Horror Hunted Houses

True Ghost Stories and Hauntings, Volume IV is the fourth in the extremely popular series of books featuring true ghost stories and hauntings by Simon B. Murik, who is the son of a long line of mediums and sensitives. Many of the stories come from his own experiences while others have been contributed by family members and those who have shared their paranormal experiences.

Adeline Virginia Woolf (January 1882-1941) was an English writer and one of the preeminent modernists of the 20th century. Her stories often seem to take the form of a stream of consciousness. 'A Haunted House' tells the story of a ghostly couple flitting from one room to the next in search of their hidden treasure...but what is it?

The dead speak and one man hears their harrowing cries.... Dan Tate survived a heart-breaking tragedy and is plagued by nightmares of his terrifying ordeal. Withdrawing into an emotionless shell, he has driven away everyone who cared about him. Dan is lost, and utterly alone. Until he hears the voices.... In Coffin Cemetery, the anguished spirits cry out to him. Lost souls, torn from their places of rest, are seeking a way to move on. Dan wants to help these wandering ghosts find some measure of peace, in the hopes that, he too can finally put his past behind him.

Still recovering from his recent tragedy, retired Marine Shane Ryan receives a call from James Moran, a well-known dealer of haunted items in New England. A robbery gone wrong has left Moran with a trail of dead bodies and a missing box of items from his inventory. And he wants Shane to track down the thief. There’s not much to go on, but Shane has an ace up his sleeve. He can communicate with the spirits of the dead, and their dark whispers guide him to a string of similar crimes.

After his estranged father’s mysterious death, Charlie Remick returns to Seattle to help with the funeral. There, he discovers his father left him two parting gifts: the keys to the family record store and a strange black case containing four ancient records that, according to legend, can open a gate to the land of the dead. When Charlie, his sister, and their two friends play the records, they unwittingly open a floodgate of unspeakable horror. As the darkness descends, they are stalked by a relentless, malevolent force and see the dead everywhere they turn.

Not only did her father abandon her five years ago, now 17-year-old Marianna Bertagnoli is being uprooted and forced to move with her mother and new stepdad to a creepy Victorian house they inherited in the even creepier town of Flocksdale. Marianna notices some strange qualities about her new home, and soon realizes she's living in none other than the infamous House of Horrors. The very house where the demented Garrett family ran a drug ring, leading to the kidnappings and murders of 40 young girls.

Librarian and writer Ivy Woodmansee has been trying to hide her psychic abilities from her boyfriend, Tristan Pierce. However, when she inherits her maternal grandmother’s house in Western North Carolina, her abilities won’t be the only secret revealed in that mountain mansion. As she learns more about her grandmother's and cousin’s mysterious deaths and her grandfather’s sudden death before that, she falls headfirst into a web of intrigue and secrecy that may not let her go.

Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton was born on the 25th May 1803 the youngest of three sons. In 1828 his novel, ‘Pelham’, brought him an income, together with commercial and critical success. He followed these with a string of applauded works across several genres: historical fiction, mystery, romance, the occult, science fiction and poetry.

Lilly Bly desperately wants to have a baby. She is struggling with infertility and bad spending habits when her husband, Jack, gets a new job that moves them from Chicago to a small town in Wisconsin. Impractical Lilly falls in love with a decrepit mansion well out of their price range—she is convinced that she will finally get pregnant and have a baby in this house—and Jack agrees to it. But when Lilly learns that her dream house was the site of a gruesome triple homicide/suicide in the 1950s, she begins to experience strange occurrences that soon lead her to believe the house is haunted.

Clifford Island. When Willow Stone finds these words written on the floor of her deceased son’s bedroom, she’s perplexed. She’s never heard of it before, but soon learns it’s a tiny island off Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula, 200 miles from Willow’s home. Why would her son write this on his floor? Determined to find answers, Willow sets out for the island. After a few days on Clifford, Willow realizes: This place is not normal. Everyone seems to be stuck in a particular day in 1994.

