haunted houses

"This book examines the history of haunted house stories, possible explanations, and the place of haunted houses in pop culture today"--Provided by publisher.

Josephine lives next door to a haunted house. She began to suspect something was wrong with the old gothic building when its family fled in the middle of the night, the children screaming, the mother crying. They never came back. No family stays at Marwick House long. Animals avoid the place. Once, Josephine swore she saw a woman's silhouette pacing through the upstairs room, but that's impossible. No one had been there in a long, long time. But now Marwick House is waking up, and if Josephine isn't careful, she may be its next victim.

Remy is a tour guide for the notoriously haunted Carrow House. The old place is a haunt for the superstitious, but Remy hasn't seen any proof of the paranormal yet. So when she's asked to host guests for a week-long stay in order to research Carrow's phenomena, she hopes to finally experience some of the sightings that made the house famous.

Sophie and Joseph Argenton have survived the impossible; for now. Desperate, they travel to meet an ally at Kensington, a long-abandoned mansion that overlooks a dead town. The house offers a small hope: its original owner had dedicated her life to researching the monster that possesses Elise. Here they hope to find a way to kill the creature without harming their young friend. But Kensington is a dangerous building. Once the carriage leaves, they're trapped inside the collapsing walls and forced to confront the horrors within. Shrouded figures stalk them. Whispers echo through the night. Unmarked graves dot the property. And the dead are not as restful as they seem.

Everyone knows about Ashburn House. They whisper its old owner went mad, and that restless ghosts still roam the halls. But when Adrienne inherits the crumbling old mansion, she only sees it as a lifeline; until night falls. As she uncovers more of the house's secrets, Adrienne begins to believe the whispered rumors may be horrifyingly true. Chasing the threads of a decades-old mystery, Adrienne realizes she's become the prey to something deeply unnatural and intensely resentful. She has no idea how to escape. Only one thing is certain: Ashburn's dead are not at rest.

When Guy finds the deed to a house in his mother's attic, it seems like an incredible stroke of luck. Sure, the building hasn't been inhabited in forty years, but Guy is convinced he can clean it up and sell it. He'd be crazy to turn down free money, right? The house is hours from any other habitation, but he can't escape the feeling that he's being watched. Still, he decides to camp in the crumbling mansion while he does repairs. Surely nothing too bad can happen in the space of a week. But there's a reason no one lives in Rookward House, and the dilapidated rooms aren't as empty as they seem.

Elle is thrilled to spend a month minding the beautiful Gillespie property. Over an hour's drive from town, the aging mansion is ideal for someone seeking solitude. But things start to go very wrong, very quickly. Elle soon discovers a crumbling graveyard nestled in the woods. It contains a generation of the house's residents, all who died the same year. As Elle investigates further, she begins to unravel the property's dark history. At its center is Jonathan Gillespie, a tyrannical cult leader and the house's original owner. And as Elle soon learns, just because he's dead, doesn't mean he's gone.

As the daughter of spiritualists, Mara's childhood was filled with s?ances and scam mediums. Now she's ready to start over with her fianc?, Neil, far away from the superstitions she's learned to loathe, but her past isn't willing to let her go so easily. And neither is Blackwood House.

When their mother is hospitalized, Tara and Kyle are sent to stay with their only remaining relatives. Their grandparents seem friendly at first, and the house, hidden in the base of the mountains, is full of nooks to explore. But strange things keep happening. The swing moves on its own. Doors slam and curtains shift when no one is inside. And one room is kept mysteriously locked. Something is being hidden away, kept safely out of sight, watching them. When a storm cuts the phone line, their only contact with the outside world-Tara and Kyle must find a way to protect themselves from their increasingly erratic grandparents, and from the ghosts that inhabit the Folcrofts' house.

Daniel is desperate for a fresh start at life, so when someone slides a note under his door offering him the groundskeeper's position at an old estate, it seems too good to be true. Alarm bells start ringing when he arrives at Craven Manor. The mansion's front door hangs open, and leaves and cobwebs coat the marble foyer. It's clear no one has lived there in a long time, but he has nowhere else to go. Against his better judgment, he moves into the groundskeeper's cottage behind the crypt. But when a candle flickers to life in the abandoned tower window, Daniel realizes Craven Manor is hiding a terrible secret, one that threatens to bury him with it.