a little about her family and their life in Canada and why they decided to leave.  Mary is devastated by the loss of Duncan and tries to tell Mrs. Colliver about how she felt that Duncan had been calling out to her, but Mrs. Colliver tells her that she doesn’t believe in ghosts or things like that.  Although Mary knows that her “gift” is real and so are spirits, she learns that others in the community share Mrs. Colliver’s no-nonsense, disbelieving attitude toward such things.  Mary, in her despair, wants to rush straight back to Scotland, but Mrs. Colliver, with her practicality, points out that Mary can’t possibly get there without money.  She tells Mary that she can stay with her family, that she will give her room and board in exchange for help with chores and that she can earn extra money for weaving and spinning.  Mary is clumsy at household chores because she was always better with animals at home, but when Mrs. Colliver sees Mary’s skills with animals, she is appreciative.

Life is hard in the small farming community.  Mrs. Anderson, Luke’s mother, explains to Mary that most of the people who live there are refugees.  When they were young, their families moved there from the Thirteen Colonies that now make up the United States because they were Loyalists.  When the Revolution came, they couldn’t stay, and so had gone north to Canada, where they struggled to establish a new community for themselves with their small homesteads. During her time there, Mary witnesses the death of a baby and the hardships of this strange place, seeing why Duncan didn’t like it there.  They tell her that Duncan was a strange boy who would seem bright and happy one day, but black with depression the next, something Mary remembers in him even before he went to Canada. 

The people are kind and welcoming to Mary, although they find her a bit strange.  As Mary struggles to make a life for herself, hoping to earn enough money to return home, she slowly comes to appreciate Luke’s kindness and help.  She learns healing arts and the use of herbs from another woman in the community, developing new skills.  In helping others, she earns their appreciation and a place in their community.  Luke Anderson becomes very fond of Mary, but she still mourns for her lost Duncan.  In spite of his kindness, she doesn’t see how she can make this strange, hard, dark forest of Canada her home, where it doesn’t even seem like the spirits she believed in and that seemed to protect her when she lived in Scotland exist.

Mary is melancholy and feels like she doesn’t belong in Canada.  It distresses her that she can no longer feel Duncan’s presence . . . although she can oddly hear him calling to her sometimes.  Mary also unnerves people when she makes predictions that come true and speaks about ghosts and spirits.  When she almost gives in to her homesickness and depression and kills herself, lured to the spot where Duncan drowned himself by his ghostly calls to her, she finally sees Duncan’s death for what it really was and finds the courage to refuse to follow him down the dark path that he chose for himself and to fight for the life she has been building, the one she really wants to live.

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

My Reaction

This book is part of a loose trilogy, involving ancestors and descendants of the Anderson and Morrisay families.  All of the books take place in or near Hawthorn Bay in Canada, but at different time periods.  Some of the characters are psychic, like Mary, or have the ability to travel through time, like Susan in The Root Cellar, who is apparently Mary’s granddaughter.  The connection between Mary and Susan is never stated explicitly, but it’s implied by their last name, shared psychic abilities, and comments that a friend makes about Susan’s grandmother in The Root Cellar.  In this series, the characters from each of the books generally don’t appear in any of the others (except, perhaps, for Phoebe, who appears briefly in this book and is the main character in the third story).  Most of the time, you only know about the family connections by reading the books and taking note of the last names.  The books go backward in time as the series progresses, and the connection between the Anderson and Morrisay families is only obvious in The Root Cellar.

With the deaths that occur in the book, discussions of suicide, and the influence of Duncan’s selfish, malevolent spirit, this is not a book for young kids. I’d say that readers should be middle school level or older. There is also some implied sex and pregnancy out of wedlock when one of Luke’s brothers gets one of Mary’s friends pregnant. Her friend doesn’t give the details of what happened, but from what she says, it’s implied that Luke’s disreputable brother forced himself on the girl and that she went along with it because she didn’t know what else to do. The description of that incident is minimal, but older readers will understand what happened. There is a scandal in the community because of it, and the disreputable brother leaves rather than face the consequences of his actions.

Themes and Spoilers

I enjoyed the book for its references to Scottish folklore, which Mary believes in and seems to be in touch with through her “gift” and for Mary’s growing confidence in her abilities and more mature understanding of what her cousin was really like and what her relationship with him really was.  In some ways, I do feel sorry for Duncan because he seems to have been suffering from some kind of mental illness, possibly bipolar disorder or manic depression, which would explain how his moods could shift so abruptly and dramatically.  However, Duncan was also a selfish and controlling person.  Although Duncan’s death was sad, Mary realizes that his end was of his own making, and it’s not the future she wants for herself.  There are some disturbing scenes in the story.  Mary witnesses the deaths of others, including a baby, because it is a harsh environment, where people sometimes succumb to sickness or bad weather, although these deaths are not described in too much detail. 

