Childhood Home a House of Terror
353390
When Mary gets fired, she finds out that her brother in Florida is charged with murder. Determined to fight the charges, she and her son return to Florida. But the streets hold many secrets, and her heart holds much love as she is tossed together with her ex-husband. The secrets of the streets turn deadly as old friends die quickly. People who enjoy the JA Jance series set in Arizona should like this story despite the extra humidity on the Florida Atlantic coast.
1189402
I read this book as a kid and I've looked for it ever since. 2 kids live with their mother in their uncle's dilapidated mansion. Old family secrets, past trauma, and ulterior motives are revealed as the French Terror, a life sized clockwork guillotine is restored. This is kid suspense at its prime.
1493602
This documentary is one of the scariest haunting stories of which I've heard, and is probably the best episode in Discovery's haunting series. I will warn you that there are spoilers ahead.

The premise of the story that the Snedeker family needs to move closer to where the oldest son, Stephen, is being treated for cancer. The family thinks they have found the answer to their prayers when they find a large home that has just been remodeled that is being leased for a very reasonable price. However, they soon learn the reason for the bargain. The house is a former funeral home. However, with the expense of the son's cancer treatment weighing heavily on the family budget, the Snedekers are unable to afford breaking their lease and moving to yet another house. Demons soon invade their domicile - or they invade the demons' domicile, depending on how you look at it - until the supernatural detectives, the Warrens, are called in and with the help of an exorcism, restore peace to the household.

Just as much as fright, though, I felt a great deal of anger at the Snedekers as parents. For one thing, Mr. Snedeker seems to believe that the size of his electricity bill is more important than the mental health of a child recovering from cancer since he removes all of the light bulbs from the basement bedroom so that Stephen can no longer sleep with the lights on. Then he forces the boy to continue sleeping in this bedroom in spite of his tales of horror of being tormented by apparitions coming from the former embalming room adjacent to his basement bedroom. He does this in spite of the fact that he and his wife have both personally been the victims of attacks and witnesses of various manifestations of the house's spirits. Afterwards, in despair, the boy just gives in to the demons' collective will, manifesting in more and more bizarre behavior until he finally attacks a visiting cousin. How Mrs. Snedeker could have invited this young niece into her home in the first place just because she wanted the companionship and help around the house, having witnessed firsthand the mayhem that the house's demons can cause, as well as her son's deteriorating mental state, is a wonder to me.

I have read an interview with the author of a book on this haunting, which tracks this documentary closely, and he paints both the Warrens and the Snedekers in a very unflattering light in that interview. He basically says that he does not really believe the Snedekers' stories, since even the Warrens themselves told the author that they think that all of their clients are crazy including the Snedekers. Plus, apparently there was considerable drug and alcohol abuse going on in the Snedeker household and the family members would never tell the same story twice. The author only went through with writing his book because he was already legally obligated to do so.

However, even if the account told in this documentary is total fiction, it is well told and frightening fiction and I highly recommend it. It is much better than the movie which suffers from a real lack of imagination given the subject matter.
1610999
This spooky album was first released by Disney in 1964.  I remember listening to it when I was a kid back in the late 1960's and early 1970's.  It had some genuine scary sounds that did great in a haunted house.  I forget all the tracks on the record but I do remember the "creaking and moaning of doors", "UFO Invasion", "Chinese Water Torture", "Screams and shreaks" and I know there were alot more scary sounds!  This album may not be as "sophisticated" by today's spooky sounds, but believe me it was scary!  Hopefully one day it will be re-released on CD or digital.  Until then though, this is another great childhood memory produced by Disney!  Highly Recommended!
3220179
This is a great - spooky story.  Anything involving a child, on his own without a support system, is scary.  But his child is running from something that happened to him in a house called the Pendleton. You get brief glimpses of his memory of the house as the story progresses - losing his sister and then his brother.  You'll have to read to see how this short story ends.  For those of you who have read 77 Shadow Street, the Pendleton is located just across the street.  The sinister happenings seem to affect all the buildings on Shadow Street.  Oh, and did I mention that while he was living in the house and his siblings kept going missing, his grandmother seemed to get younger?  Anyway, another great story from Mr. Koontz.
3455211
I read this book first as a teenager, and it scared the heck out of me - I had a hard time sleeping for a week, and I constantly jumped at shadows, especially whenever I saw our family cat slink around outside. There's just something about this story that wouldn't let go of me, even years later, I could remember phrases from the book "Hey ho, let's go", for example, or the concept of "sour ground" and the power of Native American burial places.

