The Haunting Of Hiram

Alex MacBuff is 12 years old. He is also the sole surviving owner of the ancient castle of Carra. While Alex does his best in the upkeep of the crumbling castle, he soon realizes that there’s never going to be enough money to meet with the ever-increasing expenses. The only solution is to sell the castle and hope for the best. And luckily, an American millionaire Hiram C.Hopgood is willing to buy the castle…crumbling turrets, underground passages, blood-stained drawbridge et al. But he has one condition……there should be "no ghosts". Not a single scary spook haunting any nook or cranny of the castle.

And Alex has a new task at hand. Finding a suitable new home for his resident ghosts. There’s Krok Fullbelly, the six-foot four enormous Viking, whose body was thrown off Carra rock. Miss.Spinks, the Victorian governess…..who suffers from Water Madness and spends her time flinging herself into the well or any other available waterbody. Mr.Louse, the ancient vampire who’s lost his false teeth when he drove his wheelchair over it. Wrecking good-natured havoc like any self-respecting poltergeist is the youngest ghost of Carra…Flossie. And then of course, the excitable little hell-hound Cyril who has an over-exaggerated body of a dachshund and follows Alex around like a dutiful pup.

Alex adores his ghostly family and the thought of being separated from them fills him with dread. But a castle owner's (and a penniless one, at that) got to do what a castle owner's got to do!!

And thus begins a crazy adventure. An unlikely group of heroes and a truly nasty bunch of villians....."The Haunting of Hiram" is enjoyable and filled with drama, mayhem and a lot of nonsensical good fun!

The Great Ghost Rescue

Humphrey is a lovable little ghost, the colour of summer clouds and cursed with twinkling eye-sockets. He wants to be “Humphrey the Horrible” .....downright scary like his impressively hideous family. But that’s the least of his problems.

Craggyford Castle, their home for the past 500 years is soon going to be converted into a holiday resort and they need to find a new home.....soon. In their search they come along Rick, a small boy in a school dormitory who appears to have the solution to their woes. Rick’s plan: head off to London and make an appeal to the Prime Minister for a Ghost Sanctuary.

Meanwhile, ghosts and other spectres elsewhere are also losing their homes as rivers get polluted with industrial waste...lovely old estates get converted to tourist hotels and green fields morph into smog-filled motorways. Rick and his motley crew are soon accompanied by displaced ghosts and even a family of blood-starved vampire bats.

A grave (pun, wholly unintentional) problem indeed! Will Rick’s grandiose plan work? Will the Prime Minister

do his job or be a skeptical non-believer? And will the ghosts find a place where they can truly, in the full sense of the word.....Rest In Peace?

Eva Ibbotson’s droll sense of humour effectively puts across an ecological message. In a time when animals are losing their natural habitats and the world is becoming a messier place to live in.....is it too much a suspension of reality to imagine, that ‘undead’ creatures are facing a nasty end too?

A fantastical tale..yes, but with it’s heart in the right place.

Dial-A-Ghost

Frieda and Fulton Snodde-Brittle are bursting with joy. Finally the rather gloomy but majestic Helton Hall seems to be theirs. But before they can savour their inheritance, they have to deal with the sole surviving Snodde-Brittle, a small orphan called Oliver Smith who lives in a children’s home in London.

Oliver, an asthamatic and frail child is not exactly keen at the prospect of leaving his orphanage friends and taking up residence at the sinister Helton Hall. And Fulton and Frieda sense the perfect plan to scare the beejusus out of Oliver. They call up "Dial-a-Ghost". Dial-A-Ghost is an agency run by two kindly ladies who provide homes for misplaced ghosts.

Fulton has a clear request.....proper, fiersome ghosts who moan and groan and scream and curdle the blood in your veins. The agency, unaware of Fulton's devious scheme are happy that they have the perfect candidates: Sir Pelham and Lady Sabrina De Bone …a pair of thoroughly disgusting ghosts. Originally belonging to the aristocratic set, the couple had ‘A Great Sorrow’ which had driven them mad. Carrying their wildness into the after-life.....they are truly hideous and seem to fit Fulton’s requirements to the tee.

But a mix-up by the agency’s office boy leads the de Bones to a nunnery and causes the Wilkinson family to make an appearance at Helton Hall. And a nicer ghost family it is difficult to find. Warm and considerate…they provide Oliver with the love and family support which a lonely boy always needed. It's a Happy Haunting for all!

Things seem to be going splendidly, but what will happen when the Snodde-Brittles realise the faux-pas?....How long would it take for the scary spooks to leave the nunnery and take up rightful residence at Helton Hall?

One more fun read from Eva Ibbotson’s “Ghosts-aren’t-anything-to-scream-about” collection. She manages to talk about ooze and slime and severed heads and crumbling body parts and you still can gaurantee that any child who reads them would be hooked till the last page.