October ScaredyKIT: Ghost Stories

October ScaredyKIT: Ghost Stories



Ghost story (from wikipedia):
“A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. The "ghost" may appear of its own accord or be summoned by magic. Linked to the ghost is the idea of "hauntings", where a supernatural entity is tied to a place, object or person. Ghost stories are commonly examples of ghostlore.

Colloquially, the term "ghost story" can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has been developed as a short story format, within genre fiction. It is a form of supernatural fiction and specifically of weird fiction, and is often a horror story.

While ghost stories are often explicitly meant to be scary, they have been written to serve all sorts of purposes, from comedy to morality tales. Ghosts often appear in the narrative as sentinels or prophets of things to come. Belief in ghosts is found in all cultures around the world, and thus ghost stories may be passed down orally or in written form.”

Suggestions:
I’m listing ones that I have tagged either “ghosts”, “ghost stories” or “haunted houses”. I’ve also tried (mostly) to stick with horror or possibly scary ones for ScaredyKIT. There are lighter romantic ghost stories, as well.

These are ones that made my favourites the years I read them:
The Winter People / Jennifer McMahon
Joyland / Stephen King
This House is Haunted / John Boyne
The Night Strangers / Chris Bohjalian

Additional options:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow / Washington Irving
The Little Stranger / Sarah Waters
A Stir of Echoes / Richard Matheson
The Haunting of Hill House / Shirley Jackson
Locke & Key. Vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft / Joe Hill (graphic novel)
Heart Shaped Box / Joe Hill
The Woman in Black / Susan Hill
The Amityville Horror / Jay Anson

And don't forget to update the wiki:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2018_ScaredyKIT#October:_Ghost_Stories

Happy Halloween!!!

I have a couple of options for this. The Stephen King has a long hold list, though, so it's unlikely to actually come in for me in October, so I'll probably go with the other:

Sleeping Beauties / Stephen King
Delia's Shadow / Jamie Lee Moyer

One of my favorite police procedural authors, Peter James, has written a ghost story called The House on Cold Hill and I am going to reading that this month.

My plan is to read The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson.

It's my favorite time of year! I have read a lot of ghost stories already this year because I love them--in fact, I'm reading one now, Grief Cottage by Gail Godwin, but will probably be done with that by October. Still, I have a large pile of them to choose from.

I want to recommend The Silent Companions, which I read last month and thought was really something different for a ghost story. It's also historical, so it would fit the SFFKit next month as well.

I have The Wicked by James Newman, which seems to be about a haunted town. I have have several scary short story collections which will have ghost stories. You've listed some really good options in >1 LibraryCin:. The Haunting of Hill House, The Woman in Black and Heart Shaped Box are all scary, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a favorite of mine.

I'm planning on Ghost by Piers Anthony, which I've always meant to get around to, and never quite have.

That said, The Haunting of Hill House is one of my favorite books of all-time, and all of these mentions of it may have me re-reading it also...

I will try and get to Eight Ghosts a book of 8 shorter stories, each inspired by a property in the care of English Heritage. This isn't my thing, but it looked far too nice to not get.

I'm planning to read Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire

I finished Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories edited by Audrey Niffenegger. I thought it was a nicely varied collection.

Finished Eight Ghosts. Not my thing, really. A variety of styles of story and writing. I enjoyed the brief history of the ghost story and a seleciton of the English Heritage sites that are reported to be haunted.

Evermore / Alyson Noel
4 stars

16-year old Ever is in a car crash with her family and their dog; she is the only survivor. She has since gone to live with her aunt in California. She can also suddenly see people’s auras and hear people’s thoughts. Not a fun situation. Though she used to be popular and beautiful, she now hides behind a hoodie and plays loud music to drown everything else out; she’s a freak. When a gorgeous guy starts school, she cannot figure out if or why he might be interested in her.

I really liked this. There were shades of Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse, each for various reasons. I liked both the storyline with Damon, the boy at school, and the one with her ghost sister, Riley.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow / Washington Irving
Reread on audio this time:
3.75 stars

I’ve read the story a couple of times before, but when I saw someone else post a review for the audio, I thought this would be a good time of year to listen to the audio if my library had one available. Lucky for me, it did! Not only that, the one I borrowed was read by Anthony Heald (Giles from Buffy!). I really enjoyed his narration of the story. I feel like I even caught a few things that I might have missed in reading it. It still has a lot of description and you really do need to pay attention, but I did well with this audio. I think my older reviews kept the story at “good” 3.5 stars, but I’m giving the audio an extra .25 stars.