I decided to get it for my kindle, and I have to say, it's just as scary now as it was back then, if not worse, especially since you become aware as you get older that there are things around you which you cannot see or hear, but are there nonetheless. Some folk have said it's a slow book, and it can be if you don't feel the psychological tension from book events building in you, one thing upon another.

Far as I'm concerned, this is the one of King's books that resonate with me the most, The Shining being the other. He truly is a master of horror fiction.
4061235
I've seen many houses in my short life, and none have scared me so much as this one. I bought this series for my mom for Christmans and wound up reading it before she could even start it. It keeps you pulled in and the danger that this family puts themselves in just keeps you on the edge of your seat.
READ THIS SERIES!!!

Beware ordering books in paperback from amazon though. This came with a krinkled cover and seemed a little used although ordered new.
4812983
The haunted house will forever be a common piece of Americana and Widow's Point is told from a place that makes you uneasy.  Two words - "We're Here," written where they shouldn't be.  It makes for a very uncomfortable tale. It's a fast read, made faster by how the storytale resonates with your own ghost stories from childhood. Well done Chizmar's
902460
A very interesting look into the tragic story of these children's life's.  Having come from an extremely abusive home life, it was interesting and little scary to see how similar my own childhood was and how frightening close to crossing the line my own mother had come.
3492476
Eight people are selected to spend the night in The old Butler House, noted to be haunted. Each person who was selected had their own terror haunting them from their past. But they have an offer that seems too good to be true, 1,000,000.00. It is a lot of money and each person has their reason to accept this offer.

There is something evil going on in this house, it is filled with horror and violence and fear. Soon people begin to die in horrifying, brutal ways. It becomes a fight to get out alive, who will survive and who won't make it? And what exactly is going on? What is the motive for the selected requests to be at Butler House.

Fast paced horror novel, with secrets, terror and surprises.
303675
"Fear is a place", and it lives here in this abandoned mental asylum!  Although I grew up in Boston (and S9 takes place not too far from here), I don't think I am biased to this fantastically CREEPY film!  I've seen it twice now - in the theatre and on DVD and can honestly say that I am in love - with Session 9!  The lone fact that it is filmed entirely in the (once active) Danvers Mental Hospital, places S9 far above the recent cookie-cutter Hollywood haunted house flicks (i.e. House on Haunted Hill and the like) this place is the real thing - no goofy computer generated scenes, just a group of blue collar workers and this amazing building (similar to the Overlook hotel in Kubrick's classic version of the Shining - It's truly the best screen vision of any "haunted house" EVER on film.  If you enjoy a psychologically haunting film vs. a gore fest slasher flick, then odds are you will truly enjoy Session 9.  A warning...  Don't watch it alone...  Really!!
3092651
This book is a memoir set in the 1980s and following a book called Cobwebs And Cream Teas, which detailed the first year in the life of a couple working in a National Trust property in Norfolk. This book covers three years during which the husband was the manager of the house. The couple lived in a flat on the premises in Felbrigg Hall and then of course they had no mobile phones or internet. A few cheeky drawings are scattered through the pages.

Reading this I was continually struck by the level of understaffing, survived by the goodness of volunteers, and the perpetual work, some of it heavy and much of it delicate or specialised. Admin is loaded on top of cleaning, managing supervised tours (including of the cellars and attics) and preparing foods. Special cleaners came in at the end of each year and wallpaper had to be removed with great care as it was 250 years old and would be rehung after renovations.  I noted a lady had to photograph every object in the house, taking two days, then would spend months putting every numbered, noted photo on a card in a file. Nowadays I hope a digital camera and computer storage will speed up and improve these jobs.

Areas which interested me particularly were the way the grounds became a little wildlife reserve, though the couple didn't do ground staff work so we don't hear much about the outdoors except for walks and the trees falling in the great storm of 1987. Also the curation and cleaning of the books in the library; and the development of the house tours to suit people with disabilities.  A lift was out of the question as it would have been demolishing parts of the house, but the manager even carried a lady up the stairs on one occasion while her relatives carried her wheelchair; on another occasion he persuaded a lady to use a wheelchair which the staff made available, and she was able to see the advantages. A blind guest was allowed to touch objects forbidden to other guests.  I noted that every one of the NT house managers were men. On one occasion their wives were invited to a get-together too which astounded the NT area manager.

