Kathleen Rear

October is the perfect time for a good ghost story!

Rooms by Lauren Oliver
I devoured this story in a single day. It’s a ghost story that’s truly haunting.
The Walker family have returned to the old house on Coral River to put their father, Richard, to rest. The recently departed patriarch was not a favorite among his family to say the least. As his alienated family pack his things and arrange his memorial they are unaware two ghosts, Sandra and Alice, are watching them.
Both the living and the dead deal with lasting hurts and unexpressed feelings until a new ghost arrives exposing the truths that will set fire to the whole house if not dealt with once and for all.

“Sandra is wrong. Richard Walker does not die at home. Thank God. I’ve shared the house with him for long enough.

For a time, the house falls into quiet. … In the quiteness, we drift. We reclaim the spaces that Richard colonized. … We expand into all five bedrooms. We hover in the light coming through the windows, with the dust; we spin, dizzy in the silence.”

Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro
A less serious tale of a haunting than the one above, Laurie Notaro author of Autobiography of a Fat Bride takes another fun turn in the fiction world with this tale of the afterlife.

Lucy is having the worst week ever! She returns from a girls getaway with friends to find her boyfriend has thrown her out (along with all of her possessions into the front yard.) She’s fired from her job. Then, she gets flattened by the cross town bus.
When she gets to the afterlife she is told she must go to ghost school and learn to be a haunting spirt. She has unfinished work to do back on the physical plain and must tidy up before she is granted access to Heaven.

“She wanted to put her arms around her sister and tell her it was all right. She was in a- well not a better place, but sort of an okay place. There were free movies, free bowling and she didn’t have to pay rent. And she would never have another bad hair day! That was something to celebrate, right?”