There are also some frightening moments, like when Duncan’s ghost almost convinces Mary to kill herself and when he similarly lures a young boy, Luke’s younger brother, to the spot where he drowned and almost kills the boy because Mary finds the little boy comforting and Duncan doesn’t want her to be comfortable and happy.  In the beginning, readers see Duncan through Mary’s fondness for him, so the true darkness of his personality isn’t immediately apparent, although I had some misgivings about him from Mary’s first description of how they played together as children.  I didn’t like the way she described how he would tease her until she became angry or hurt and then he would sulk until she comforted him.  She says that wasn’t really fair, but to me, it was disturbing because I have seen that kind of selfish personality before, and it’s never a good sign.  It shows right from the first that Duncan doesn’t really care about Mary’s feelings.  He cares only about his own feelings, and he has no interest in changing his behavior out of consideration for her.  In fact, the very idea that he should consider her feelings seems somehow insulting to him, even though he supposedly loves her.  He just thinks that she needs to reassure him that everything he does is fine whether it is or not.  In his view, Mary is obviously wrong to feel hurt even when he tries to hurt her because he has more right to his feelings than she has to hers and he should be able to behave any way he wants with no consequences.  That’s what Mary’s first description of Duncan said to me.  As soon as I saw that, even though some might consider it just the actions of an immature child, I had some suspicions about him.

My suspicions were somewhat confirmed before Mary left home. Her mother told her that she didn’t think Duncan was worth chasing after, calling him sulky and thoughtless, but the full truth of that doesn’t strike Mary until she confronts his spirit where he died. Because people in Canada don’t like to talk about Duncan much, when Mary first hears about his death, it isn’t immediately clear that he killed himself or how.  At first, it’s just somewhat implied, but when Mary is almost lured to her death, she sees the full truth about Duncan. 

Mary comes to realize that, although everyone, including Duncan and herself, felt like the two of them were two parts of the same person, they really weren’t.  Mary sees that not only can she live without Duncan, she has been living without him for years.  She lived without him for a time in Scotland, and she’s been living without him in Canada, and she can continue to live without him wherever she chooses to live the rest of her life.  When she was younger, she had thought of Duncan as being the stronger of the two of them because he was not plagued by the same “gift” she was, but she realizes that she is actually the stronger of the two of them.  Duncan’s “love” for her had also always been a selfish one.  He couldn’t bring himself to work hard and return to Scotland for her sake, but he expected her to give up everything, even her own life, to join him in Canada and in death.

When Mary realizes all of this, Duncan’s spirit loses its hold over her, and she comes to see that the darkness in him was darker than the forests that had seemed so frightening to her before.  Free from the shadow of Duncan’s death and his selfish spirit, Mary is able to see the beauty of Canada and to be more open to the good people around her, forging a new future with a better man.

Posted on by TracyC

Twin Spell

Twin Spell by Janet Lunn, 1968, 2003.

This book was originally called Twin Spell but was renamed Double Spell in reprintings.

Elizabeth and Jane Hubbard, a set of twelve-year-old twins, can’t really explain what made them stop to look at the little wooden doll in the window of the antiques shop.  Ordinarily, they probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all, but something seemed to draw them to it while they were supposed to be going home to look after their little brother.  The woman in the shop wasn’t going to sell the doll to them, either, but for some reason, she said that she felt that she ought to do it because it seemed like the doll belonged with them.

Buying the old doll starts off a chain of mysterious events in the twins’ lives.  On impulse, still forgetting that they’re supposed to go home and baby-sit, the girls decide to visit their Aunt Alice and show her the doll.  Aunt Alice had been living in England, but she had recently moved back to Toronto to live in the girls’ grandmother’s old house.  Aunt Alice doesn’t know what to think of the doll, except that it might be worth something as an antique.  She shows the girls around their grandmother’s old house, but Elizabeth has a sudden fall down the stairs, breaking her leg.  Strangely, a week later, Aunt Alice suffers a similar accident, breaking her hip.

Because of her accident, Aunt Alice decides that the big old house is a bit much for her to handle, and she tells the twins’ parents that they can have it to live in instead.  With five children in the family, including the twins, they could really use the larger house, and the children are excited about going to live there.

The twins find themselves thinking of odd things, as if they were old memories.  They suggest taking a “sick basket” of goodies to their aunt, thinking that maybe their mother had done something like that for someone before or maybe they had dreamed something like it.  Their brothers can’t remember any such thing happening, and it would be pretty weird for both of the girls to have the same dream.

However, the children think that a basket of goodies for their aunt would be a good idea.  They put together some stuff from their kitchen and what they can buy with their money, and they decide to include a book that she can read while she’s recovering.  Unfortunately, the book they choose from their shelves turns out to be a rare copy of a book about the history of Toronto that their father was using for a research project, so they have to get it back.  They do, and Aunt Alice tells them that she enjoyed it and that she had forgotten that an uncle had written it.

