Captives

Nightmare Hall #25

by Diane Hoh

Four friends become the prisoners of a crazed killer who decides who will live—and who will die
Molloy, Lynne, Daisy, and Toni are headed for summer school at Salem University, where they’ll officially be freshmen in the fall. But their journey takes an unexpected detour when they’re stranded by a violent storm. They take refuge at the deserted Nightingale Hall, an off-campus dorm haunted by a tragic past.
What the four girls don’t know is that someone else has taken shelter a psychopath who’s on the run after murdering a prominent psychiatrist.
The electricity is off. The phones are dead. Someone has locked the doors from the inside and nailed all the windows shut. There’s no escape for Molloy and her friends, who are at the mercy of a madman with no intention of letting any of them leave—at least not alive.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Diane Hoh including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Genres: Horror, Young Adult

159 pages, ebook

First published July 1, 1995

About the author

Diane Hoh is the author of fifty-seven novels for young adults. She grew up in Warren, Pennsylvania but currently resides in Austin, Texas. Reading and writing are her favorite things, alongside gardening and grandchildren.

Reviews

[Georgia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strictly speaking this is not part of the Point Horror collection, but I am a completist and upon realising Nightmare Hall continued past the last I can find published in print, I didn’t have much choice but to carry on and read them.

The Nightmare Hall books were never really my favourite. As ridiculous as it sounds, it was mainly due to the aesthetic - the books looked different to the others in the collection, the covers felt smoother and irritatingly, the print on the spine didn’t match the rest. This tells you a lot about who I am as a person.

However, Diane Hoh books are generally a hoot so I can let it go (I can’t, I’m still furious). I can only find e-books of this title so I’m calmed somewhat (I’m not, I’m still raging).

Onwards to the actual book...

Basic plot - Malloy and her odd bunch of friends are driving to Salem University to engage in a maths summer school prior to starting their studies in August. After a freak storm, they take a detour and end up in a ditch. Seeking safety and refuge they come across the seemingly abandoned Nightingale Hall...but all is not quite as it seems...

Review - I’m assuming these books were written in the mid 90s but still cannot get over how the names are actually now hipster names. Ernie and Arthur... I mean in the mid 90s I would have ripped the piss out of these names but they were both legitimate contenders when I was naming my sons. Note to all - if you’re procreating, raid these novels for names. The surnames are clearly just Hoh looking at her notes and just naming things. Molloy... *looks at pages*...Book? Daisy... erm... well there’s going to be a lot of water...RIVERS!

Sadly, that’s about all the praise I can give. This was phoned in. My students have better fleshed out characters and plot development. Obviously, a killer is on the loose and has also sought refuge in the abandoned dorm. But who is it? (It’s Arthur.)

The girls are attacked and held one by one, as well as a rookie cop. Arthur is clearly absolutely terrible at everything he does, as not one of them actually dies, even the cop with a bit of metal in his chest. He finds it so easy to beat his psychiatrist to death but can’t seal the deal with 4 whimpering teenage girls?

We need to talk about Arthur.

His motivation is... ok... so... I really don’t know where to start. Basically, he’s evil because he is fat. That’s it. It’s such a gross motivation that I found myself re-reading the end multiple times to try and find something, ANYTHING, that could soften it. It isn’t there. He’s evil because he’s fat. There’s the hint of child abuse (his mother making him clear large portions of food) but still... the psychiatrist suggests he goes on a diet (OH MY GOD DOCTOR LEO, YOU AREN’T A NUTRITIONIST), Arthur has a psychotic break and kills him before running off and attempting to murder 5 people on the basis that one of them might have heard him bump into a chair. I mean, I’ve never been tempted to engage in mass murder but this is quite a leap.

The storm. I understand that storms can occur in summertime - I was caught in an absolute shit storm of one in 2012 (after parking on higher ground to wait it out I was overtaken by a man in a kayak going down a high street - not even a joke). The storm is bloody ridiculous though. It’s so deeply out of season that surely there would have been ample warning... also, I don’t mean to judge parental input but I’m 34 and my mother wouldn’t let me drive any distance in that weather now, so WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?

My other major takeaway from this - Diane Hoh vastly overestimates the importance of socks to teenagers.

[Trisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a little bit frustrating, because people kept making heinously stupid decisions that everyone who's ever watched a horror movie should know not to do. I still don't know why that chick insisted on going outside on her own - why was she so adamant?!

Anyway ... it was a good story but yeah, exasperating. Also, for someone who seemed to be going on an absolute rampage, that killer was pretty incompetent!

One of these days surely they're gonna close Nightmare Hall down? Too much bad shit goes on there!

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one actually did take place at Nightmare Hall!

