Author: Marty Chan
Publisher: Orca Book

Xander thinks the George Wickerman Hospital would be the perfect setting for Spirits and Specters, a role-playing game where players go on “missions” to find evidence of paranormal activities. According to local legend, tuberculosis patients were used as test subjects in medical experiments that ended tragically, and their disfigured ghosts walk the hallways of this now-abandoned building. What better location to go ghost hunting? Even though they didn’t really believe the rumors, Xander and his friends soon begin to suspect that they are not alone. Is this place actually haunted by ghosts? Or something even more terrifying?

If you like scary, but not too scary, Marty Chan sure knows how to work it. This is a fun horror story, which is not to say it’s humorous. It simply walks a perfect line between spooky and nightmare territory. It’s well written, as in gripping beginning to end. The teens are diverse and authentic, and their dialogue is snappy and entertaining. The group they meet inside the haunted hospital is a little overdone on the Sixties get-up and expressions, but that’s a pretty small quibble. Best of all, it’s a quick, easy read, and as believable as a tale with paranormal can get. Dare you to read it.

-P.W.