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Category Archives: Ghost stories

Forbidden by Eve Bunting

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by truebooktalks in Ghost stories, Historical Fiction, Young Adult

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Fiction, movie material, teen readers

forbiddenBunting has told us a chilling tale based on events that really happened off the coasts of northwestern Scotland. In the story, Josie Ferguson goes to live with her father’s brother and his wife in an isolated village that people from other towns have little to do with.  Her relatives are emotionally cold to her, but they have accepted the responsibility to care for her until she reaches eighteen – not out of any sort of love, but because they will get money for doing so.

A young man named Eli shows up at her uncle’s home and she is drawn to him because he has a way of dealing with the family’s dog – a dog that had bitten her when she tried to go outside one night. Eli takes her to his aunt’s home to get the bite treated before it can get infected.  His aunt, rather cryptically, tells her that she cannot get emotionally involved with Eli because he is a “reporter” and is “forbidden.”

She manages to isolate the dog one day when her aunt and uncle are out on their fishing boat and goes into town to see if she can find at least one sympathetic ear.  She finds that the townspeople are as strange as her aunt and uncle, and that they have  some sort of secret which ties them together.

The entire town engages in “wrecking,” the practice of stripping wrecked ships of all saleable items that can be saved from ships that have been wrecked on the rocks of the firth.  Technically nothing can be salvaged as long as an animal or a man from the wreck was still alive.   That did not stop the “wreckers;” they just made sure that no one was breathing.

Josie finds out that her uncle and aunt are tied into the wreckers, and they actually lead ship to their destruction, but with Eli’s help, she manages to escape their grasp before she must take part in “wrecking.”

This is a fantastic ghost story, one of the best I have read lately.  The setting reminds me of Wuthering Heights, but the plot is different.  I think teen readers will greatly enjoy this tale.

 

 

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Notes From Ghost Town by Kate Ellison

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by truebooktalks in Ghost stories, Mystery and Suspense

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Fiction, ghost stories, mystery, teen readers

ghost town     I like ghost stories if they are somewhat believable.   Ghosts who can kill or otherwise hurt people are just plain ridiculous to me.  This one is a great read. All the way through it I kept thinking, “Maybe Olivia is really just hallucinating and imagining things.”  This tension of reality and impossibility makes for a great tale.

Ellison has given us this enjoyable story: How can Olivia, a girl whose mother is in jail for killing a boy, even begin to believe that her mother didn’t do it since the police found her with the body and covered in his blood?  Maybe Stern, the ghost of the boy who was killed, will be able to make her see that her mother is innocent.  But, since her mother already had mental problems, that may be a little unlikely, especially since Olivia thinks she is now losing her mind.  Seeing a ghost is not Olivia’s only problem. She had just begun art school when the murder happened, and she returned home – not just to comfort her father and be comforted by him, but also because she could no longer see colors. The inability to see colors is not something an artist can handle very well.  If she tells anyone about this, she is convinced they will think she is also losing her mind.  Once Stern convinces her that her mother is really innocent, she must prove that to the police and keep her visual problem a secret– not an easy task.

I recommend this for any middle school or high school student.  Readers of mysteries will enjoy it, and readers of the paranormal will also relish the tale.  Parents need not worry about sex, drugs or bad behavior.

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