Patapsco Spirits: Eleven Ghost Stories

by Addison Hodges Hart

A bohemian artist obsessed with a lonely woodland pond haunted by preternatural beings... an old man and his grandson who maintain their strong connection after the former's death... a revenant summoned for vengeance through a carefully guarded secret "conjuring song"... a priest mysteriously called upon to rescue the soul of a woman guilty of a decades-old brutal murder... These are just some of the stories told in this chilling collection. All the tales are set in the early 1960s, in the region surrounding Maryland's long and twisting Patapsco River—a terrain known for its dark lore and eerie locations. And although the setting is a well-known waterway in the United States, the spiritual entities teeming in these pages are the demons, faeries, ghosts, shape-shifters, goblins, fetches, tricksters, sprites, elementals, and angels that have occupied our phantasmal folklore for millennia. Here, then, are eleven stories to unsettle, disturb, and—we hope—entertain the reader.

250 pages, Hardcover

Published June 3, 2023

Reviews

[Evan Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I was sad to reach the end of it.

[Andrew Carnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so good. Like spooky Wendell Berry. Strongly recommend. I think I believe in Ghosts now

[w gall · Rating 5 out of 5]

The setting of these stories were all in the region of author's home town; the time, the early 1960s. But the stories were all different; not one resembled another. Also, none the stories gave me a sense of unmitigated horror, though there were many scary passages. Some of them exuded a subtle message, a sense of a perspective of a good world in which the bad experiences that the living characters could come back to. There were few covert religious messages. But a religious element was quietly present; there was evil, and there was good. I enjoyed the book.