Ghost stories... I loved Dark Matter, what else to try?

[AnonymousBird]

I really surprised myself - I thought Dark Matter was fabulous, really intriguing and genuinely had me wondering and imagining what it would be like in that situation. Loved it, lots of atmosphere and suspense. Serious chill in the spine.

Unlike Greatcoat, which was as flat as a pancake!

I've never really explored the Ghost Story genre, only read the odd slightly ghostly story by accident in the past (eg. Lovely Bones), so please can anyone recommend anything else? I have Woman in White, Florence and Giles and White Lie on my Kindle for starters....

Thanks!

[KurriKurri]

Rockinhippy - check out The Knife Man by Wendy Moore, and Blood and Guts by Michael Mosely - both factual books on the birth of modern surgery that I have heard recommended on here. I haven't read them (they are on my wish list!) and you will need to check out whether they are suitable - but they might be right up her street

[pollywollydoodle]

i also loved dark matter and thought the greatcoat was dull

the snowchild is a recent good atmospheric read rather than a gory one as are insommnia and rose madder by steven king (all too explicit for 10yo tho, i think)

woman in white is great as is turn of the screw if you haven't seen or read it

[SarahAndFuck]

I thought The Little Hand and The Greatcoat were both quite dull.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons are both very good, lots of atmosphere and creepiness. They are also very different, Hill House is your classic creepy old house while House Next Door is a new build with a difference.

[SarahAndFuck]

Rockinhippy - there is one moment in Dark Matter that might bother your daughter. It upset my mother very much.

Has she read any of the Lois Duncan books? I loved them when I was aged about 11/12 and still have them now. The Eyes of Karen Connors, about a teenage girl who has visions and tries to help the police with missing persons cases. And Stranger With My Face, about a teenage girl whose friends start to fall out with her over odd things she has said and done, except she hasn't said or done them. She eventually sees a doppelgänger of herself and realises something is very wrong.

Another book along those doppelgänger lines is Another Me by Catherine MacPhail.

[SarahAndFuck]

Stephen King's Bag of Bones is quite a good ghost story as well. It's not my favourite of his, and I did have to read it more than once before I really took to it, but it is good.

[SarahAndFuck]

I recently read A Sincere Warning About The Entity In Your House as well. That was very good but it's more of a short story than a book.

And talking of short stories, if anyone has a copy of a book called A Day In The Life, which raised funds for Breast Cancer Care, there is a very good short ghost story by Maggie O'Farrell in it that I really recommend reading. It's called The House I Live In.

[SarahAndFuck]

Actually have you read anything by FG Cottam? His stories have a kind of classic, creepy tone to them.

All of them are very good, but my favourites have been Dark Echo, about a cursed/haunted boat and The Waiting Room, about an abandoned train station now on private land, whose owners start to be haunted by an evil presence that has focused it's energies in and around the old waiting room. Colony is about an island off the coast of Scotland, where a group of modern day investigators discover more than they ever wanted to know about the disappearance of a group of settlers who vanished years earlier. Brodmaw Bay has a very creepy ghost coming and going, and some other strange things as well.

[Ceasnake]

SarahAndFuck, thank you for reminding me of the Lois Duncan books! They are truly excellent. I Know What You Did Last Summer was made into a fairly awful film but the book is great. I think Summer of Fear was my favourite... my introduction to psychological thrillers.

[SarahAndFuck]

I forgot she wrote the I Know What You Did... book. It was very different to the film. She's written quite a lot of books and they were always in demand at the school library, they had a waiting list for some of them.

The authors teenage daughter was murdered in 1989 and the case is still unsolved. She wrote a book about it which I've often meant to read it. The police believe it was a random shooting but Duncan did her own investigation and thinks her daughter's boyfriend was involved with a gang that killed her.

[marissab]

Ooo go on then. Just bought dark matter 2nd hand off amazon for £1.60. It better be good ladies. I just broke my no buying books rule!!!!