Title & Author: What Feast at Night by T.Kingfisher Published by: Tor Publishing Group | Tor Nightfire Pub Date: Feb 13 2024 Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Horror | LGBTQIAP+ Pages: 160 Date Read: Aug 22 2024 Rating: ★★★☆☆
Thank you Netgalley, author, and the publishers for allowing me the opportunity to read this book early.
I am a huge fan of T.Kingfisher and request her books the second I see them on Netgalley. This woman can write and writes well, and generally her novellas are everything I want in a story. They’re short, but the story isn’t lacking (generally). This one though suffers from a lot of fillers that I found annoying. The constant use of (), repeating of information, and there was not enough horror. Though when we are given the scary bits, they are terrifying. Sadly, though, the ending was very anticlimactic and not really scary at all. It wasn’t tense, and fell flat.
I loved this exploration into folklore. I think that I had heard of moroi before, but really didn’t know much about them and wouldn’t have minded if there were some real life accounts thrown into the story to act as proof of what was happening.
Alex, Angus and Miss Potter are amazing characters and I hope T.Kingfisher writes more featuring them.
Title & Author: Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker Published by: Tor Publishing Group | Tordotcom Pub Date: Jan 28 2025 Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Sci Fi & Fantasy Pages: 192 Date Read: 2024/08/03 Rating: ★★★★☆
I had started to read this book after failing to read Cherie Priest’s “The Family Plot”. This book delivered in all the right ways for a ghost story. I’m a huge fan of the “cozy horror” genre and really just want more books like this, maybe with a little more scare, just a pinch more though.
Title & Author: Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne Published by: Tor Nightfire Pub Date: March 26 2024 Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Sci Fi & Fantasy Pages: 296 Date Read: 2024/08/16 Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
I skipped a few chapters and skimmed more, but I’m counting this book as read darn it because I had put so much time into reading it that I do not want the wasted effort. This book should have been considered finished by the 60% mark, that would have made it so, so much better. Don’t get me started on the ending. I had to read endless pages where Anna’s family just use her as a punching bag, why not remove some of that and flesh out the ending more? Oh man, I hated this book even though there were genuine parts that scared me.
Edited to add: Actually, I’m coming back to add that I’m so angry at this book, because it almost caused a reading slump.
Edited to add (again): jeez I probably should have thought this one out more. Anyways, I will say it is clear that Jennifer Marie Thorne can write. Up until the 60%ish mark I was hooked. Just got so dang boring.
Title & Author: At the Bottom of the Garden by Camilla Bruce Published by: Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine | Del Rey Pub Date: Jan 28 2025 Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Sci Fi & Fantasy Pages: 384 Date Read: 2024/07/13 Rating: ★★★★☆
Thank you Netgalley, publishers, and author for giving me the chance to read this wonderful book.
I liked this story a lot. There was a bit of a “Practical Magic” vibe happening, but only if the story remained when they were children. Oh, and if you like a complicated, awful woman. I’m a little amazed with the author making me able to feel bad for Clara, our antagonist. No where does she come off as sympathetic and yet, when I read her childhood, I got a glimpse of why someone might turn out like that.
There were only two things that I think take away from the story; the pacing (which slows down in the middle), and the sisters voices. I got their character chapters mixed up a lot, because it was a bit difficult at times to distinguish from which viewpoint I was reading, they just both sounded the same (even though the chapters were named after them, it was just difficult).
I’m a little embarrassed by this, but I always thought the saying was, “If you thought (this), you have another thing coming.” I learned thanks to this book that it’s “think”…”If you thought (this), you have another think coming.” And it really does make way more sense. SMH
When Ruby rents a fully furnished apartment, she doesn’t expect it to come with the ghost of the previous tenant too. When her neighbor across the hall winds up dead, and the police dismiss it as a mugging gone wrong rather than a murder, she and her deceased roommate decide to investigate.
I got this book through Netgalley and requested it primarily because of the cover and I wanted a mystery. It’s a decent mystery that was fun to read. I liked the main characters of Cordelia (my favorite), and Ruby. Ruby I thought at times was annoying, but I can’t explain why exactly. I think it was because she was so outgoing? Example, who in their right mind is gonna go to the murder victim’s work and interrogate his coworkers? What company would even allow this woman to walk on in and conduct an investigation in their break room. This is probably where I should say that this begins what I disliked about the book. Why in the world would all of Jake’s (the dead guy) coworkers answer this woman? She isn’t the police, she has no power or authority. There’s a bit later on when one of Jake’s girlfriends turns up at Cordelia’s and Ruby’s apartment to answer questions. What?! Why? Why would she do that. I can suspend my disbelief for ghosts, but I can not envision a world where a woman who seems to be so full of herself would travel to the apartment of some unknown woman to answer questions to help further along Ruby’s investigation. It doesn’t make sense.
