Terrifying Ghost Tales (SCPL)

In the countryside of Victorian England, Edward Atherton, rector of Thornham St. Stephen, has taken on the arduous task of restoring the ancient church. But he should never have meddled with the tomb that lay beneath the church's crumbling walls. The moment the workman raised the tomb lid, an unspeakable horror escaped. At a loss to explain the unsettling noises and frightening visions that begin to plague the church, Atherton calls upon fellow antiquarian...

Amidst the lush farmland and orchards in Old Gate, Virginia, stands the magnificent Bliss House. Built in 1878 as a country retreat, Bliss House is impressive, historic, and inexplicably mysterious. Decades of strange occurrences, disappearances and deaths have plagued the house, yet it remains vibrant. And very much alive. Rainey Bliss Adams desperately needed a new start when she and her daughter Ariel relocated from St. Louis to Old Gate and settled...

A strange carnival brings terror to the population of a small midwestern town. Few American novels written this century have endured in the heart and mind, as has this one Ray Bradbury's incomparable masterwork of the dark fantastic. A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and...

"Far upstate, in New York's ancient forests, a drowned village lays beneath the dark, still waters of the Chilewaukee reservoir. Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that's what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America's founding, were forced from their land, but they didn't move far, and some...

"The sudden sinking of a Thames passenger craft with no survivors is seen simply as freak, unexplained accident. But when the male statues of London start crying blood and a choking fog descends causing a passenger plane to crash into the Thames Barrier, the country panics. Is London under a terrorist attack - or is something else at work? Professor Juliet Harrington suspects these unexplained incidents are related to 'The Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom',...

Emma Rose Finnis has never made peace with her death . . . or with her ghostly afterlife. Finally free from the mansion she haunted for more than a hundred years, she takes on a new, daring form, one that allows her to pass for living among the citizens of the remote Sierra Nevada town of White Bar. But the town is hiding its own deadly truth, buried in its Gold Rush past. As the sleepy town's secrets come to life, they inevitably bring Emma Rose's...

After she and a dozen other children found them being raised by "Father," a cruel man with mysterious powers, Carolyn and her "siblings" begin to think he might be God. When Father disappears, they square off against each other to determine who will inherit his library, which may hold the power to all Creation. As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come she has a play. The only trouble is that in the war to make a new God, she's...

"The story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly place called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a chilling encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering...

"A retelling of the fate of the Donner Party, with a Walking Dead style twist"-- "A tense and gripping reimagining of one of America's most fascinating historical moments: the Donner Party with a supernatural twist. Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy...

Holly Gibney (from Stephen King's Bill Hodges trilogy and The outsider) must face her fears and possibly another outsider--this time on her own. In "Mr. Harrigan's Phone," an intergenerational friendship has a disturbing afterlife. "The Life of Chuck" explores, beautifully, how each of us contains multitudes. And in "Rat," a struggling writer must contend with the darker side of ambition. If these stories show King's range, they also prove that certain...