As the family moves into Aunt Alice’s old house, the twins keep thinking that there is something strange about their doll, that it seems to be influencing them, giving them visions of the past.  Besides the “sick basket” dream they both had, they have visions of a house and a blonde girl in old-fashioned clothes.  They start to think that the doll, which they both have the impulse to call “Amelia,” might be magic or something.  Jane is the more sensible of the two, and she insists that there must be some other explanation, like imagination or coincidence.  Elizabeth, the dreamier twin, insists that it’s the influence of Amelia, that they’re somehow seeing Amelia’s memories of the past.

After the girls argue about the doll and the source of their odd visions, Jane starts ignoring Elizabeth.  Elizabeth continues thinking about what they’ve seen, and the blonde girl, who she is sure is called Hester and was the former owner of Amelia.  Eventually, Jane starts agreeing with Elizabeth about Hester being the doll’s former owner, but she is dubious when Elizabeth says that Amelia wants to find the house where she once lived with Hester.  Jane doesn’t know how the two of them can do that.

They ask their father for his advice, and he suggests that they start at the museum.  There, they learn by studying the styles of old clothes that Amelia is from the 1840s.  They find an area of town with houses similar to the one they’ve seen in their minds, where Amelia once lived, but they have trouble finding the exact house they’re looking for.

Jane becomes increasingly afraid, though.  More and more, she begins to feel like something is trying to take the doll away from them.  Something that is mean and doesn’t like her is in their attic.  Something like a ghost.  Jane has an awful feeling that something horrible is about to happen.

When the Jane looks at the history book her father has been reading, the one written by her great-great-uncle, Jane suddenly has a startling revelation. The house they have been seeking in actually their house, changed over the years by new additions. Amelia came from their house, and that is where she really belongs. Through the visions, they see an old tragedy in their family reenacted, a tragedy that puts Jane’s life in danger.

The book is available to read for free online through Internet Archive. There is no need to borrow this copy and no time limit; you can just read it in your browser.

Themes and Spoilers

The girls had made a mistake when they first started receiving their visions.  They had assumed that Hester was Amelia’s original owner, but she wasn’t.  The glimpses they got of Hester weren’t through the doll’s eyes, but those of the doll’s real former owner.  The doll was one of a set of two that originally belonged to another set of twins in the girls’ family, Anne and Melissa.  Hester was their cousin, and she was not a nice girl.  Both Jane and Elizabeth sensed it pretty early.  During an argument with Anne years before, Hester accidentally lit Anne’s dress on fire with a candle she was holding, causing Anne to die.  Hester hadn’t actually meant to harm Anne.  The whole thing was just an accident, but Hester’s guilt and Melissa’s anger and grief at her twin’s death had caused Hester’s spirit to linger in the house.  By learning the circumstances of Anne’s death and assuring Hester that they understand that she had not meant to kill her cousin, that it was all an accident, and that she couldn’t save Anne because she was just too frightened and didn’t know what to do, they help Hester’s spirit to finally rest and to reunite Amelia with her doll twin, which Hester had hidden years before.

The scene where the girls see Anne’s death is a little scary, but mostly sad.  Hester lived on after the incident, but it was not a happy life.  She ended up having to live in Anne and Melissa’s old room, where Anne died, because she never married and had to live with family.  Aunt Alice remembers knowing her as a young child, when Hester was a bitter old woman.  Perhaps if Hester hadn’t been carrying that guilt around for so many years, her life would have been much happier, although being a nice person had never particularly been her nature.  However, the twins’ acceptance of Hester’s tragedy and assurance that they understand and forgive her for what happened set her spirit at peace.

The genealogy in the story is a little confusing, partly because certain family names repeat through the generations, but there is a chart in the back of the book to help.  There are some other loose ends in the story which are also never completely clarified.  The girls admit that they will probably never know how the doll Amelia came to be in the antiques store, but it doesn’t particularly matter because Hester, Anne, Melissa, and Amelia all seem to be at peace now.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

In a Dark, Dark Room

In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories retold by Alvin Schwartz, 1984.

This is a collection of classic scary stories based on folktales from around the world.  A special section in the back of the book explains more about where the stories came from.

This book was a favorite scary book of mine when I was a kid, and the stories are the type that kids commonly like to tell at camp or at sleepovers to spook each other.  Stories like these stay with you for years!

Sometimes, you can find individual stories from this book read aloud on YouTube. The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Stories in the Book:

The Teeth – A boy meets a series of strange people with increasingly long teeth.  Based on a story from Suriname. (Here is a video of someone reading this story as an example.)

In the Graveyard – A woman sees bodies carried into a graveyard. Based on the song “Old Woman All Skin and Bone.”

The Green Ribbon – A girl wears a green ribbon around her neck for her entire life, refusing to explain to even her husband why she wears it, until she is old and about to die.  Based on a European folk tale.  Originally, it was a red thread.

In a Dark, Dark Room – Classic slumber party story!  “In a dark, dark wood, there was a dark, dark house.”  What will it all lead to?  It is known in Europe and America.

The Night It Rained – A man gives a boy a ride home on a rainy night.  When he returns the next day to pick up the sweater he loaned the boy, he gets an eerie surprise.  Based on a class of ghost story known as “The Ghostly Hitchhiker,” which has many variants.