Also, this book has me wondering if everybody in Boston is obsessed with beer and drinking? Because I would have thought that no, of course not, but this book has every character (besides Ruby) asking for a beer. I’m surprised the author didn’t write in the bus driver as drinking on the job.
I also liked some of the explanation on the ghost mechanics, like why ghosts don’t want to actually come in contact with a living person. That’s a great idea, make it painful for the ghost too. However, I did not care for the whole “if I believe it to be true, it suddenly is”. Need to make a whole garbage bag disappear, just will it to be so! Yet Cordelia struggles with floating, but can walk through the walls, and sink through the ground. I get that ghosts have magical abilities in a folklore sense, making things appear and disappear. I just thought explaining it away with simply thinking it’s true makes it true was a bit lazy. Furthermore, I would rather have not had it explained. Along with maybe a whole garbage bag disappearing. There has to be rules to this, right? If you can cover it with your ghostly hands it disappears, if you can’t wrap your whole body around an object it’s going to be visible. It’s just the way it is. I have read, watched, and listened to ghost stories, I’m a paranormal expert, 😛 Just kidding. I have no idea. But that’s just what I found annoying.
Overall, I enjoyed reading it. I liked the story line. I loved Cordelia’s character and look forward to reading the next one in this series.
Thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the review copy. All opinions are mine.
Title & Author: A New Lease on Death by Olivia Blacke
Published by: Minotaur Books
Pub Date: Oct 29 2024
Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
Pages: 336
Date Read: 2024/05/07
Rating:★★★☆☆
Tim Shelley / WCBU This architect’s concept drawing dates to 1895.
A little dive into the history of Peoria Public Library. Most of this comes from the book “Tomes of Terror“. I tried finding out more on the people themselves, but some of what is written in “Tomes of Terror” is just wrong and or I couldn’t find any information to support what was written. In those cases, I wrote out what I found and the source. Otherwise, take this story for what it is, a good legend.
Peoria Public Library doesn’t look like a place that is cursed, nor does it look to be haunted. Something that looks fairly modern, it’s hard to imagine a place so juxtaposed from one that is typically imagined when it is reported to have as many as thirteen ghosts in residence.
To start off our story, we go to the 1830s, when Andrew and Mary Stevenson Gray lived in a two-story home in Peoria, IL. Life was seemingly well for them until Mary’s brother died, and her nephew came to live with them. He brought with him grief and little else, for he tended to associate with criminals and be of no use as a drunkard. He spent a good deal of time in jail and accrued a lot of fines and fees for lawyers.
Eventually, the Gray’s were unable to pay the debts for their nephew and had used their mortgage as a means to pay their lawyer, David Davis (no wonder he turned out to be a crap lawyer with a name like that). And as this story goes on, Mr. Davis wanted his money and brought a lawsuit against them to foreclose on the mortgage.
Mary kicks her nephew out and when his body is found later floating in the Illinois River she curses the land with “thorns and thistles, ill luck, sickness and death to its every owner and occupant.” 1
The land gained a quick reputation for being haunted. Stories began that Mary’s nephew could be heard crying and begging at the front door. Caretaker’s for the property refused to work there. Because the public opinion was so against David Davis, he never actually lived there and the home abandoned. What a waste!
It’s unclear what or how Mary and Andrew spent the rest of their lives, however there is a legend that states that on the night the house caught fire, the local’s saw the ghost of Mary in the flames, dancing and laughing as the house burned.
Gov. Thomas Ford
The property then becomes the home of Gov. Thomas Ford, who was thought to already have been cursed prior to moving in.2 (Side note: dude went to Transylvania University… I’m being superficial here, but again, what a name.)3
Within quick succession he lost his wife to stomach cancer, then died a few weeks after. Mrs. Ford died of cancer of the stomach October 12th, 1850, aged 38 years; and the Governor, then removed to the residence of Mr. Andrew Gray, already in the last stages of consumption, breathed his last on Sunday, November the 3d of the same year… 4
According to “Tomes of Terror“, the property is then given to an ex-slave, Tom Lindsay. Lindsay had recently been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, and the son of his ex-master purchased a portion of the property and allowed him to live there.5 However, he wasn’t a slave and bought property himself, though I can find nothing on what property he bought.6
The book “Tomes of Terror“, makes claims that Tom had a lot of issues living there, had to rebuild the home, and employing superstitious methods to live on the land peacefully. But again… the beginning of this section got it all wrong, so maybe there is no truth to this.
