145. Candlemas Mystery – Ruth M. Arthur

As it says on the back: “an unexpected holiday on the Dorset coast throws Harriet headlong into a strange and mysterious adventure.” Totally. Harriet’s friend Nancy’s parents take her in while some repairs are going on at their school. Then Nancy gets really sick and Harriet ends up wandering around on her own and meets the “Gramma” of the village area, who tells her stories about witchcraft and not going outside after dark on Candlemas, Groundhog Day to quite a lot of the US that likes weather predicting rodents or doesn’t but likes the movie. Personally, rodent holidays where the rodents aren’t the scary kind work for me.

Anyway, Harriet also encounters a plaque about a boy that died on Candlemas via drowning and Gramma is all like, witches did it because he was out after dark on Candlemas, and then Harriet sees his ghost because…she is out after dark on Candlemas. But it’s not actually a ghost, it’s a boy from a juvenile detention center who escaped and is hanging out in caves. Spoiler. Birney is a little disagreeable and the witchcraft part is a little skimpy, but this is a nice enough story in the end.

Mortemer thinks towels are much better to hide in than caves. Usually you need a towel, as opposed to it needing you for witchcraft.

A Wisting to the Curious, a darling reference to the 1970s “A Warning to the Curious” from the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas, is the sensitive story of how not to do archaeology and to respect the folklore of a coastal area. Wisting, as a ghostly but very solidly alive guardian with his little hat, also wouldn’t shatter a witch staff like in this book and he’d turn that boy out of the caves before he could break stuff. Such is the life of a referential guinea pig painting.
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