The Pirate – When Ruth visits her cousin’s house, her cousin tells her that her room is haunted by the ghost of a pirate.  Based on a British folktale.

The Ghost of John – A short poem. The author of this book first heard this from a young girl in California in 1979.

Posted on by TracyC

The Halloween Tree

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury, 1972.

A group of neighborhood boys want to go trick-or-treating on Halloween night, but they’re upset because it looks like a friend of their, Joe Pipkin, won’t be coming with them.  When they get to Pipkin’s house, he seems ill and is clutching his side.  His friends worry that he’s sick, but he valiantly reassures them that he’ll be fine.  He sends them on, telling them that he’ll catch up with them and that his costume will be great.  Specifically, he tells them to “head for the House” which is “the place of the Haunts.”

The house that Pipkin is talking about is the creepiest house in town.  It’s large, so large that it’s hard to tell how many rooms it has.  The boys knock on the creepy-looking door knocker on the front door, and a man answers the door.  When the boys say, “trick or treat,” the man says, “No treats.  Only—trick!”  Then, he slams the door without giving them anything.

Not knowing what else to do, the boys walk around the side of the house and see a large tree, filled with jack o’lanterns.  This is the Halloween Tree.  The strange man they saw before rises up from a pile of leaves and scares the boys, giving them the “trick” that he promised them earlier.  He finally introduces himself as Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud.  He begins talking to them about the history of Halloween and asks them if they understand the real meanings behind the costumes they have chosen.  The boys admit that they really don’t know the meanings behind their costumes, and Moundshroud points off into the distance, calling it, “The Undiscovered Country.”  He says that out there likes the past and the history of Halloween and that the boys will learn the answers if they’re willing to go there.  The boys are interested, but they say that they can’t go anywhere without Pipkin, who promised that he would come.

Pipkin suddenly appears in the distance, by a dark ravine, holding a lit pumpkin.  He says that he doesn’t feel well, but he knew that he had to come.  Pipkin trips and falls, and the light in his pumpkin goes out.  From a distance, the others hear him calling for help.  Moundshroud says that something bad has happened.  Pipkin has been taken away to The Undiscovered Country by Death.  Moundshroud says that Pipkin may not be taken permanently but perhaps held for ransom and that, if they follow Pipkin to The Undiscovered Country, they might be able to get his soul back and save his life.

Moundshroud has the boys build a kite that somewhat resembles a pterodactyl, and they use it to travel into the far distant past.  The first place they arrive is Ancient Egypt, where the boys learn about mummies and how the Ancient Egyptians viewed the dead.  They see Pipkin as a mummy, being laid to rest in a sarcophagus, surrounded by hieroglyphs, telling the story of his life.  (Or, as Moundshroud says, “Or whoever Pipkin was this time around, this year, four thousand years ago,” hinting that Pipkin has been reincarnated before and what they are seeing during their journey are his past lives and deaths.)  Pipkin calls out to his friends for help.  Moundshroud tells the boys that they can’t save Pipkin now, but they’ll have a chance later.

They continue their journey through time and around the world, seeing glimpses of Halloweens past in Ancient Rome and the British Isles, where they learn about druids, Samhain, and witches.  Moundshroud describes how the Romans supplanted druidic practices with their own polytheistic religion until that was eventually replaced by Christianity.  All along, they can still hear Pipkin calling to them, and he seems to be carried off by a witch.  As they pursue him, Moundshroud teaches them the difference between fictional witches and real-life witches, which he characterizes as being more like wise women, who don’t really do magic.

From there, they go to Notre Dame to learn about gargoyles.  They continue to see Pipkin in different forms, even as a gargoyle on the cathedral.  Pipkin tells them that he’s not dead, but that he knows that part of him is in a hospital back home.

In Mexico, the boys experience Dia de los Muertos and learn about skeletons and a different kind of mummy from the ones they saw in Egypt.  They find Pipkin, held prisoner in the catacombs by the mummies, and Moundshroud tells the boys that the only way to save him is to make a bargain, both with him and with the dead: each boy must give one year from the end of their lives so that Pipkin may live.  It is a serious decision, for as Moundshroud says, they won’t miss that year now, being only about 11 or 12 years old, but none of them knows how long they will actually live.  Some of them who were destined to die at 55 would now only make it to 54, and as they reach the end of their lives, the year will seem that much more important to them.  Even those who live longer will still want every day they can possibly have.  However, each decides that he is willing to make the sacrifice because, without that sacrifice, Pipkin has no chance, and they can’t just let him die.

They make the bargain and are soon returned home.  When they go to Pipkin’s house to check on him, they are told that Pip is in the hospital because he had his appendix taken out, just in time to save his life.  At the end of the story, Tom (who is the leader of the boys through most of the story), wonders silently who Moundshroud really was, and he hears in his mind, “I think you know, boy, I think you know.”  Tom asks him if they will meet again, and Moundshroud says that he will come for Tom many years from now, confirming that Moundshroud was Death all along, which was why they had to make the bargain with him.

