Just in time for Halloween! If you enjoy some real personality, quirkiness and spiritual questing served alongside your ghostly manifestations and other hair-raising events, then what are you waiting for? Throw this one in the shopping cart. Especially because Leon (the brooding, tobacco-chewing chief ghost at Annie Wilder's house) might get even tougher to live with if "his" book gets less than its due.
Full disclosure: The author is a friend, I took a look at the manuscript early on, and I've been to her magical, spooky house 8 or 10 times. Weird things definitely happen there. I stayed there one night and had a house-inspired, ghosty dream. In my dream, a little boy was standing in the room watching me sleep. Then a bunch of Annie's relatives started filing into the bedroom. Feeling a little self-conscious, I got up and left the room. That was when I found a new room in her house--one that doesn't actually exist (physically, anyway). It was long and narrow like a portrait gallery, and there were paintings on the wall that changed scenes when I looked away. One, I remember, started out as a picture of a nice white brick farmhouse, then changed to something else.
After I woke up and told Annie about the dream, she got an odd look on her face, and said that she used to have a painting like that. Yikes.
Her story is suspenseful, there's a full cast of characters and cats, and the writing is quite well done. There is a lot to sink your teeth into: she incorporates various alternative spirituality ideas and practices into the story as part of her life in the house--interesting and educational, too. Leon the Ghost becomes incorporated into the family and repair projects-kind of a "Ghost and Mrs. Muir" thing (without the romance). Read it. Annie really is an original. What else would you call a woman who is much more afraid of snakes than of being haunted?
Annie Wilder and her teenage children purchase a 100 year old home and inherit ghosts galore. Annie and her children immediately begin to have paranormal experiences that keep them awake night and afraid even in the day. Apparently the house is not only haunted but is a way station for those spirits crossing to the other site! Annie is open minded and soon learns to communicate with the ghosts and to help some of them cross over to the other site. This true life story is a compelling read that will keep you up at night.