Next up “Tomes of Terror” claims that many more property owners and their children died, but without any names I again couldn’t look it up, so I’ll just add it here, cause it makes for a spooky story.
However, in the decades following Lindsay’s departure, several more residents of the property suffered a series of eerie fates. The first was a local businessman whose wife died tragically within the first year of the couple obtaining ownership of the property. The next was a banker whose wife died shortly after giving birth to a baby boy; the child died soon after. That same banker remarried and he and his new wife also had a boy. That boy, who suffered a bizarre affliction wherein he avoided warmth, was often found sleeping in the cold front hallway of the home in the depths of winter. He too, died. His mother’s grief and despair was so deep that she was sent off to Minneapolis in an attempt to recover her sanity. The next resident of the cursed site was a boarding room housekeeper whose son plunged to his death from a hot-air balloon, and whose daughter drowned in the nearby river.
After the property was purchased to use as a library, Fred J. Soldan was appointed as head librarian. He was taken ill after a ride to Washington and returned with other members of the Peoria Bicycle Club in late October 1891 and died of pneumonia on November 5th at age 39.7
E.S. Willcox was appointed next and twenty years later on April 6, 1915, died after being struck by a car.8
Patterson Prowse died of a heart attack in the library, 1921.9
Lastly in curious sudden deaths is Dr. Edwin Wiley. It is said he died in 1925 from ingesting arsenic, though that seems to be another legend.
Welcome to the series of Haunted Libraries (and Bookshops) Around the World. In which I will highlight a library (or bookshop) and its stories of ghostly apparitions, and maybe suggest a book along with it.
Moravian Book Shop is currently located in Bethlehem, PA and boasts the title of being the oldest and possibly first bookstore opened in America. I’ll spare you most of the history, but to say that the bookstore itself has changed its location and name many times. So this little ghost tale probably doesn’t have anything to do with the original owners.
The staff have felt like they were being watched in the basement and just generally don’t like being there1, but more spectacular was when the ghost led the store manager back to the kitchens, where she had discovered the stove was still on.
Jane Clugston, who sells children’s books and has been with the store for almost 30 years, can corroborate. She told me that one night, while closing the store with a fellow employee, she saw a dark figure in a back hallway of the store, going into the kitchen. She and the coworker followed the figure back. Then, she says she realized the back kitchen stove was on, as well as the fan.
“I don’t know why this person, ghost, spirit drew us back there, but I guess to turn off those appliances,” says Clugston. “I’d never thought of it until I told someone else and they said a ghost led you back there. But in that back hallway a lot of people have said that they’ve felt things and they’ve seen things.” It’s like something out of a book.2
Besides then general sightings of thinking there may be patrons waiting is a story of how another manager saw a woman sprinting from one room to the other and had assumed that she was a shoplifter. He went to go investigate and discovered that he was the only person to have seen her.1
They decided to go camping near the lake instead of the woods, where the trees canopy wasn’t so thick overhead that you couldn’t see the stars. Though now that it was getting darker, she wished she hadn’t ignored the niggling fear that was now quickly building to dread.
She thought it had something to do with the water and how black the surface was. You wouldn’t be able to see your hand just below the surface.
The ghost stories they shared earlier around the campfire hadn’t helped her nerves either. Her imagination was turning every snap of a twig into some terrible being coming to get her.
She lay there in her sleeping bag, alone in her tent, unable to sleep. There were footsteps outside her tent shuffling past, then a splash in the water. She unzipped her tent, and although she didn’t know how to swim herself, thought she would sit on the dock and join whoever from her party was out in the water now. The moonlight was bright and in the water she could see her friend bobbing just above the surface. Then in the next moment it looked as if her friend were pulled under.
She waited a few heartbeats, wanting to see if her friend would resurface, and when she didn’t, started to cry for help. Their other friends, bleary-eyed, came running from their own tents, one tripping over their fire pit. She explained what happened, and they both went running into the water.
After several minutes, they pulled her friend onto the shore and began CPR. Her friend began to cough up water, and with a speediness surely not normal, stood up and started to walk away. She caught up to her and grabbed her arm.
“What are you doing? Come back, we will get the fire going.” Her friend, the one she had known since grade school, ignored her. As she watched her friend walk down the dark path towards the main road, she felt as if somehow that wasn’t actually her in there. She walked back to the water’s edge and in the moonlight she could have sworn she saw her friends face just below the surface.