I thought the tale could have done with more detail here and there, maybe a few recipes from the local area. I'd be interested to know if farming is carried on here by traditional methods or if modern pesticides were used at this time. I would also like a map, showing how to get to the house and its proximity to towns.  The manager did seem to be doing things the long way round on a few occasions such as taking a roundabout, through a few garden areas, route while carrying hot food. And if the author, a lady who also writes romance novels, doesn't tell us why the couple ceased to work at the house, we are going to invent our own options.
4697185
It wasn't my old neighborhood, but it bordered my father's on Buckeye Road, where he was born in 1930.  I'd give anything to have Dad still alive today and able to read this wonderful book.  (While humbly admitting that my maiden last name is a Hungarian one -- I had no idea that the Hungarians apparently so lorded it over and bullied the Slovaks, both in the Old Country and in the Cleveland ethnic neighborhoods.)  I truly was drawn into this reminiscing drama -- the hair-raising legends, the culture, the cozy gatherings in the hardware store supplanted with comforting -- and familiar! -- Eastern European food and story upon story, each one more compelling than the chapter previous.

  This was the first book where I was EVER to read a thorough, and horrific, description of "Turney Tech", the spooky old Cleveland State mental hospital which loomed over Broadway and much of Garfield Heights -- it scared me so as a child, driving past it in our family's car, and yet the black-stone gothic buildings were successfully eradicated and all reference and history of the ghastly shame of terribly abused patients in the edifice -- only exposed in 1940's newspaper accounts and two books written during the era -- forgotten and buried under the Mill Creek Housing Development.  Does no one living there today have nightmares, paranormal experiences, or just plain old CURIOSITY about the place?

Then there's that close, close call with the Kingsbury Run Butcher in 1936 -- chills went down my spine reading it.  There was the upside of close, familial, cozy Cleveland with its ethnic families and neighborhood banding together in their culture and religion -- and then the scary dark underside of any city, where even the most protected could fall prey to either the horrors of a Great Depression mishap 80 years ago -- or a monster on the loose.

I absolutely am going to read this book again, recommend it to friends, pass it on to family to read.  I really want to hear more from Joel Mader, the author.  This book begs for sequels.
1576600
Amity is bone chilling, nail-biting, creepy as sin. Theres so much that will leave you reeling and breathless, uncertain of whats going on only to hit you with something so horrific, youll wish you didn't know.

The house itself is terrifying. It has a life of its own that is both poetic and so disturbing. Its alive and breathing. You feel it watching, almost as if it can leap from the pages. If youve read The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich, youll know what I mean.

There are two stories that alternate. One 10 years in the past and one in the present. One male, one female. Both perspectives are strong. Gwen and Conner are worlds apart and yet living the same fate. Theyre forced to question everything and doubt their own minds. You may doubt yours too. Sometimes the flips between POVs are trippy and confusing and throw you off. Other times, they're eerie and oh so dark.

The pacing is moderate to slow. Some sections lag quite a bit despite the creep factor.

I could have taken or left Conner. He couldn't keep me invested. Gwen and Conner both talk to the reader, almost in a diary form. Even with that format, it wasn't powerful enough.

If you're looking for a spooky Halloween read aloud, check this out.
1139905
This was my favorite book as a kid, along with the other 2 or 3 in the same series.  I am trying to find it to save for my daughter, now that it's out of print!  It's pretty scary -- definite nightmare material.  Old Mrs. Tuggle is as memorable a force of evil as anything Stephen King can come up with.  I recommend for the not-so-faint of heart kids!
999601
The Number of the House is 13 by T.R. Sutherland

Two cousins decide to spend the night in the creepy house down the block that happens to be number 13. But they are in for a surprise, the house seems to come alive and they are in for the fright of a lifetime.

A great spooky short story. I feel Y/A as well as adults will love this read.

*This book was gifted to me.
2221082
It must have been very difficult for her to relive the horrors of being held for 11 years after so much childhood abuse.  We need to be aware of these cases and report situations that look suspicious.  I find it hard to believe that family and friends did not find the whole house weird and investigate thoroughly.