A GOOD GHOST STORY....

The movie, ‘The Others’ with Nicole Kidman…did you see it?  Did you read Neil Gaiman’s Coraline?  Did you ever read Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ or see the Julie Harris’ version?  breathe: a Ghost Story by English author Cliff McNish is a story with an ‘other’ character, the Ghost Mother and it’s a good, creepy, well-written tale. Jack and his mom move into an old house after his father’s death.  It’s to be a new, fresh beginning but on the first night, Jack sees and hears the ghosts of the house and his own health, compromised by severe asthma, suffers as he struggles to understand what is living or not in their new house.  We’ve got a little soul-sucking going on, something called the Nightmare Passage, ghost children and then the “Ghost Mother’, a restless spirit who at first seems benign and comforting but gradually Jack comes to know her as a being with a dark purpose.  Jack’s own mother comes dangerously close to becoming the Ghost Mother’s victim, too.  The writing is tight and controlled.  Jack’s asthmatic condition add to the reader’s own sense of dread as the story progresses.  Read it.