I loved J.L Bryan's ghosts and Ellie Jordan's character! Some ghosts are bad but others are only trying to help, like Mercy. The ghosts in this story are trapped in a house called The Marsh House. It is a creepy dark mansion that was sold to a family with dreams of turning it into a bed and breakfast or possibly a hotel. However, they quickly find out it is haunted when strange things begin to happen.

The father is a drunken slob who refuses to believe there is a ghost in their house and his daughter Lexie is traumatized by having seen one.

Her mother Anna Treadwell is the only sensible one who reaches out to Ellie Jordan for help.

Ellie Jordan has to get rid of the ghost of Mercy Cutledge, so they perform a couple things, like stage a funeral, but it doesn't work, so now, Ellie is forced to evict her. Before that happens, she gathers more facts about the owners of that particular house. I found the research fascinating. Ellie and her partner Stacey also break into the same loonie bin asylum her ghost lived in but was long since shut down and abandoned. That part gave me the creeps. They didn't have a machete but wore boots and waded in tangled vines, smashed glass and tall weeds in a thorny jungle.  I can picture them both running like a bat out of hell out of that decrepit place. Good times.  

After doing some research, she finds out the owner used to be Augustus March born 1848 and had amassed a lot of money. He marries Eugenia who was a good church-going woman, but she develops a strange sudden illness and died in 1901. It was suspicious.

Augustus has a bad reputation and a few years later his house is turned into a high-class brothel or some shit like that. I can't remember if he did it himself or if it was his niece Louisa Marsh (?). Augustus left his house to her, which by the end of his life was about all he had left.

Long story.

Anyway, the writing is good. I was afraid when Ellie began discussing how some ghosts can actually hurt us, that I would start hearing and seeing ghosts and didn't want them to hurt me ~ Lol I felt like crawling under my blanket with the classic case of the shivers. Like Scooby-Doo!

I am looking forward to reading more in the series. I am already attached to the characters. So fun.

I bought this classic horror to read for Fraterfest Halloween Readathon and was content to do so until Penguin Random House recently offered a FREE audio download of Frankenstein in connection with Kiersten Whites new release of The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein. So ya. I could not wait another minute. Now I have the pleasure of owning both formats and I am loving Jim Weiss narration. His voice booms in crescendos and is soft in decrescendos. I'm on page 139. The written text reads like a beautiful song with descriptive lyrics. I don't know where Mary Shelley got her inspiration from but I saw a similarity from the Bible story, Sodom and Gomorrha. When God speaks to Abraham about sparing the city if he found as few as one righteous person? Same with Frankenstein. When the monster pleads with Victor to make him a companion. If for the sake of one person who shows compassion towards him he would save humanity. Or something like that.

"If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundredfold; for that one creature's sake I would make peace with the whole kind!"

How the creature was terribly misunderstood when he tries to help a small child all because he was hideous looking!

"This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense, I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone."

Poor creature. How sad and lonely and wretched he was! I love Clerval and Justine Moritz and the snow-clad mountains in Geneva. I love the cottagers. Everything about the story is well written and descriptive. It's not hard to picture.

I adored the movie, Young Frankenstein. It's amazing how much of the real story is portrayed! so I was sort of familiar with the main ideas but I think it's cool to be able to actually read the book. I don't find it scary at all. 

Very short book that is a countdown of ghosts. It's fun and the illustrations are nice.

I liked it, but I think Prelutsky's It's Halloween is better. I'd recommend checking that out in addition to this one.