Ghost Horror

The year is 1942. Britain is in the grip of the Second World War, bringing blackout conditions to much of the country. For several years, Briarwych Church has remained locked and unused. Arriving to take up his new position, Father Lionel Loveford's first task is to open the great wooden door and get the church back into use. But something lurks in the shadows. A terrible tragedy once took place in Briarwych, and now the locals live in fear of a vengeful spirit that has sometimes been spotted looking out from the church's windows.

The Movie Town Theater is holding its first ever Film Noir Festival, with Pen handling book sales for the guest speakers, including screen actress Hedda Geist. The legendary femme fatale has been out of the spotlight for decades. Unfortunately, the moment she steps back into it, she's nearly killed. Then other guests start to die, and Penelope wants to know why her little town's Film Noir weekend has taken a truly dark turn.

A rogue agent has come in from the cold and wants to spill his secrets. The Organization wants Ishmael to find out if Frank Parker is who he says he is, what he really knows, and why he has emerged from the shadows after all this time. Ishmael heads to Ringstone Lodge in Yorkshire, where Parker is being held to find that an atmosphere of fear and suspicion prevails. As he and his fellow residents are menaced by a series of alarming and inexplicable incidents, Ishmael sets out to prove that it's human trickery rather than any supernatural being behind the seemingly ghostly goings-on.

Seabury Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of the pulp magazine Weird Tales' original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey.

Fleeing the attentions of the handsome and commanding Marquess of Darkefell, Lady Anne Addison arrives on the doorstep of a dear friend seeking nothing but rest and relaxation, but soon finds herself putting her investigative talents to work after a sighting of the Barbary Ghost. Always a skeptic of the supernatural, Lady Anne immediately suspects the apparition is nothing more than a diversionary tactic to conceal smugglers on the beach below her friend's house.

Alone in the world, Elspeth Swansome takes the position of nanny to a family on the remote Scottish island of Skelthsea. Her charge, Mary, hasn’t uttered a word since the sudden death of her twin, William—just days after their former nanny disappeared. No one will speak of what happened to William. Just as no one can explain the hypnotic lullabies sung in empty corridors. Or the strange dolls that appear in abandoned rooms. Or the faint whistling that comes in the night . . .

A small boy huddled in the dark. His mother had promised she would never leave him...not in this awful house...not in this terrible town. But she was dead. Gone. And he was alone. Trapped. With no one to answere his desperate call or hear his final agonized cry... and now...

When fate knocks, answer the door. Unless it knocks three times. Then pretend you didn't hear it. Nora Ashcroft knows all too well that life is full of trouble when you can speak to the dead. When she accidentally lets in a dark entity to the house she shares with Ruby, it's up to her to banish the who-knows-what before the rest of Eastwind devolves into complete chaos. If she hopes to succeed, she'll need a special kind of assistance, and, unfortunately, the best man for the job is also the last witch in town she wants to spend time with...

Long lost to the public in out-of-print pulp magazines, dusty Victorian anthologies, and the pages of now defunct newspapers, these vintage vampire stories have truly proved immortal. Resurrected now for the year 2011, this is a stunning collection of nineteenth-century vampire stories by heavyweights such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker. These rare stories are arranged in chronological order from 1846 to 1913 and are compiled by two of the world's leading vampire anthologists and experts.

Burdened by debt after her husband's death, Lucy Muir insists on moving into the very cheap Gull Cottage in the quaint seaside village of Whitecliff, despite multiple warnings that the house is haunted. Upon discovering the rumors to be true, the young widow ends up forming a special companionship with the ghost of handsome former sea captain Daniel Gregg. Lucy finds in her secret relationship with Captain Gregg a comfort and blossoming love she never could have predicted.

At the outskirts of Maple City sits the Crossroads Motel, a throwback to the days when the motor lodge was king. Two years ago, the motel was the site of an act so brutal that its buildings were left to rot. Jessie Voss, however, sees promise in the Crossroad's bare bones and buys it up, determined to breathe new life into the place. When the Larson family shows up on her doorstep, road-weary and desperate for a break, Jessie offers them lodging, even though her grand opening is still a week away. But the arrival of guests awakens the motel....

Alex watches from her bedroom window as the small, secluded town of Amberton sleeps: a bright, pleasant town with a dark, disturbing secret. Helen, her foster mother, is gone all hours of the night with no explanation. The neighbors, always friendly, always smiling, are also always watching. They know something Alex doesn't. Something she shouldn't....

In the midst of the woods stands a house called Lichen Hall. This place is shrouded in folklore—old stories of ghosts, of witches, of a child who is not quite a child. Now the woods are creeping closer, and something has been unleashed. Pearl Gorham arrives in 1965, one of a string of young women sent to Lichen Hall to give birth. And she soon suspects the proprietors are hiding something. Then she meets the mysterious mother and young boy who live in the grounds—and together they begin to unpick the secrets of this place.

The Mediator series has earned #1 New York Times best-selling author Meg Cabot unrivaled praise for her portrayal of a smart, courageous heroine. Suze Simon, a mediator who guides ghosts to the afterlife, is having a great time with her best friend from New York. But then four ghosts, the "RLS Angels", show up looking for revenge. The angry spirits died in a car accident and they blame Michael Meducci, a nerdy boy who has a crush on Suze.

The one rule bookshop owner and widow Penelope Thornton-McClure has given ghostly, hard-boiled PI Jack Shepard is to not haunt the customers. But when the hot, young author Angel Stark arrives at the store to promote her latest true-crime novel, Jack can hardly contain himself. Angel's book is an unsolved mystery about a debutante found strangled to death, and it's filled with juicy details that point a finger at a number of people in the deb's high-society circle. But when the author winds up dead, too - in precisely the same way - Pen is fast on the case...which means Jack is, too.

From the cramped bowels of a dimly lit radio station, Ghost Radio is beamed onto the airwaves. More than a call-in show to tell scary stories, Ghost Radio is a sanctuary for those sleepless denizens of the night, lost halfway between this world and the next. Joaquin, the host, slowly he finds himself unable to distinguish between the real world and the world populated by the nightmares on Ghost Radio.

This collection contains a mixture of stories about ghosts and contacts from spirits, some by celebrated authors, together with essays on psychical research. As Joseph French notes in the preface, even for the skeptic, tales of ghostly activity retain a distinct fascination. The widespread interest in psychic phenomena in the early twentieth century proved to be a significant stimulus to literary production.

Zombie, Indiana explores the impact of an invading zombie horde on a trio of Hoosier protagonists…each of whom have some dark secrets to keep. When the governor’s daughter mysteriously disappears on a field trip, IMPD Special Sergeant James Nolan, scholarship student Kesha Washington, and Governor Hank Burleson must all come together not only to find the governor’s daughter, but also to undertake a quest to redeem the very soul of the state itself…all while under constant attack from the living dead.

In the forgotten town of Red Fox, a Navajo couple is tortured by things unseen and by motives unknown. Wild animals slink through their house in the dark, a barrage of stones pound their roof nightly, and mutilated sheep carcasses are turning up on their property. Armed with a camera and just enough to go on, Perry and Dex travel to the desolate locale, hoping to film the supernatural occurrences and add credibility to their flailing webcast.

Who would suspect that the same mind that created the most famous literary detective of all time also took on the eternally popular genre of vampires? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a contemporary of Bram Stoker, gave us some fascinating works of vampire fiction. From the bloodsucking plant in "The American's Tale" to the bloodsucking wife in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," he reveled in the horror created by creatures who survived on the blood of men and women.