There are stories all over the world of ghostly beings that drown those foolish enough to swim in their waters. The story above was inspired by the myth of the Shui Gui. The Shui Gui is a ghost from Chinese folklore. They are the result of a person drowning and will free themselves only when they drown another. The stories I read through vary on what happens. The victim takes the place of the Shui Gui, but the freed spirit either takes over the body or moves on.1
Another similar story is of a spirit that tries to drag it’s victims to the depths of the pond at House of the Binns, Linlithgow, West Lothian. Though I couldn’t really find any stories regarding these spirits, they were overshadowed by the General who lived there and his card games with the devil.2
Next we travel to Blackwater, Florida. There is a local legend of a woman who is deathly pale, and smells of rotten flesh. 3
By Tim Ross – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3075595
As part of the Blackwater River State Park, Blackwater River State Forest is a favorite outdoor recreation spot. But if you’re tubing, swimming, boating or fishing in the river, make sure to leave the water before the sun sets. Otherwise a woman in the water will drag you to the bottom with her. One of the least known ghosts in the area, the woman in the water, has been described as a deathly pale woman with long jet-black hair. The few people who managed to escape her clutches first smelled rotten flesh right before she re-surfaced and tried dragging them to their deaths. One account says that the ghost of Blackwater River isn’t limited to the river. Apparently, she grabbed a man’s ankle from within a puddle as he ran away from her. He was lucky. You may not be. So, stay safe at the Blackwater River State Forest.4
Uncovering Chinese Mythology: A Beginner’s Guide Into the World of Chinese Myths, Enchanting Tales, Folklore, Legendary Heroes, Gods, Divine Beings, and Mythical Creatures by Lucas Russo
Just then another knock, and the priest began to speak to the ghost, but was cut off when the artist yelled, for he had seen the ghost sitting in the fourth pew. He could see him clearly, and later, when the priest told him he imagined it, he would become angry, forgoing any further conversation and retiring to bed. The priest, though, would have his own experience later that night. The priest lay in bed. What really was that the artist saw? He wasn’t sure he exactly believed the artist, but he hadn’t meant to upset him either. As he was beginning to fall asleep, he heard three clear knocks close by in his room. They sounded odd—not quite something of this world. As with anything before in his life, he knew there was a dead man in his room. He began to pray. He prayed for the dead man, and as he did so, he began to feel the chill in the air and soon fell asleep. The next few nights passed in peace. The priest congratulated himself on freeing the ghost.
“I really think I scared the ghost.,” laughed the priest. The artist smiled and began to climb up the scaffold.
Knocks from one corner, then the other.
The artist felt cold and wanted to leave. He finished the paint he mixed and left. However, the priest grabbed hold of his arm.
“Let’s face it.”
The artist freed himself and looked to see the ghostly form of a man, all in black, glide down the aisle toward the sanctuary light.
“Father! Do you see him? There! There! He’s just blown out the sanctuary light.”
The priest went to investigate, while the artist left.
The following weeks passed with a familiar rhythm. The artist and the priest would work, and as soon as the chill became present, the artist would pack up and leave.
On the nights that the priest did not join, the artist would make newspaper blinders and do his best to ignore the ghost, even when the ghost began to burn candles.
This story is quite incredible and is written in detail by Louis Adamic in his article for Harper’s. The artist’s name is Maxo Vanko, and the priest who was the Father of the Croatian Catholic Church of St. Nicholas is Father Zagar.
The author wrote that he believed his friend and wrote the article before other publications picked it up.
What I find amusing is that in his book “Real Hauntings: America’s True Ghost Stories,” Hans Holzer apparently speaks to the priest and is still upset at having never seen the ghost for himself. “Father X. paused. I was impressed by his well-told story, and I knew at once why Father H. wanted no part of us. How could he ever admit having been in the presence of a spirit without having seen it? Impossible.”
It is cold and rainy inside the church. Every once in a while a large truck, or is it from the train men joining the cars together that is causing the church to shake? How late is it anyway, the man doesn’t know. Ever since he started working on the murals, he’s stopped taking his watch with him so as not to be tempted or tricked into thinking he’s tired.
The man has been painting on top of a creaking scaffold now for four days. He is painting the Madonna, a difficult endeavor for him. He really was feeling tired and cold, but he wasn’t ready to quit yet, after all, he was on a short deadline.
