Tag: ghosts

Rooms by Lauren Oliver

Rooms by Lauren Oliver

The patriarch of a family has recently died. The home he leaves behind is haunted and his family comes to divide up the remains of his earthly possessions.

Secrets are about to be revealed that concern both the living and the dead.

Rooms is part-mystery and part-family drama. My favorite characters were the ghosts and their interactions with each other.

“We expand into all five bedrooms. We hover in the light coming through the windows, with the dust; we spin, dizzy in the silence. We slide across empty dining room chairs, skate across the well-polished table, rub ourselves against the oriental carpets, curl up in the impressions of old footprints.” pg 12, ebook.

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Though they are stuck together in the same house, the two ghosts couldn’t be more different. It makes for some amusing dialogue.

“I’ve never been one to sugarcoat the truth, and at least I’ve still got a sense of humor, even if I’m all splinters and dust everywhere else. That’s another thing that drives me crazy about Alice: no sense of humor at all.” pg 34, ebook.

The living characters of this story have some serious problems.

There’s Minna, a nymphomaniac with a young daughter. Her brother, Trenton, a perpetually insecure teen with suicidal tendencies. And their mother, Caroline, an aging alcoholic.

To make matters worse, Trenton’s starting to hear disembodied voices in the house.

“In the quiet, Trenton heard it again. A voice. Not quite a voice, though. More like a shape: a solidity and pattern to the normal creakings and stirrings of the house. It was the way he’d felt as a kid listening to the wind through the trees, thinking he could make sense out of it.” pg 52, ebook.

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As if they didn’t have enough problems.

“That’s what a broken heart looks like,” she said, and stood up. “Like a haunting.” pg 64, ebook.

Strangely enough, I recently read another book with a ghost’s point of view. The Last To See Me by M. Dressler is about a ghost trying to stay alive and solve the mystery of her previous life, before the person hunting her could discover it and use it to destroy her.

I compared The Last To See Me to this book and, I confess, I liked Dressler’s book more. Dressler has fewer characters, but she gives those few more depth.

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I felt like Lauren Oliver, though she did develop her characters, struggled a bit to fit all of the different story lines together. I did like the ending of Rooms.

Recommended for readers who like their mystery with a touch of the paranormal. Age appropriate for mature teens and up because of the sexual content, hints of abuse and suicide themes.

Thanks for reading!

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3) by Jim Butcher

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3) by Jim Butcher
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Another satisfying entry in The Dresden Files. Harry Dresden is again saving the world from supernatural creatures so that we can all sleep soundly in our beds at night. He’s joined by a knight of the church, an intrepid reporter and his familiar, Bob.

There are vampires, fairies and ghosts, oh my! Plus some other magical creatures thrown in for good measure.

My one complaint is that my favorite character, Murphy, doesn’t figure as largely into this plot as she did in the last book. Here’s hoping that she has a larger role in the next.

Recommended for fans of urban fantasy, The Dresden Files is the tops. Also, if you can, listen to the audio books. James Marsters’ narration is near perfection.

Thanks for reading!

House of Spirits and Whispers: The True Story of a Haunted House by Annie Wilder

House of Spirits and Whispers: The True Story of a Haunted House by Annie Wilder
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Annie Wilder is a very sensitive person. Almost from the moment she moves into her house, strange things start to happen. More than just creaking doors, Annie experiences full blown apparitions, strange noises in her furnace pipes, and has out-of-body encounters with turn of the century woman in period clothing.

Far from being freaked out by it all, though she is at times, Annie learns how to live with the spirits and takes pride in her haunted house.

From a young age, Annie accepted her other worldly perceptions saying: “.. a strong intuitive ability runs in my family. My mom can see and hear spirits, and both her mother and mother’s mother, who were Irish, was psychic, too.” pg 3.

It seems to me that if you grow up with these sorts of things happening around you, it isn’t too hard to carry them on into your adult life.

Not that things go entirely smoothly. When Annie realizes that something completely out of the ordinary is going on in her new digs, she freaks out a little bit.: “I needed to regain some sense of perspective and power. A weird dichotomy was developing in my relationship with my house. I loved my house in the daytime but felt terrified and powerless in it at night.” pg 27

Ghosts are a large part of her experience, but not the whole enchilada. “The house seemed super conducive to astral activity; besides seeing and hearing spirits, I started seeing lights.” pg 53. Lest you think that Annie is having a break with reality, some of her relatives stay in the house and see the same thing when she’s not even there. I wonder if she’s ever considered running a bed and breakfast.

She also has a scientifically-minded boyfriend who has strange things happen to him too: “It also meant a lot to me that Rex, with his objective, left-brain way of perceiving the world, was seeing and hearing some of the same extraordinary things that I was, and couldn’t explain them with regular science. He brought up the bumblebee as an example of something that defies the known laws of physics. Because of the size and mass of their bodies compared to the size of their wings, bumblebees should not be able to fly. But they do.” pgs 99-100. I didn’t know that.

