Saturday, October 1, 2011

Haunted Halloween

Fall celebrations meet us on every corner. The sun’s shifted on the horizon, and the days grow shorter. Temperatures grow cooler.  Many baseball teams have closed the clubhouse until next year. Halloween looms around the corner. For the next couple of weeks the blog will cover scary books and fall festivals.

Let’s start with a book review of Haunted Halloween Stories: 13 Chilling Read-aloud Tales by Jo-Anne Christensen.  She wrote it for the YA audience. Haunted Halloween provides entertaining haunted stories good for telling orally at parties and sleepovers with the lights turned low. Turn off the electronics, and enjoy some face-to-face social activity.

Camp Wannapoopoo will appeal to young boys. Marty, now thirty-seven, entertains us with a story about a ghost he encountered at camp as a youth. This story also deals with the trending topic of bullying, and holds a few good lessons.

Molly Goodacre haunts the general store. Molly has been murdered, and she’s trying to apologize to her friend. She desires to explain events leading up to her death. Christensen wrote this story for an older audience than Camp Wannapoopoo.

Ever had a run of bad luck, wish you could get rid of it. Even tempted to pass it along to someone else, just so long as it didn’t affect you any more. In The Tip bad luck flows from one person to another via an artifact. Christensen weaves a story of vagaries of life, and how much success or failure depends on luck.

People are willing to pay lots of money to attend addiction spas to stop smoking.  Sharon caught help with her smoking addiction by vacationing at Bertie’s B &B. She got the smoke scared out of her in One Sure Way to Quit.

Even ghosts like to take a vacation at the beach. Read this humorous tale about a ghostly realtor that caters to the dead in the Presence. You’ll enjoy this ghost story told from a different viewpoint.

Haunted Halloween Stories contains a collection of stories good for sharing at a gathering of 10 to 15 year-olds. Published in 2003, and about 200 pages, this book is fun and enjoyable.

Photos and text by Bruce G. Smith


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