I saw the animated movie version of this story long before I read the book, and it really gave me the creeps!  Moundshroud is creepy because he is kind of two-faced.  On the one hand, he seems somewhat helpful in helping the boys to find Pipkin and teaching them about the history of Halloween, but on the other, he does not admit to the children that he is Death until the very end, that he is the very thing that they need to save Pipkin from, and that they can only do it by offering a sacrifice of years from their own lives. Although it does occur to me that Moundshroud may not be quite as two-faced as he seems because Pip’s illness and potential death may not have been planned by him but simply the fated situation for Pip, and Moundshroud might have just taken it upon himself to provide a way for Pip’s friends to save him in the least painful way. By not telling them that a sacrifice of part of their lives would be necessary until the very end, after they had come to a better understanding of life and death in the history of Halloween, he may have made the choice easier for them to make. Also, he never says exactly how much time they bought for Pip with their sacrifice. The implication is that Pip is now free from his early appointed death date and will now live a full life, similar to what his friends will have. The exchange does not seem to be an even one, a year for a year, with the children needing to decide how many years they will donate to Pip. Although the kids still don’t know at the end how many years each of them will live, it seems that none of the rest of them is in danger of dying in childhood, and they will all live for many more years.

I wouldn’t recommend this book for young children (it still gives me the creeps, and I’m in my 30s), but it is interesting how they take a journey through the origins of Halloween. The book and the movie were somewhat different, partly because there were more kids in the group in the book and partly because the group of kids in the movie also had a girl in a witch costume. In the book, the kid in the witch costume was also a boy.

Both the book and the animated movie are available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Who Knew There’d Be Ghosts?

Who Knew There’d Be Ghosts? By Bill Britain, 1985.

Tommy Donahue and his friends, Wendy “Books” Scofield (the smartest kid in their class as well as being pretty tough) and Harry “the Blimp” Troy (known for being the tallest and biggest kid in their class), prefer playing around the abandoned Parnell house instead of at the park because they like to play games of pretend, based on adventure stories that Tommy has read.  It’s hard to play games of pretend in such a public place as the park because other people either laugh or think that they’re just getting in the way.  Almost nobody goes near the old Parnell house because people think that it’s haunted.  They’re right; it is haunted.

Some people in their town have been trying to arrange for the Parnell house to be turned into a museum because the Parnells were the founding family of their town, but the movement hasn’t been able to raise the money needed to renovate the place.  Now, Tommy’s father, a lawyer, has been recruited to arrange for the house to be purchased by a private citizen who says that he wants to renovate the house and use it as his own residence.  However, Tommy and his friends overhear the buyer, Avery Katkus, and a confederate talking as they look over the house.  Mr. Katkus isn’t interested in the house at all; he wants something valuable that is hidden inside.  When they hear the two men plotting to sneak into the house at night to do some searching for this mysterious something, the kids decide that they will come back at night and watch for them to find out what they’re looking for.  The kids don’t want anything bad to happen to the house because they’ll lose their private playground.

Tommy is the first to go and check out the Parnell house at night, and that’s when he meets the ghosts, Horace and Essie Parnell.  At first, Horace tries to scare Tommy away, but when Tommy explains that he only came to keep watch, Horace asks him what he means by that.  Tommy explains to him about Mr. Katkus, and Horace says that he could use Tommy’s help.  Years ago, Horace’s father made a dying wish that all members of their family should be buried in the family cemetery on the property of the house.  Most of the members of the family are buried there, but Horace, who was killed during the Revolutionary War, and Essie, who accidentally fell overboard from a riverboat and was permanently lost in the Mississippi River, were only two Parnells who were not buried on the property, so their spirits are now bound to the house.  Naturally, Horace and Essie are concerned with the future of the house.

Tommy tries to tell his friends about the ghosts, but they don’t believe him until they see the ghosts for themselves.  When the three kids return to the house the next night, Horace saves them from being attacked by Mr. Katkus’s hired confederate.  Now convinced of the ghosts’ existence, Harry and Books are eager to help save the house, and the key in doing so is discovering what kind of hidden treasure the house holds.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Kate’s Camp-Out

Sleepover Friends

#6 Kate’s Camp-Out by Susan Saunders, 1988.

Kate’s family is spending the weekend at a cabin at Spirit Lake, and Kate is allowed to bring her Sleepover Friends with her.  However, what promised to be a fun and exciting weekend soon comes with complications.  First, Kate discovers that the Norwood family will be in a cabin nearby.  Dr. Norwood is a colleague of her father’s, but his two sons, Sam and Dave, are pests who like to play practical jokes.  When they arrive at the cabin, there is also no electricity (a problem that they fix the next day), and they learn that the reason the lake is called Spirit Lake is because there are some scary stories about the place.  Kate’s father tells the girls a story before bed about an old fur trapper who murdered another fur trapper for his money.  The ghost story is interrupted by Dr. Norwood, who comes over to see if everything is all right because there have been some break-ins in the area recently.