* Lynne, Daisy, Toni, and Molloy are driving to Salem University for a maths summer class. Unfortunately the roads are flooded and they get diverted down a muddy back road.
* The back road is a bad idea and the car ends up in a ditch. They leave the car and climb towards a house they can see (Nightmare Hall), A large boulder rolls down the hill and nearly hits them.
* They get to the house and have to break a window in the back door to get in. They find some dry clothes to wear, and Lynne goes outside to get wood to burn in the fireplace.
* Lynne gets hit with a chunk of wood, and never comes back inside. When the girls go looking for her they see blood and a shoe and have no idea where she has gone.
* They put new batteries in the torch and go around the house looking for Lynne, they find her with a head wound stuffed in a trunk in the attic.
* Toni stays with Lynne while Daisy and Molloy go downstairs. They discover that someone has nailed all the downstairs doors and windows closed. They discover a second staircase in the downstairs bedroom and push an armoire in front of it.
* Meanwhile, at campus, a student has killed Dr Leo (the psychiatrist - Tanner's dad from book 19). Molloys boyfriend Ernie (who her parents disapprove of) is worried that Molloy is so late. He tries to get the police to look for her but they're too busy with the floods and the murder.
* Ernie speaks to Tanner who says that she suspects the killer might be hiding at Nightmare Hall seeing as the weather is too bad to get far, and Nightmare Hall is currently empty.
* Ernie gets detained by the police when they see him talking to Tanner, and asked questions because he was once one of Dr Leo's patients.
* When he finally is released he manages to convince one of the policemen to go check at Nightmare Hall, and sets off over there on foot with his friend Simon.
* Back at Nightmare Hall Toni goes looking for fresh air and gets shoved out of a window. She screams, and Daisy and Molloy see her fall from the downstairs window.
* Daisy and Molloy go out the kitchen window but can't find Toni. The policeman arrives and they go back in the window. The policeman goes upstairs and then they hear a thump. Daisy goes down to his police car to try and radio for help.
* Daisy finds the car but the radio has been destroyed, someone attacks her from behind and tries to strangle her.
* Molloy tries the phone again and is then attacked from behind. She hits her attacker with the telephone, and then ties him to the staircase rail with a washing line.
* Ernie and Simon find Daisy in the back of the police car and she explains what happened. Simon drives her back to town while Ernie tries to go up to the house and gets washed away by the water flooind the creek.
* Molloy finds Toni in the washing machine and drags her out, she sets the kettle boiling and then looks round the house and finds the policeman half dead in the attic with Lynne.
* She goes back downstairs to find that the murderer has escaped. She throws drinking glasses on the floor in case he has his shoes off, and then grabs the kettle of boiling water.
* The attacker comes up behind her and she throws the boiling water on him, while Ernie tries to get in the window. Then Molloy hits the murderer across the knees with a baseball bat to stop him.
* It then turns out that the murderer is Arthur a fat kid from campus who snapped because Dr Leo told him to go on a diet 🙄

This was okay, but I don't think it was very believable. While Arthur could have killed Dr Leo and then hidden out at Nightmare Hall before the rain got heavy, I don't think he had time to be terrorising the 4 girls, then chatting away to Ernie on campus, and then terrorising the girls again, and running back and forth between the two locations in a serious storm. I just don't see how he had the time to do that. Also, they commented about him being really fat, but then he's able to move soundlessly around a creeky out house, and up and down creeky back stairs? Really?
And killing someone for suggesting he go on a diet? Surely more people than just Dr Leo had suggested that if he was really as big as they were saying. It's not nice, but people don't always hold back when you're fatter than they think you should be. It happens to me all the time!

[Carmen Tudor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why, yes, I did have to suspend my disbelief with XXL ratchet straps, but I really quite enjoyed this house-bound tale of terror. It reminded me of one of my favourite episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour called 'The Unlocked Window'.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed how this one was written. More suspenseful adding in the different povs.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved these books when I was a kid. Besides Fear Street these were probably my favorite of all the teen horror series. And so it was with some trepidition that I read this book 20 years later. So often these books don't possess the same eerie magic I remember from my youth. Luckily, this one still had some of that old spark in her. While the characters could really use a Law & Order marathon or a stint in the girl scouts, this book wins at creepy imagery. Dear potential serial killers: please don't stuff people in things they shouldn't be stuffed into. It's disturbing.

I recommend reading this book under the covers on a dark and stormy night. But make sure that noise you heard coming from upstairs really is just the wind.

ps. Second time writing this because the internet died when I hit save the first time. The first review was stellar.

[Priscilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second or third Nightmare Hall book, this one wasn't the best. You meet a group of girls on a car journey in the rain, and a murder of a physiologist. Both become connected, straight away the killer wants them dead. There is no time to get to know them or care about who they are. I had no idea who the killer could be as we'd not been introduced to many characters. I prefer The Wish by this author, I'll read more of the series. But this felt rushed.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because as a young adult I enjoyed reading the Nightmare Hall series. If you are reading this as an adult you just have to take it for what it is. If you enjoyed RL Stine, Christopher Pike as a teen then you probably would have liked this series. It was good to revisit my teenage years for a little while on this one.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this story as I love a locked door mystery

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always, these are just fun little horror books from my past that I enjoy jumping back into every once in a while. Not life changing but a good time.

[Kasey Loftis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this one.

[Erin *Proud Book Hoarder* · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad for this type and age group but not as good as most in the series.

[Miss.Always.Reading.Books · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book just kept repeating itself. 4 friends get caught in a storm, there's a killer on the loose, their car breaks down, they seek shelter in an empty college dorm.
They hear a noise, someone gets killed.
Over and over one of them kept repeating "What was that?" a minute later someone dies.
R.L. Stine could have wrote a better version of this book.
It was scary nor did I jump.

[LJP1610 · Rating 5 out of 5]

best nightmare hall. ftw

[Elizabeth Hubble · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ending I pictured in my head was better than the actual ending, but overall it was a decent book.

[Mehsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars.