Posted on by TracyC

The Mysterious Horseman

The Mysterious Horseman: An Adventure in Prairietown, 1836, by Kate Waters, 1994.

This book is part of a loose series of books by Kate Waters, showing child reenactors at living history museums, having adventures in the roles of the characters they play. While most of the books are set in Colonial times at Plymouth and Colonial Williamsburg, the setting for this story is the Connor Prairie living history museum in Indiana, which shows life in a small town in the 19th century.

The story centers around a boy named Andrew McClure. He is the only one of his siblings left still living with their parents. His older sister is now married, and his baby brother died of an illness during the last year. His family is still grieving for his little brother. Andrew’s best friend is a boy named Thomas Curtis, who lives nearby, and Andrew works part time at a local inn to earn some money.

One day, while Andrew is doing some sweeping at the inn, he overhears some men talking in the taproom. He doesn’t hear their entire conversation, but he hears them talking about a mysterious rider without a head who chased a schoolmaster. Andrew is startled, and he wonders if that has something to do with the new schoolmaster who is supposed to arrive in town.

When Andrew is done with his work, he goes to the schoolhouse, and he finds his friend Thomas and Thomas’s sister, helping the new schoolmaster to clean the schoolhouse and prepare it for lessons to start. Andrew wants to talk to Thomas about what he overheard at the inn, but the schoolmaster only wants to talk to the boys about lessons.

Later, Andrew does have a chance to talk to Thomas, and both of the boys are spooked by the idea of a headless rider. They even think that they hear the rider on the road! The frightened boys go see Thomas’s father, the blacksmith, and tell him about the rider. Fortunately, the blacksmith knows what the men were talking about, and he can settle the boys’ fears.

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

My Reaction

I didn’t know about this book until I was looking up Kate Waters’s books for my younger cousins. I was surprised because Kate Waters’s living history museum books are mostly set on the East Coast or focus on the Colonial era. This 19th century book set in Indiana somewhat departs from the theme and has a different feel from the other Kate Waters books, but I enjoyed it. I’ve been to Connor Prairie because I have relatives in the area, and I enjoyed my visit. It’s been years since I’ve been there, so I didn’t immediately recognize the setting. When I read the explanation in the back of the book, I was fascinated to realize that I had visited that location before.

Andrew has a fascination for life on the frontier because he often watches people pass through his town on their way further west, and he daydreams about going west himself. His family is also still coming to terms with the death of his little brother, so the subject of death is still on Andrew’s mind. The deaths of children due to illness were sadly common in the 19th century and on the frontier, and the mourning in Andrew’s family adds to the melancholy and spooky atmosphere of the story.

Most adults and older children will probably recognize what the men at the inn where actually talking about when they were discussing the headless rider who chased the schoolmaster. When the boys talk to Thomas’s father, he immediately recognizes the story as the plot of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, originally published in 1820, about 16 years before the story in this book is suppose to take place. The men at the inn were just discussing the plot of the story, not something that they saw on the road themselves.

Posted on by TracyC

The Vampire Mystery

The Boxcar Children

#120 The Vampire Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2009.

The Alden children are introduced to a local author by their grandfather. Charles Hudson lives in an old house that his family has owned for years, next to a graveyard. He is known for writing a book about a vampire, and he explains to the Aldens that he was inspired to write the story because there are local stories about a vampire in that graveyard. He grew up hearing those stories, and he used to scare his brother with them when they were kids.

Mr. Hudson is now trying to sell the house. He doesn’t really want to, but he’s getting older, and the house is really too big for him to easily maintain it by himself. However, strange things have started happening since he decided to sell. His For Sale signs have been stolen and vandalized, people have been hearing strange sounds coming from the cemetery, and one of his neighbors, Mrs. Fairfax, found what looks like blood on her porch. His nervous realtor, Josh, seems to think that the vampire stories are real and that the vampire is trying to stop anyone new from moving into the house. He got that idea from the author’s book, where the sale of a house near a cemetery awakened the vampire’s wrath. Of course, Mr. Hudson and Mr. Alden say that’s just a story, but it’s still spooky to the Alden children. When they went outside to explore the cemetery, they also saw a mysterious figure lurking around. Mr. Hudson worries that the stories about the vampire will make it hard for him to sell his house.

The author says that he needs to out of town to meet with a movie producer about making a movie based on his book, and he’s a little worried about not having anyone to look after the house while he’s away. The Alden children offer to look after his house while he’s away, watering the plants and keeping things tidy for potential buyers. Mr. Hudson gratefully accepts their offer of help.

However, the next time the children go to the house to check on it, they find that the police are already there because someone vandalized the house during the night. The vandal ripped out some flowers in the garden and left a threatening message painted in red on the porch: “Leave me to rest in peace or you will be sorry.” The neighbor, Mrs. Fairfax accuses the children of doing the vandalism because she doesn’t like kids. Fortunately, Josh the realtor is there and vouches that the children are friends of Mr. Hudson and are just helping him with some things while he’s away.

At a local bake sale, the children have an odd experience when Benny bumps into a man who looks a lot like Mr. Hudson. In fact, he thought for a moment it was Mr. Hudson. The man left quickly, and he dropped a vial of something red, which the kids think looks a lot like blood!

Who could be behind the vandalism at Mr. Hudson’s house? Is Mrs. Fairfax so worried that a family with children will move in that she would fake the return of the legendary vampire to prevent anyone from buying Mr. Hudson’s house? Is Josh really as scared of the vampire as he pretends, or does he have his own reasons for wanting to sabotage the sale of Mr. Hudson’s house? What about the mysterious man who looks a lot like Mr. Hudson? Was that really blood in that vial, and could he actually be … the vampire?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I enjoyed this mystery! It’s mildly spooky, but not too scary. The children and the adults around them, for the most part, are pretty sure that whoever is doing these things isn’t a real vampire. They’re just not sure who’s pretending to be a vampire. There are some spooky moments, where someone is lurking around the cemetery, and later, someone enters Mr. Hudson’s house during the night, and the kids almost catch that person there. The person does some things to scare and distract them, but nobody gets hurt.

I had a couple of theories about who was doing what, and in a way, they both turned out to be right! It’s a bit of a spoiler, but there are two people who are doing secretive things in the story, and they’re not working with each other. They have separate motives for what they’re doing. Their separate plots just kind of build on each other’s, further building up the legend of the vampire.

It’s a fun, mildly spooky mystery that would be fun to read about Halloween, although it’s not specifically a Halloween story.

Posted on by TracyC

Scared Stiff

Scared Stiff by Jahnna N. Malcolm, 1991.

Kelly Anderson and her brother Chace rarely have visitors to their house because their parents are morticians, and there is no way to even get to the children’s bedrooms without passing a dead body somewhere because the family home is the mortuary. Their house is a big, old mansion in Maryland with the mortuary on the ground floor and the family quarters above. The kids’ parents say that it’s traditional for morticians to live at the mortuary, but Kelly still thinks that it’s creepy, even though she’s been around it her whole life. She also hates it that she always has to be quiet because there might be a viewing or funeral going on. When she was little, she was always afraid that they would accidentally bury someone who was still alive. However, her brother thinks living in a mortuary is kind of cool and makes jokes about it, saying that his parents are “professional boxers” and that they live in a “body shop.”

One evening, Kelly’s parents go out to a Chamber of Commerce banquet, leaving Kelly and her brother home alone with Chace’s friend, Matt. Before her parents leave, her mother says that she’s ordered pizza for them and suggests that Kelly go down to the video shop and rent a movie. She says that Kelly can also invite a friend over, if she wants, and Kelly complains that no girls she knows want to hang out in a mortuary. In fact, kids have been teasing her mercilessly and telling her that she and her family are gross and creepy. Chace just makes jokes about these comments, but they really bother Kelly. It bothers her even more that her best friend seems to be siding with other people who keep telling her not to take it seriously, especially now that she’s dating one of Kelly’s tormentors. (Yeah, it usually is the people dishing it out who want everyone to just be cool about everything they inflict on someone else. Insert eye roll here.) Kelly just wants someone to care about her feelings.