Recommended for people who are interested in paranormal experiences, ghosts, and other unexplained phenomena, Annie Wilder introduces you to her house of spirits and whispers and it never gets too out of hand or scary. Some further recommended reading: True Tales of Ghostly Encounters or Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah.

Thanks for reading!

The Paranormal Caught on Film: Amazing Photographs of Ghosts, Poltergeists and Other Strange Phenomena (Caught on Film) by Melvyn Willin

The Paranormal Caught on Film: Amazing Photographs of Ghosts, Poltergeists and Other Strange Phenomena (Caught on Film) by Melvyn Willin
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The Paranormal Caught on Film is descriptive of what this book is — a collection of photos claiming to show the paranormal.

The short blurbs accompanying the photos were intriguing, but for the most part the photos themselves appeared to be either fancy light reflections or film corruptions. I was disappointed.

Page 91 of The Paranormal Caught on Film captured my feelings about the book as a whole: “I am always one to advocate keeping an open mind, but on the other hand we should be careful not to remain so open-minded that our brains fall out!”

If forced to pick favorite photos, I’d go with ‘Yogic Flying’ on page 101, which, after some investigating into the phenomena, doesn’t seem much like flying to me- more like enthusiastic rocking, which the picture doesn’t show.

I’d also go with ‘The Grey Lady’ on pg 133 which is allegedly a ghost caught on film in the Reading Room of the Willard Library in Indiana. Again, the lady looks more like a light reflection, but since it took place in a library, it made my list.

I can’t really recommend this one other than to say: borrow it from your local library.

Thanks for reading!

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey
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Incredibly scary and a perfect read for the month of October, Colin Dickey examines ghosts, haunted buildings, and other urban legends throughout the United States. But, it’s not just about ghost stories, he also delves into the true histories of everything from cemeteries to asylums.

When I picked up Ghostland I thought: how creepy can the US be, it hasn’t been around all that long, comparatively speaking. And I found out: really, really creepy.

You don’t have to believe in ghosts to enjoy this book. Here’s what the author had to say in the intro: “Even if you don’t believe in the paranormal, ghost stories and legends of haunted places are a vital, dynamic means of confronting the past and those who have gone before us. Ultimately, this book is about the relationship between place and story: how the two depend on each other and how they bring each other alive.” loc 23, ebook.

I learned a lot of quirky, historical details about the United States. For example, did you know that Spiritualists were a huge part of the suffrage movement?: “Early suffrage meetings were heavily populated with mediums and trance speakers; in some places it was difficult to find suffragists who weren’t also Spiritualists. Spiritualism had given many of these women practice and confidence in speaking to groups with authority; by allowing others (the dead) to speak through them, American women began to speak for themselves in greater numbers. Spiritualism was only one of many factors and social movements that drove women’s suffrage, but it was a vital and important one.” loc 961-978, ebook.

One night, my ride home from work was late and I found myself alone in the library with all of the lights off and it was so spooky. I felt like I was being watched and jumped at every little creak in the stacks.

In this passage, Dickey explains why: “Few things are more unsettling than being somewhere emptied out, after everyone else has left. If you’ve ever worked a closing shift, or as a security guard, you know the way a place can change after the doors are locked and the lights are dimmed, when the lighting so carefully designed to spotlight the latest gadgets goes slack, when the mood lighting gets moodier. It’s as though you don’t belong there.” loc 1250, ebook

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The most disturbing moments, for me, were the true history portions of the narrative: “Early madhouses were often revealed to be nightmares of abuse and neglect. Reports of incontinent patients hosed down with icy water, naked women chained haphazardly to the walls, fleas and rats rampant, and other horrors gradually prompted a desire for something more sanitary and humane.”loc 2205, ebook. Eeeek. Is it any wonder that these places are haunted?

Dickey includes a poem by Goethe in his examination of the “ruins” of Detroit: “Goethe wrote in 1827: “America, you have it better Than our old continent, You have no ruined castles And no ancient basalt. Your inner life remains untroubled By useless memory And futile strife.” That was then. Now, almost two hundred years later, we’ve started to catch up to old Europe. We have plenty of ruined castles now, plenty of wasted strife to call our own.” loc 3217, ebook. I would have disagreed with that sentiment but then I readGhostland. Now, I know better.

Recommended for folks who are looking for a spooky, non-fiction read for Halloween or any other time that you’re looking for a good scare. Pick this one up with a hot drink and a warm blanket… you’re going to need it. Some read alikes: Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah by Colm A. Kelleher (one of the scariest books I’ve ever read) or Mysteries and Monsters of the Sea by Fate Magazine (similar to Ghostland but nautically themed).

Thank you to Viking Publishing and NetGalley for a digital copy of this book for review purposes!  And, thank you for reading.