He’s sees movement below him. Must be the priest, he reasoned. Why is he gesturing like that? Waving his arms around in that manner? The artist is annoyed, didn’t he ask the priest not to enter the church during this time? Well, he is probably practicing for his sermon. The artist chooses to ignore him, besides what right does he have to keep the priest out of his own church. It is laughable, really. Why too is the priest not saying anything? The artist reasons he really isn’t trying to distract him. “To the devil with him!” He really must work on this and does his best to ignore him.
That night the man returns to the parish house where he is staying with the priest. The dogs go mad, barking and pawing him. The priest makes no mention of having been in the church during their normal cake and coffee, and the artist doesn’t ask, he only wants to get to bed.
The next few days pass by with little incident. He works as much as he can and when he is at his most exhausted he joins the priest for their meal in the early hours of the morning. On the eighth night he is back on the scaffold, mixing paint, he happens to look down and see the priest again waving about. He feels strange. He can hear the priest mumbling and assumes the pries is prating. The artist does his best to ignore him, and again feels vexed at the intrusion. Still though, the cold, the weirdness, he decides it’s enough for tonight, and he will finish with the last of the paint he mixed, and retire early.
The dogs are barking and excited again, and he is surprised that with all the commotion to find the priest asleep on the couch.
“You must be sleep walker, ‘ he says to the priest when he wakes up a few moments later.
The priest laughs, says no, then asks the artist to explain himself. And so the artist does, recounting seeing the priest on two nights come in and wave about. His assumptions…
After the artist is done, the priest takes a moment and then explains that there have been stories of a ghost, though he himself has never encountered it. He goes on to tell the artist how worried he had been for him, high up on the scaffolding, and has been keeping guard outside, in case the artist sees the ghost and injures himself from fleeing.
From that night on the priest joins the artist, and it is on that first night that he issues a challenge to the ghost. “Come on, ghost, show yourself and see if the gospodine profesor and I are afraid of you.”
The artist laughed and began to work, when from the back of the church came a tapping or knocking sound. The artist felt a chill then asks “Hear that, father?” “What?” “That strange knock back there?” “Yes; but wasn’t it a creak in the scaffolding??” “I don’t know, I don’t think so?”
Note: I will continue this story next week, there you will be able to find my references.
This week I focused on why we see ghosts in our dreams and if it is just the subconscious or if like some believe, they really do appear.
So far in my very limited research, it’s thought that when you dream of a ghost it represents unresolved issues, or the manifestation of your grief.1 But what about all of the anecdotal stories where the dead communicate something important, urgent even, that a dream couldn’t predict?
Let’s ignore the completely reasonable possibilities that it’s the subconscious mind working over something and using the symbolism of a ghost. Or that the brain is acting out a play in which the dreamer accomplishes something by speaking with someone who has passed on. Instead, this is going to be focused on the stories that aren’t so easily explained. Starting with the common stories shared by people all throughout the world who have dreams of someone who was alive at the time they went to bed, dream of them saying goodbye, and awake to find out that the person has indeed died. These stories are adapted from various books and sources linked in references.
Mr. Hans Holzer pulled up outside an impeccably clean church. There was nothing at all about it to suggest a haunting, and yet that was why he was here. For the purpose of this week’s story though, I am not focused on why he is there, but instead one of the priests he meets. After being told by the oldest Father that he wasn’t going to speak on the subject of it’s resident ghost, Mr. Holzer has a conversation with the assistant priest that tells him a curious story of when he was studying theology in Croatia.
While there he made a friend, who like him, believed in the existence of ghosts, even when their peers scoffed at the idea. The friends made a pact that the first to die should come back and give a sign to the other. Not to long after the priest knew his friend had died after seeing him sit in a chair smiling and waving to him whilst he was asleep. He later learned that his friend had died in an accident at around the same time as his dream. (Holzer The Restless Ghost of the Parish Priest)2
This next story is about a woman who states she was having money problems at the time of her grandmother’s death. She began to dream of her grandmother repeatedly telling her that if she needed money to go look under her mattress. The woman ignored the dreams, but they persisted. So finally decided to see what she would find, she goes and looks under the mattress and finds $1,500 in Mexican Pesos.3
I am a huge fan of Nuke’s Top 5 and there is a clip where a woman who had recently lost her husband was in a sleep clinic being monitored for her breathing issues. As she is sleeping, her sleep apnea starts and in the clip you can see a pale hand reach out and nudge her.4 (go to about the time mark 1:00:00). I know this isn’t about dreaming, but I liked the story too much not to share.
