GHOST STORIES & OTHER HAUNTINGS
Do you believe in ghosts and hauntings?  Or just in good ghost stories?  Try one of these books for an encounter of the ghostly kind:
 

Jade Green – Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Upon her mother’s death, Judith is taken in by her Uncle Geoffrey who insists on one condition:   she can bring nothing green into the house.  She defies this order by bringing with her a photograph of her mother that is framed in green.  And although she hides it away, it appears that it may be unleashing a force that is determined to bring out a hidden secret of Uncle Geoffrey’s.

Historic Haunted America – Michael Norman & Beth Scott
Tom Doherty Publisher, 1996.

It took Norman and Scott eighteen years of research and travel across the United States and Canada to gather together these North American ghost stories.  The ghosts in these stories can be found in homes, theaters, plantations, schools and railroad cars.  They may be soldiers, servants, mental patients, murder victims or lovers.  The tales range from typical encounters like rattling chains or moans to elaborate encounters like haunted mines or the Inn of Seventeen Ghosts in Pennsylvania.

The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
Buccaneer Books, 1959.

Eleanor Vance has always been a loner.  She has also always known that someday something big would happen to her.  That day occurs when Dr. John Montague invites her to attend a ghost watch at Hill House.  Although she initially wants to flee, the house begins to have an alarming effect on her:  it leaves her with a feeling of bliss.

A Foot in the Grave – Joan Aiken & Jan Pienkowski
Viking, 1989.

Pienkowski asked Aiken to compose ghostly stories to accompany a series of paintings she had created.  What resulted is this collection of eight ghost stories.  In “Beezlebub’s Baby,” an interfering aunt takes in a ghost baby that becomes fond of the family and can’t be convinced to leave.  In “Light Work,” a sinister uncle is apparently killed by human hands that he collected from the Dismal Swamp.  In “Cold Harbour,” a creepy phantasm known as “la larva” takes revenge on a greedy history teacher who grave robs.  There are no happy endings in these ghostly tales.

Nightshade:  20th Century Ghost Stories – Robert Phillips, editor
Carroll & Graf, 1999.

This is a collection of ghost stories by twenty-seven masters of twentieth century literature.  Contemporary writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joyce Carol Oates as well as classic writers like Henry James, Franz Kafka and Rudyard Kipling tell stories of phantasms, shades and specters that write letters, ride bicycles, rake leaves and deliver mail.  But these ghosts also live in dolls and sticks of furniture.  Some haunt houses and others haunt the corners of souls.  This collection of ghost tales delivers great suspense, psychological terror and unusual mystery.

Castle of Spirits
A fun site that includes ghost stories, ghostly photos and urban legends.

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LIS 304
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
Spring 2002
University of Illinos-Urbana-Champaign
Dana Russell