On the other hand, some of Chace’s friend’s are morbidly fascinated by what happens at the mortuary. Chace has been giving them tours of the embalming room where they prepare bodies for burial without his parents’ knowledge or permission. Chace says that the appeal for his friends is that they like to be scared. His friends are always afraid that a dead body will come to life, so Chace likes to grab his friends’ necks so they feel like the dead body was reaching for them. Then, they get scared and run away. It thrills Chace’s friends every time, although Chace says it’s all starting to feel a little routine. The kids’ parents would punish Chace if they knew what he was up to.

Before Matt comes over, he calls Chace and asks if any new dead bodies have arrived at the mortuary. Chace promises him that, if there’s no dead body to see, they can still look at the coffins. Kelly tells Chace that, for about the last month, she’s been having some premonitions that something bad is going to happen, but she’s not sure what it is. Her premonitions start getting worse when a sudden storm comes in.

At first, Matt’s visit seems pretty normal. The kids eat the pizza (which the pizza delivery guy just flung at the door because even pizza delivery guys are afraid of the mortuary), and the boys start playing video games. Then, Kelly hears that their mother’s grandfather clock chimes the wrong number downstairs. The clock is an antique, and it does that sometimes. Chace doesn’t want to go downstairs and fix the clock because he’s playing a game. Kelly is nervous about going downstairs because the mortuary gives her the creeps, but she doesn’t want to admit that she’s nervous in front of Matt, so she goes to fix the clock anyway. While she’s fixing the clock, she gets the odd feeling that there’s a dead body in the building even though Chace had told her that they didn’t have any “customers” that day. When she takes a look in the chapel, she sees that her parents have left a red light on by the door to the embalming room, which is the signal that there’s a body there.

When Kelly goes back upstairs, she asks Chace why he said that there was no body when there is. Chace says that the light was off earlier, and the three kids go downstairs to check. The light is definitely on, and Chace says that he must have made a mistake before. He’s surprised because their dad usually tells them when a body has arrived, and he didn’t this time. Matt asks them what their parents do with the bodies, and the kids describe the process of preparing a body for burial. Matt asks if he can see the body because he’s never seen one before. Kelly says that the boys shouldn’t go in there because it’s against the law for anyone but a licensed mortician to be in there, and also the body might be in a really bad condition if it’s been in an accident. Matt thinks that just makes it sound even more cool. Chace hesitates because, while he doesn’t usually mind giving his friends secret tours, he’s starting to get an odd feeling from the situation. Things aren’t like they usually are, and he’s starting to share Kelly’s premonition.

However, Matt insists that he wants to see the see the body, so Chace says that they’ll just take a quick look. Kelly goes upstairs and locks herself in her room, and the boys go in the embalming room. Although Kelly tells most of the story, she says that Chace told her later what they saw. There is a body on one of the tables in the embalming room, covered by a sheet. The feet sticking out from the sheet have ugly yellow toenails, and the toe tag says “J. L. Torbett.” Matt asks if he can see the face of the body. Both of the boys are nervous about moving the sheet because Chace still has an odd feeling, but Chace finally pulls back the sheet. J. L. Torbett turns out to be an old man with white hair, who is oddly wearing an orange jumpsuit. Chace’s odd feeling grows when he realizes that his father hasn’t even started to work on this body. He usually starts prepping bodies immediately upon arrival. Then, the body moans. At first, Chace tells Matt not to panic because it’s probably just air escaping from the body, and that happens with dead people. (That’s true. It is probably one of the factors of human decomposition that led to stories of vampires and other undead creatures. But, this is a scary story.) Then, the body sits up on the table, and Matt screams and runs. Chace hesitates for a moment, thinking that it might just be an odd nerve impulse that caused the body to sit up, but then, its head turns toward Chace, it opens its yellow eyes to look at him, and it starts reaching for him. Chace faints.