The girls are spooked by the ghost story, but the next day, they also encounter the Norwood boys and realize that they’re every bit as awful as Kate remembers them.  First, Sam and Dave trick a couple of the girls into wading out into a deeper area of the lake so that they’ll fall in and get wet.  Then, when the families meet for a barbecue, the boys give a couple of the girls worms in a bun instead of sausages.

Because of their bad experiences with the boys, the girls are allowed to go back to their cabin while the others finish the barbecue.  While the girls are at the cabin, they accidentally find a secret hiding place in the fireplace with a pouch of old coins inside!  The girls wonder if that could be the stolen money from the ghost story, but Stephanie, who has been reading a book about ghost stories from the area, says that the dates on the old coins are later than the story took place.  According to the book, a ghost child was once seen around their cabin, but the girls can’t figure out why a child would have hidden so much money.

While the girls wait for the adults to return from the barbecue, they fix dinner for themselves and decide to hold a séance to contact the spirits.  They don’t really believe that the séance will work when they try it, but without any tv or radio, they don’t have anything else to do, and they can’t get their minds off the ghost stories. 

To the girls’ surprise, they actually hear strange knocks in reply to the questions that they ask the spirits.  Then, a child’s giggle convinces them that it’s just the Norwood boys, spying on them and trying to scare them again.  It’s the last straw, and the girl plot how to get even with the Norwood boys!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

This is one of those stories that has a somewhat ambiguous ending. When the girls try to catch the Norwood boys playing ghost, they instead discover the identities of the people behind the recent break-ins at the cabins. Later, they learn that Sam and Dave actually have alibis for the time that they heard the ghost noises, leaving them wondering if the knocking and giggling could have actually been a ghost. The girls do manage to play a prank on the boys before the end of the story, but they never learn the story behind the old coins.

I liked the part where they never firmly establish whether or not there was a ghost because it’s fun to leave people wondering. People who like ghost stories can imagine that the girls did hear a ghost, but if you don’t like the scary explanation, you can imagine that there’s another explanation for the noises. However, I found the lack of resolution behind the presence of the coins a little disappointing. The owner of the cabin they were using lets each of the girls keep a single coin as a souvenir (and the coins really are valuable collectors’ items) and gives the others to a local museum. I think I would have liked the story better if the girls found an explanation for the presence of the coins at the museum, so at least part of the story would be resolved.

There are two main theories that I have behind the events in the story. One is that the thieves in the area hid some stolen coins in the cabin for some reason and they were the ones trying to scare the girls during their seance. The other is that the mystery of the coins ties in with the child ghost in some way, hinting at dark unknown deeds from the past. Alas, there is no confirmation about which of these theories, if any, is true.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Jane-Emily

JaneEmily

Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp, 1969.

Louisa is a young woman around the turn of the century.  She is only 18 years old and unmarried, but she is in love with a young man named Martin.  However, her parents think that she is becoming too serious about Martin too soon, so they insist that she spend the summer taking her young niece, Jane, to visit her other grandmother.  Jane has lived with her maternal grandparents, Louisa’s parents, since the death of her parents.  Louisa loves her niece, but she resents her parents changing her summer plans in order to keep her away from her boyfriend.

However, this is not just a love story but a ghost story.  Jane’s parents were killed in a strange buggy accident, which is why she lives with her grandparents and young aunt.  Her other grandmother has lived alone since the death of her son (Jane’s father) and her husband, some years earlier.  She had another child, a daughter named Emily, but Emily died young many years ago of a sudden illness.

As Louisa soon learns, Emily was a pretty and clever but seriously disturbed child.  Her father idolized her, coming to love her even more than he loved his wife.  He thought she was absolutely the most perfect child in the world and could never forbid her anything.  He gave her everything she ever asked for and refused to allow his wife to discipline her for any reason, even when she needed it.  It would be enough to spoil any child, but Emily was extremely callous, cold, and manipulating by nature.  Her father’s catering to her only fed her selfishness and ruthlessness.

Emily was known to resort to extreme measures to get her way, and in the end, it led to her death.  She fell in love with the son of the local doctor, deciding (without his consent) that they would get married one day.  However, he didn’t really care for her at all, seeing her extreme selfishness.  In a bid to get his attention and sympathy, Emily decided to make herself ill.  One cold night, she soaked her nightgown in water and deliberately sat by an open window.  Unfortunately, it worked too well, and she became so ill that she died.

However, Emily’s selfishness and determination to get her way seem to have lasted beyond the grave, and young Jane’s presence in her old house, in the very room that used to be Emily’s, seems to have awakened Emily’s wrathful spirit.  Jane becomes fascinated with the reflecting globe in the garden, which Emily declared was hers alone and that no one else could ever look into it.  Jane claims that she can see Emily’s face in the globe, but people don’t believe her at first. Jane bears a close resemblance to Emily, although the two of them are very different in character.  Jane seems to develop an unhealthy obsession with her dead aunt, and she seems to know things that only Emily could have told her.  Emily seems to be slowly taking over Jane.