A fast moving tale of terror that takes place on Halloween night when a bunch of teens, thinking they are at a radio station's haunted house, find themselves taking a hayride to the real thing. It is the 20th anniversary of the McConnell farm slaughter, and several of the teens start to realize the special effects are a bit too realistic. How many will survive the night?

Everyone knows about Hill House. It's the biggest tourist attraction in town. That's because it's haunted. Haunted by the ghost of a 13 year-old boy. A boy with no head! Duane and Stephanie love Hill House. It's dark. And creepy. And totally scary. Still, they've never actually seen the ghost. Until the night they decide to go on a search. A search for his head.

The Purisima Hauntings: When Naomi Kiernan’s husband died, she lost more than her partner; she lost her purpose. Once a talented writer, Naomi can no longer breathe life into the words on the page. After accepting an invitation from her best friend to teach at La Habileté, a prestigious art school, Naomi notices some peculiar behavior from her students. The Haunting of the House on Greenpond Road: When Amber finds a miraculously low-priced house for rent, what she thought was the solution to all of her problems becomes the beginning of her worst nightmare.

When Ken and Sally Richardson lost their only daughter to cancer, the glue that held their family together dissolved. Wrecked with grief, Ken and Sally are lost and desperate and on the cusp of bankruptcy from their late daughter’s medical bills. But when a mysterious letter arrives, informing the Richardson family they have won a mountain cabin in Montana's luxurious Big Sky region, they’re skeptical of the letter’s legitimacy.

Hadlow House has stood empty ever since the tragic events that claimed the lives of its first owner. Now, however, a new family is moving to the house, bringing fresh life to halls and rooms that have for so long remained dormant. But do echoes of the past remain, lurking in the shadows? At first Hadlow House seems idyllic, but cracks soon start to show. Old voices are heard, but are they offering threats or a warning? By the time the truth becomes clear, Hadlow House might well be ready to claim yet another victim.

Marigold is running from ghosts. The phantoms of her old life keep haunting her, but a move with her newly blended family from their small California beach town to the embattled Midwestern city of Cedarville might be the fresh start she needs. Her mom has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation that comes with a free house, one that Mari now has to share with her bratty 10-year-old stepsister, Piper.

When Joe and Danny take on the job of house-sitting Snowden Manor, they fail to realize that they won't be in the house alone. Inside the walls swarms a specter made of equal parts ghost, succubus, and witch, and she uses the manse as a prison for souls. Now that October's supermoon is falling over the mountains, she is ready to rise and reclaim her flesh.

Owen Webber is a former unpopular kid that has betrayed his own values and reinvented himself as a teenager with an insatiable appetite for danger. To cement his new image and secure his place within the ranks of the popular crowd, he has decided to undertake one of the most dangerous challenges in Fallen Oaks—the Haunted House Marathon—a contest where six players face five of the most haunted places during Halloween night. Not believing in the paranormal, Owen thinks this will be a joke, but he soon finds that the supernatural is no laughing matter.

Lucia and her sisters grew up on the edge of Mockbeggar Woods. They knew it well—its danger, but also its beauty. As a lonely teenager, Kate was drawn to these sisters, who were unlike anyone she’d ever met. But when they brought her into the woods, something dark was awakened, and Kate has never been able to escape the terrible truth of what happened there. Now, Kate is returning home for the first time in years—for Sam and Chloe’s wedding. But the woods are stirring again, and Kate must reconnect with Lucia, her first love, to protect Chloe, the village, and herself.

From a colonial manse in New England to a small-town home in Iowa to a Beverly Hills mansion, these residences have taken on a life of their own, gaining everything from local lore and gossip to national - and even global - infamy. Here, writer Steve Lehto recounts the stories behind the houses where Lizzie Borden supposedly gave her stepmother "40 whacks", where the real Amityville Horror was first unleashed by gunfire, and where the demented acts of the Manson Family horrified a nation.