When Matt and Kelly come to find Chace, they find him on the floor of the embalming room, disoriented, and the old guy in the jumpsuit is standing in the middle of the room, swaying like he’s trying to get his balance. Kelly demands that the guy tell them who he is and what he’s doing in there. The boys tell her that he’s the corpse, but she says that’s impossible because he’s up and walking. The kids are terrified, but the man prevents them from leaving. The kids tell him that he’s in a mortuary and he’s supposed to be dead. The man is confused because he just remembers going to sleep in his cell and waking up there. The kids realize that he must be a criminal, but the man insists that he’s not. He asks the kids what day it is, and they say that it’s Friday, November 13. (Yep, Friday the 13th!)

That date excites Torbett. He says that he has spent 50 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, and the day has come to take his revenge by killing the people who sent him there. Of the twelve jurors, one is still alive, and so is the judge and a key witness. The kids realize that Torbett is talking about murdering three people. They also realize that, when he smashes some bottles in his agitation, he cuts his hand … and it doesn’t bleed. The kids try to run away, and Torbett grabs Kelly. Kelly realizes that his skin is cold and his eyes are lifeless. Torbett really is a walking dead man, brought back to life by his intense need for revenge. The kids struggle with Torbett, and Torbett runs out of the room, looking the children inside.

However, the embalming room has a telephone. Kelly remembers that her friend, Gretchen, is babysitting at the house where the old judge lives, and she wants to call her and warn her, but Matt says that they need the police and calls 911. Unfortunately, when the kids try to explain what the problem is, the operator doesn’t believe them and thinks its a prank. Kelly gets angry with the 911 operator, hangs up, and calls Gretchen, but the phone line at the house is busy. Matt says that, weirdly, the embalming room is probably the safest place for them to be because it’s the last place Torbett will want to return to, but that doesn’t help much. Torbett is still out to kill people, and if and when he does come back, the kids are trapped. What are they going to do?

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

My Reaction

I’ve been looking for this book for awhile because I remember reading it when I was a kid in elementary school. Actually, that kind of amazes me now because I’ve always been easily spooked, and I’m still kind of surprised that I read this and remembered liking it. I was also easily grossed out as a kid, and I still am, so, while I think that it’s really interesting that the author included some real details about the morticians’ professions, I have to admit that I still find it gross. There are reasons why I got a ‘C’ in health class in high school and declared myself to be a conscientious objector about dissection and did reports instead. I’m very squeamish.

Feeling the way I do about these things, I can’t remember why I decided to read this book when I was a kid, but I know why I finished it. The book is well-written, and once you become involved with the characters’ situation, it’s compelling to keep reading and find out what happens. Actually, the only parts of the story that I remembered before I re-read it where the very beginning and the very end.

The kids manage to break out of the embalming room and try to help the people that Torbett said that he would go after. They already know that it’s too late for one of Torbett’s victims because Kelly was talking to her on the phone and trying to convince her of the danger when Torbett broke in, but they know who and where the other two possible victims are, and they decide to try to reach them before Torbett does.

Part of the story that I had forgotten is that Matt comes from a bad neighborhood. One of the people Torbett is trying to kill also lives in that neighborhood, and when they go there, Kelly says that the neighborhood gives her the creeps. Then, she realizes that she might have offended Matt in the same way people have offended her for making fun of the place where she lives, and she apologizes to him. Matt says it’s okay, and he understands because it’s not a safe neighborhood. I liked that part of the story because I thought that it was an interesting comparison. There are different reasons why someone might have to live in a place that people consider undesirable (lack of money in Matt’s case, and their parents’ profession, in Kelly and Chace’s case), and it’s not always a reflection on the person so much as their circumstances.

In case you’re wondering if maybe Torbett is actually alive and was faking that he’d been dead, no, he actually is a risen corpse. At one point, he gets shot, and the hole is big enough for the kids to look right through it, and it doesn’t stop him. Torbett also isn’t lying about not being guilty of the murder he was sentenced for. Along the way, the kids learn who the real murderer was, and it’s one of Torbett’s victims.

The story has a kind of open ending. Just after the kids think that they’ve finally dealt with Torbett by cremating him, their parents come home from their dinner, saying that they had to leave early to pick up a body … at the state prison. It’s Torbett, and as the book ends, they see his head move under the sheet.