Jane’s grandmother confides that she has believed that Emily caused the sudden deaths of her husband and son because they both died under unexplained circumstances and Emily could never let go of anything or anyone she thought belonged to her.  Now that Emily seems to be showing an interest in Jane, her grandmother begins to fear for her.

Meanwhile, Louisa is falling in love with Adam, the young man Emily had planned to marry and who is now a doctor himself.  Adam also loves her, wanting her to marry him.  However, Louisa has become convinced of Emily’s evil presence and the threat that she poses to young Jane.  When Emily forces Jane to go out in a freezing rain, making her become ill in the way she did before she died, Louisa must help Jane to fight for her life.

Emily’s presence centers around the gazing globe in the garden, and the only person who can end her evil influence and save Jane is her grandmother, who finally finds the courage to stand up to her daughter and tell her that there are some things that she can’t have.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

Parts of the story feel a bit preachy on the subject of parents who spoil their children, but Emily and her family are presented as an extreme case of that.  At times, characters wonder what Emily would have been like if her father hadn’t constantly catered to her every whim and had given her the discipline she needed.  They all agree that she would have lived a longer life, as would other members of her family.  However, Emily was already a naturally selfish person and apparently incapable of empathy.  Her father’s worship of her was seriously unhealthy and, in a way, a reflection of his own selfishness; Emily represented all the qualities that he loved in her mother but she was a creation of his (well, you know, 50%, genetically speaking), making her infinitely more perfect and more worthy of his love than his own wife.  One of the other characters comments that his wife was the real victim in the end because her husband blamed her for their daughter’s early death (which was definitely Emily’s fault alone) and subjected her to years of guilt over it, rejecting all the love they had once had for each other.

The story ends happily but on a somewhat ambiguous note because Louisa realizes that there are many things that she doesn’t understand, and although Emily seems like she’s finally gone, the memory of her will haunt them all.

Posted on by TracyC

The Secret of the Floating Phantom

SecretFloatingPhantom

The Secret of the Floating Phantom by Norma Lehr, 1994.

Kathy Wicklow is going to be staying with her grandmother in Monterey for a while, helping her while she recovers from a twisted knee.  Kathy is disappointed about it because she only just got home from visiting her Aunt Sharon, and she was looking forward to some time at home with her dog, Snuggles.  Snuggles can’t even come with her to her grandmother’s house because of her grandmother’s allergies.

Kathy’s grandmother is a dance instructor, but someone else has to teach her classes until she’s better.  Her friend, Loretta, owns a Spanish restaurant and sometimes visits and brings dinner with her.  (The grandmother describes it as a “Spanish” restaurant, but they serve things like tacos and burritos with salsa, which is what people where I live think of as Mexican food.)  Kathy’s grandmother is sure that Kathy will like Loretta’s granddaughter and grandnephew.  However, she is strangely secretive about what she and Loretta have been doing during her visits, saying that their meetings, which they hold with a mysterious man called Mason, are financial discussions and are “not for children.”

Kathy learns that her grandmother and her friend are really holding séances. Loretta’s husband is dead, and Loretta fears that she might lose her property unless she can produce the original deed to it. She thinks her husband knew where the deed was, and she hopes to contact him so that he can tell her.  When Kathy spies on them during a séance, she sees a mysterious fog that seems to be trying to tell them something. No one else can see it but her. It appears to Kathy several more times, and it seems to be leading her not only toward the deed but toward a lost treasure from the early days of California.

Kathy is suspicious of Mason’s motives and the fact that he doesn’t seem to like her. It turns out that he is not really trying to help Loretta and her family but trying to find a treasure that was hidden by an ancestor of Loretta’s over a hundred years ago. At that time, the area where they now live in California was attacked by pirates. Loretta’s ancestor, Ambrose, was given the task of hiding the treasures from the local mission. He buried them under a tree and marked the tree with a cross. However, during the attack, he was badly injured and blinded. He was unable to find the spot where he buried the treasure himself, and the others who went to find it couldn’t locate the tree.

The fog-like spirit that Kathy sees is Ambrose. Lisa, Loretta’s granddaughter and Kathy’s friend, is spooked by Kathy’s visions, but she helps Kathy to follow the clues that the ghost provides to the treasure. In a hole in the trunk of the tree, Kathy also finds the deed that Loretta has been searching for. Mason tries to take the treasure himself, but he can’t move the heavy bricks on top of it by himself. Mason leaves before anyone can confront him. Digger, Lisa’s cousin, feels especially betrayed because Mason had seemed like such a good friend to him. Kathy notices that Mason seems to share some characteristics with one of the pirates from the attack in Ambrose’s time, which might be a hint that Mason is a descendant of the pirates, but it’s never fully explained.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Monster Manual

MonsterManual

Monster Manual by Erich Ballinger, 1989, 1994.

This book was originally written in German and then translated into English.  It’s not a story about monsters but a kind of guide to monsters and other creatures found in fantasy, horror, and science fiction books and movies.  There are articles about different types of monsters, fictional characters, and monster-related concepts that are organized in alphabetical order, like a encyclopedia.  The creatures in the book range from traditional monsters from folktales and classic literature, like vampires, mummies, dragons, ogres, and creatures from Greek mythology, to modern ones from popular fiction, as seen on this monster family tree.

