September ScaredyKIT: Ghosts & Hauntings

October's theme is Ghosts & Hauntings.

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.”

Some Suggestions:
- The Winter People / Jennifer McMahon
- The Woman in Black / Susan Hill
- The Haunting of Hill House / Shirley Jackson
- The Little Stranger / Sarah Water
- Delia's Shadow / Jamie Lee Moyer
- A Christmas Carol / Charles Dickens
- Heart-Shaped Box / Joe Hill
- Locke & Key, Vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft / Joe Hill
- Ghost Story / Peter Straub
- This House is Haunted / John Boyne
- The Shining / Stephen King
- Joyland / Stephen King
- The Amityville Horror / Jay Anson
- A Stir of Echoes / Richard Matheson
- The Graveyard Book / Neil Gaiman
- The Mystery of Grace / Charles de Lint
- The Night Strangers / Chris Bohjalian

Don't forget to add what you've read to the wiki:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2019_ScaredyKIT#September:_-_Ghosts_.26_...:

Some possibilities for me:
- A Barricade in Hell / Jamie Lee Moyer
- What the Night Knows / Dean Koontz
- The Lace Reader / Brunonia Barry

I have a few others on my tbr tagged "ghosts" or "hauntings", but I decided to choose from those that are also tagged "horror" for the ScaredyKIT this month.

I've got Volume 1 of Tales from the Haunted Mansion lined up.

I am tentatively planning to read Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo in translation from Japanese.

Thanks for getting the thread up, Cindy. I am going to read The Thread that Binds the Bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman and if time permits, I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurdardottir.

I'll be actually playing along this month by reading the Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James.

I'm going to start out with a book that has been on my ereader for sometime: In Ghostly Japan.

I have to host Ghost Story for f2f in Oct. Maybe I will read it in September.

I don't think I've got anything that fits this category except Ghost Ship by Neil Plakcy, but I think the only ghost is in the title.

I finished In Ghostly Japan by Lafcadio Hearn. It wasn't all about ghosts; although there were a few good ghost stories. It also contained myths, the incense ceremony and lots about Buddhism. 109 pages 2 1/2 stars

Read The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud, first book in series. YA. Team of 3 teens who hunt ghosts. Certainly not that scary but has a bit of blood and spiders. Everything you ever could want to know about ghosts as the book has a complete Index of ghost and ghost terms.

I'm going for The Turn of the Screw, which is also a 1001 book and a classic I want to read, and so fits the TBRCAT as well.

>11 Kristelh: Ooooh, that sounds kind of fun!

I am reading Haunted Oklahoma City. Close enough to visit some if they are intriguing.

I've finished Tales from The Haunted Mansion. Four middle schoolers enter the abandoned mansion to tell each other scary stories, but they're met with the mansion's librarian, who tells them the scariest stories of all.

Finished The Turn of the Screw, which is about a governess who sees ghosts and is very worried about her two young orphaned charges.

I have October and will be posting it soon. Just got back from a short vaca celebrating my partial retirement. Stay tuned.

October thread is posted; https://www.librarything.com/topic/311257

What the Night Knows / Dean Koontz. 4.5 stars
4.5 stars

When John was a kid, his entire family was murdered. He killed the murderer. His family was the last of four families to be murdered at the time. John is now married with kids of his own and is a cop. 20 years later and another family is murdered, seemingly by the 14-year old son. But there are too many similarities to the first of the four family murders 20 years earlier for there to be a coincidence…

I really liked this. It drew me in immediately. It did slow down in the middle (but in part, I also think that’s because I had shorter amounts of time that I could sit and read; I would have liked to sit for longer periods of time for this book), and it picked up again at the end. It is horror, it is violent. I found many parts of it, especially at the start, very creepy (which I love, but wasn’t great to be reading right before bed, which I mostly was for this one!). Definitely creepy...

I read The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson. I was drawn to this book by its cover. It is a quiet coming-of-age story set during one summer in a small town on Niagara Falls in Canada, and the writing has an episodic feel to it, which is not my favorite style. However, the writing is quite good, and there are some lovely insights into the nature of memory and the stories we tell. Jake's weird Uncle C draws Jake and his new friend, Billy Yellowbird, into a "Saturday night ghost club" where he takes them to sites of tragedies around the town and tells a ghost story at each one. Whether there are actual ghosts depends on the reader's personal beliefs. The whole novel also functions as an old-fashioned "ghost story" in that things are not as they seem and there is an unexpected twist at the end. However, this story is less about ghosts and more about boyhood, nostalgia, and family. I liked it well enough but found it difficult to get caught up in the story, as I have read this type of thing many times before, so for me this was a mixed bag.

I have completed my read of I Remember You by Yrsa Sigdardottir and I heartily recommend this ghost story. It's dark, creepy and atmospheric and gave me the chills.

I completed Ghost Story by Peter Staub. I don't know if these are really ghosts but they certainly are ghost stories in the sense that they are scary. I am going to reread it. I think it fits for October even better than now. The book starts out (after prologue) in early October.