I changed my plan as I don't own The Haunting of Hill House. I am reading The Mysteries of Udolpho, Gothic romance with specters.

I finished Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott. While the story does have a ghost angle to it, it is more of a historical mystery kind of story. Great for readers who love a Cambridge setting or are fascinated with Issac Newton, but overall just an average read.

Apologies that I forgot to post here earlier, but the November ScaredyKit is up :) https://www.librarything.com/topic/297559

I finished The woman in black and found it very well written. The description of the marshes was especially atmospheric.

Finished Ghost… a strange, hard sci-fi, paranormal ghost story with quite a bit of philosophy and metaphysics thrown in. Full review written. This may well end up being my strangest read of the year.

I finished The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. A lot of gothic but not to horrible to tolerate but the romance is the bigger element. Way too long and convoluted. I listened to recording by Karen Cass and her skill with voices was awesome.

None of the books I wanted to read this month were available at my library, so I went with one of the suggestions from post 1, The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian. I'm not quite half way through yet, but am really enjoying this so far. I also finished a quick short story which was one of the new Audible Originals that they are giving away to members, Lullaby by Jonathan Maberry, about a couple with a new baby in a haunted house.

Read two this month (unintentionally). Joyland was my intentional read, and enjoyed it very much. Daughters of the Lake was unintentional - got it through Amazon's Early Readers program - and it was also a good read. Very ghosty.

I've been stumbling on ghost stories this month by accident. Portrait of Jennie was a very mystical romantic ghost story, Sing, Unburied, Sing had ghosts to move the narrative along, and River of Stars also had ghostly appearances. I am currently reading The Green Man which is actually a ghost story and I still have my planned reads of Into the Grey and The House on Cold Hill yet to read.

>19 Kristelh: well done - I'm somewhere in Volume 3 now. Not the easiest read, Emily not exactly my cup of tea...

I've been reading The Wicked. From the back cover, I thought it was about a town haunted by ghosts, but it seems that isn't the case. There are alien-like insects and I think it will turn into a demonic possession deal. Normally not a problem, and maybe a handful of ghosts will be thrown into the mix. Fingers crossed.

I read one of the free audio Sync books (2018) Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama. This was full of ghosts and horror. The story was engaging. Mermaids, sea monsters, and ghosts.

I read Cast a Cold Eye by Alan Ryan: This was a moody, atmospheric ghost story, not so much scary as it was melancholy. An Irish-American writer travels to a small village on the Irish coast to research for several months, but he starts seeing apparitions and begins to suspect the villagers know more than they are letting on about them. I liked how Ryan wove Irish history and culture into his story and the technique of ghost stories told inside the story by the local priest, or seanachie.

I finished The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian. It started off promising, but then ended up going in a different direction than I was hoping. It ended up being more of a story about witches than ghosts.

I finished Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire. Highly recommended! Cool protagonist, spooky atmosphere.

I have completed both Into the Grey by Celine Kiernan and The House on Cold Hill by Peter James, both very fairly good ghost stories but I would give a bigger nod to Into the Grey.

I forgot to report in that I finished a second ghost story for this KIT: The Servants by Michael Marshall Smith. Ghosty but not super creepy (no spine-tingling thrills) but fabulous Brighton setting that may appeal to readers who enjoy stories with an old home feel about it.

>28 lavaturtle: I've read a lot of McGuire's other works, but none in this series. I'm glad to hear that it's highly recommended!

I finished The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which I absolutely loved. I'm also working through The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft, which contains a good number of stories featuring ghosts or at least suggestions of ghostly activity.

Has the November thread been set up?

>32 mstrust: It has, Jennifer :) - http://www.librarything.com/topic/297559

Thanks so much, Judy, I totally missed that!

Well, I know why I missed that November thread. Both the link and when I searched for the thread in the group come up with a message that tells me I must join LT in order to post. That one particular thread is not recognizing me as a member. I've never had that happen before.

>35 mstrust: Weird! You might want to post over in the "Bug Collectors" group and hopefully someone from LT will be able to figure out what's going on.
http://www.librarything.com/groups/bugcollectors

Thanks! I posted on Bug Collectors.