Tag: supernatural

Ghost Eaters

A novel of addiction and grief by Clay McLeod Chapman

5/5 Star Review

“Do you want to get haunted?”

Erin Hill can’t let go of her charismatic ex-boyfriend, Silas. When he reaches out to her to bail him out of rehab again, she and their friends decide to hold an intervention for him. It goes about as well as you would expect and shortly thereafter he dies of an overdose. This is where the story really begins.

“Death is not the end, trust me!”

Their mutual friend, Tobias, approaches Erin after Silas’ death and promises her that she can see Silas again. All she has to do is try this new drug, Ghost. Tobias claims that everyone is haunted and the drug allows you to see the spirits of the dead. In her grief, Erin agrees and nothing is ever the same again.

“A name is a vessel. It holds certain syllables, certain cadences. If you say them in a certain order, in a certain rhythm, you’re able to invoke the very breath of God. And I want to say Silas’s name with life again. I want to say his name and have it sound the way I used to say it when he was alive. I want to say his name with all my heart. To endow every letter with love, everlasting love.“

Ghost Eaters is a haunting novel of grief, pain, and addiction interspersed with Chapman’s keen sense of humor. He asks the question, “What would you do if you could see your loved one again?” and answers it the way most of us probably would in the way that Erin behaves. The best horror, in my opinion, is grounded in reality and Erin’s spiral is utterly believable.

I love supernatural horror and really appreciated the fresh way that Chapman approached his hauntings. It’s one thing when you can walk away from a haunted house or haunted object, but it’s a wild new horror when you’re the one who is haunted and can’t escape your ghosts.

I don’t want to mislead anyone by saying this is a super serious dive into grief and addiction. While those elements are there – it isn’t all this book is about. In fact, the last quarter of this book is downright bonkers! I will never look at mushrooms the same way again.

Overall, I though Ghost Eaters was a pretty stellar read that ticked off a lot of boxes for me. I highly recommend checking it out!

Halloween Fiend

A spooky little Halloween novella by C.V. Hunt

3.5/5 Star Review

I’m wrapping up reviews for books read in the last week of April and you know what that means – we are less than halfway to Halloween! Over on the Spine Breakers YouTube channel, Sue and Megan have been hosting Halfaweenathon 2020. You can find the the original video and the reading challenges here.

I read Halloween Fiend for challenges #1 – Read a book with black or orange on the cover and #4 – Read a book with a spooky word in the title. I was running out of time so I had to combine challenges for this book!

Halloween Fiend is a quick and spooky little read. The novella follows the story of Barry as All Hallow’s Eve looms closer and closer in the town of Strang. It’s a town with a long-held secret – it plays victim to a dark creature that the townsfolk have come to simply call Halloween. Every night, small sacrifices, treats, must be left out for Halloween so that it can be kept at bay. Barry is tired of it all and wants out, but it is not quite so simple as that…

Hunt has created an eerie mythos surrounding Halloween and the town of Strang. It’s a little similar to Jackson’s ‘The Lottery,’ but a with a more cult-like attitude toward it all. Halloween Fiend is a very atmospheric read; You can smell fall in the crisp air as you pass through the town square and likewise taste the stale smoke on the back of your tongue that comes from decades of smoking inside a closed house.

I had two minor complaints about Halloween Fiend – neither major enough to keep me from recommending this title, but worth a mention. The first is that the main character, Barry, is too generic. I often forgot that I was supposed to be reading from the perspective of a middle-aged man. It’s not necessarily pivotal to the plot, so it is easy to overlook. My second is that I found some of the plot points to be a little too vague. I am all about ambiguity in horror – I quite love it, actually. There were just one or two explanations that I would have liked to have been more forthcoming in the story.

Overall, this was a fun read! If you are looking for a quick little tale to get you in the spirit of Halloween then this is definitely one to pick up.

In A Dark Place

The “true” story behind The Haunting in Connecticut by Ray Garton

4/5 Star Review

I’m wrapping up reviews for books read in the last week of April and you know what that means – we are halfway to Halloween! Over on the Spine Breakers YouTube channel, Sue and Megan have been hosting Halfaweenathon 2020. You can find the the original video and the reading challenges here.

I read In A Dark Place for challenge #3 – Read a book that involves something supernatural.

I am endlessly fascinated with the supernatural and the paranormal. It’s something that I would like to believe in, but thus far have not experienced anything that could not be rationally explained. I love reading “true” tales of hauntings, but they are all read with a grain of salt. In A Dark Place was no exception to this. More on this in a bit.

In the 1980s, The Snedekers oldest son was undergoing daily cancer treatments and the family needed to move closer to the city in order to better care for him. With limited income, there was only one home that they found and could afford that satisfied both the needed location and space for their family of six – a former funeral home. The parents opted not to share that fact with the kids and spent their next year or so in utter denial of all of the weird goings-on around the home. Their eldest son was the most affected and often blamed for the spooky occurrences. The situation reached its boiling point once their son was no longer in the home and the Snedekers could no longer lie to themselves about the presence of evil. Enter the Warrens and eventual exorcism of the home.

This book has it all – strange sounds, disembodied voices, shadow figures, weird lights, footsteps, phantom touches, disappearing items, vibrating beds, the evil spirits of necrophiliacs, and demonic anal rape. Oh, yes – what kind of possessed house would this be if you weren’t being anally raped by a demonic presence?!

This book is an absolute blast – when you read it as fiction. It stands on its own as a pretty great haunted house novel. Ray Garton is a fantastic writer and his story shines. If you read it as a true story, well, there are many plot holes and inconsistencies to be found. Garton himself found them and questioned the Snedekers who never seemed to be able to keep their stories straight. He approached the Warrens about the questionable events and was told by Ed to, “…make it up and make it scary. That’s why we hired you.” I highly recommend reading the interview that Ray Garton did with Damned Connecticut about his experience writing this book. You can find it here.

Whether or not you believe the validity of this story or in the Warrens ability to assist in these cases – it is a fun ride. Garton wrote a wicked fun haunted house story that can be enjoyed whether it is true or not. Recommended read!