MonsterManualFamilyTree

Some topics, like vampires, actually have more than one entry in the book.  There is the Vampires article, which talks about the general idea of vampires and traditional beliefs about them. Then, there are the articles about Dracula and Nosferatu, specific vampires from classic literature.  In the Nosferatu section, they tell you that the famous silent movie Nosferatu was actually based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, just with the location and character names changed.  Unlike the suave-looking Dracula, who is not obviously a vampire at first sight, the vampire in Nosferatu was also depicted as an unearthly creature.  One thing they don’t mention is that Bram Stoker’s widow sued the studio that made Nosferatu for copyright infringement.  The studio went bankrupt, and all copies of the movie were supposed to be destroyed.  The only reason that we can see the movie now is that copies of it had already been sent overseas and preserved.  It’s now considered a classic silent film and has a cult following.

MonsterManualVampires
MonsterManualNosferatuOgres

Some articles are also activities, like the one about Drawing Monsters and the quiz to see how fearful you are.

MonsterManualFearQuiz

All throughout the book, there are also segments of a comic strip at the bottoms of various pages in which a monster tries to frighten a young girl, who is unimpressed.  By the end of the comic strip, the girl and the monster become friends.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death

BlossomSleepDeathBlossom Culp and the Sleep of Death by Richard Peck, 1986.

This book starts shortly after the previous book in the series ends.  After Blossom’s old history teacher was run out of town for his scandalous behavior, he was replaced by Miss Fairweather.  Miss Fairweather is a tough, no-nonsense woman who pushes her students to study hard and take history seriously.  Unexpectedly, she comes to appreciate Blossom, an outcast from a poor family, because Blossom demonstrates some knowledge of Ancient Egypt.  Little does Miss Fairweather know that Blossom’s comments in class were inspired by one of the visions that Blossom occasionally gets because of her psychic gifts.

Blossom experiences a visitation from the spirit of an Ancient Egyptian princess who says that she needs Blossom’s help.  Years ago, her mummy and some precious objects were stolen from her tomb.  The princess doesn’t seem to know exactly where her “earthly form” is now, but she’s sure that it’s somewhere nearby.  She’s very concerned because she senses that archaeologists in Egypt are digging to find her tomb and knows that when they finally reach it, they will discover that she isn’t there.  Rather than being concerned about her tomb being violated by the archaeologists, the princess senses that they are searching for her remains in order to venerate them, that if they find her mummy, they will take it to a place of great beauty where it will be treated with the utmost care and respect (a museum).  She wants that and fears that she will miss her chance at the kind of immortality that this form of glorification, care, and study will provide.  So, she asks Blossom to find her earthly remains and inform the searchers of her true whereabouts.  At first, Blossom has no idea how she can accomplish that, but the princess threatens her with a true Egyptian curse if she doesn’t try.

Then, Blossom receives a clue to the mystery in the form of a beautiful Egyptian scarab that her mother found one day while she was out scavenging.  If Blossom can find the place where her mother found the jewel, she can also find the princess’s mummy.  Fortunately, Miss Fairweather has assigned the class special projects about Ancient Egypt, and she is thrilled when Blossom says that she wants to study grave robbers.  Blossom sees this as a good way to collect some extra information about grave robbers that she can use to find the princess’s mummy as well as get a good grade in Miss Fairweather’s class.  It also proves to be an excellent way to draw Alexander Armsworth into her search for the mummy.

Alexander still denies to Blossom that he has real psychic abilities like hers, even after their previous adventures together.  He insists that it was just a phase that they were going through, one that he wants to leave behind.  He’s been busy flirting with Letty, the class snob, and he’s trying hard to get into a prestigious fraternity so that he can give Letty his fraternity pin.  Not only does Blossom think that the boys in the fraternity are a bunch of idiots who do stupid things, but the idea of Alexander giving Letty his pin as a sign of their relationship is just sickening.

Blossom is reluctant to admit her real feelings for Alexander, but the two of them are close in ways that Letty and Alexander never will be because of their shared abilities and adventures, and Blossom has a sense that their futures will be intertwined as well.  Alexander is angry that Blossom is roping her into yet another supernatural escapade, but he has to go along with her project idea because he has already gotten on Miss Fairweather’s bad side and needs to do well on the project to save his grade in class.

Along with the supernatural adventure, there is also a look into the past, the world of 1910s America as well as Ancient Egypt.  First, there are the traditions of stunts associated with Alexander’s initiation into his fraternity and the tradition of giving a girl a fraternity pin as a precursor to engagement (“engaged to be engaged”).  Then, they discover that Miss Fairweather is a suffragette, which is the reason why she left her previous teaching job.  Her feminist ideals cause problems for her in her new, small town when they become known, but with Blossom’s help, she wins over some of the influential women in town as well as a male admirer.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.