Haunted Air

The roots of Hallowe'en lie in the ancient pre-Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men. The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls' Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging 'soul cakes' in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay. From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half-remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Hallowe'en was reborn in America. The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival's intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back. The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognisable, other. Torn from album pages, sold piecemeal for pennies and scattered, abandoned to melancholy chance and the hands of strangers.

F. Paul Wilson's engaging, self-employed, off-the-books fixer, Repairman Jack, returns for another intense, action-packed adventure just a little over the border into the weird, in The Haunted Air. First introduced years ago in the bestseller The Tomb, Jack has been the hero of a series of exciting novels set in and around New York City including Legacies, Conspiracies, All the Rage, and Hosts. "Repairman Jack is a wonderful character, ultracompetent but still vulnerable. Wilson strolls into X-Files territory and makes it his own, keeping the action brisk and the level of suspense steadily rising," said the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle. In Astoria, Queens, the lively ethnic neighborhood just across the river from Manhattan, a house is being haunted by the ghost of a nine-year-old girl in riding clothes. More than two decades before, she'd been abducted from stables in Brooklyn. Now it's up to Jack to uncover the truth of her story and liberate the pretty, blond spirit. Perhaps the answer is in the odd little store called the Shurio Coppe? Ah, but that would be telling. Jack does things no human being should be able to do, but we watch, in horrified fascination, as the forces of evil seem about to triumph and fill the world with eternal darkness. And then-- but you must read the book. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds heat, power, and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight. This is one of the most disturbing and outrageous books you’ll ever read, one that could only come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk.

It was a job any kid would kill for: to play a role in the Historical Society's Haunted House Halloween fundraising event. Ellen Streater was thrilled to play Joan of Arc, burning at the stake. It was for a good cause—to benefit the eerie old Clayton House, soon to reopen as a museum. They said the house was haunted. Ellen didn't believe it—until she felt a strange, icy feeling when she touched the beautiful Fairylustre bowl. Then she saw the ghost in the mirror—a beautiful phantom who beckoned her into a nightmare beyond her wildest dreams. "Entertaining and appealing, with lively and believable young people and a personable ghost." —School Library Journal

Get an education in ghostly history—and meet the spirits that haunt schools in Boston and beyond. Includes photos! Among the throngs of students attending colleges and universities across the state of Massachusetts linger the apparitions of those who met their untimely ends on campus grounds. In 1953, Eugene O’Neill, an Irish American playwright, died in room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel—today a Boston University dormitory. Named Writer’s Corridor in O’Neill’s honor, the fourth floor draws students in search of creative inspiration and a sighting of the ghostly writer. A grief-stricken widow roams the halls of Winthrop Hall at Endicott College in her pink wedding gown. She threw herself from her widow’s walk after receiving news of her husband's death at sea, and is known to students today as the “pink lady.” Author Renee Mallett reveals the stories behind these “school spirits”—and offers eerie stories from over two dozen colleges and universities throughout the Bay State.

As the filmmaking capital of the world, Hollywood has produced lots of scary movies. Ghosts, monsters, and mummies from its studios have made unforgettable on-screen appearances. Yet what if this world-famous spot in southern California is itself haunted by ghosts? What if some of Hollywood’s most famous residents cannot bring themselves to leave the limelight? In Haunted Hollywood, children visit 11 of Tinseltown’s spookiest sights and meet its most legendary ghosts. Among them are an aspiring but unlucky actress who haunts the Hollywood sign, a horror-movie actor who is still seen on his old set, and a world-famous magician who seems to have escaped death. The haunting photographs and chilling nonfiction text will keep children turning the pages to discover more spooky stories.

Describes over 2,000 sites of supernatural occurances in the United States, including places visited by ghosts, UFOs, and unusual creatures.

The Himalayas, 1935. Kangchenjunga. The sacred mountain. Biggest killer of them all. Five Englishmen set out to conquer it. But courage can only take them so far. And the higher they climb, the darker it gets.