Ghost Child

by Duffy Stein

The Talmans are leaving the dirt and danger of New York behind to bring new life to the old house in Glendon, Vermont—their dream come true. They will change everything but the treasure-filled toyroom, already the perfect paradise of fantasy—and terror. Caught helplessly in a chilling re-enactment of ancient wrath, the Talmans become playthings of an evil force they can neither stop nor understand.

Genres: Horror

396 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1982

Reviews

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 1 out of 5]

When all the puppets come to life at the climax and murder an entire roomful of excited little girls attending a sleepover birthday party it only makes the preceding 220 pages feel so much emptier and sadder.

[Brian Mazur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Representative of horror books from the eighties. Which is fine with me, because o have soft spot for horror books from that decade. An easy read, with a bit of a hokey ending. Again, that is all fine with me.

[Peggy Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this one in high school and it scared me. More than 30 years later, I still think about it sometimes.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I figured would be a pretty hokey book turned out to be a well-written story, great for this time of year with Halloween!

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite the really great cover and the premise of killer dolls, this is a very mediocre read. There are really four characters in the story: mother (Mickey), father (Rufus), son (Todd), and daughter (Jenny). Anyone else serves as nothing more than an obvious plot device. And the four family members are all simpathetic, except for the father. The reader is told that he is a gentle, kind person; but none of his actions support this. Instead, he is a poor father who spends very little time with his family and has no idea how to raise his own children. They move into a haunted house in Vermont where the father is a pedeatric doctor.

But since the author could not build interesting characters, he could at least construct an interesting back story to add a sense of personality and dread to the setting. He almost pulls this off when he underlines the wife as the main protagonist and she starts to research into the tragic history of the old house. And the reader almost gets a little bit of back story. But that all falls apart when the kindly local historian decides to destroy the records of what really happened at the Cutter house. It almost got interesting, then failed.

Finally the author tops it all off by killing a bunch of innocent children. Now killing children certainly raises the stakes. It can also set up a dreadful mood. But when it's done near the end of a story, it just feels like the author realized that he did not know how set up the mood of the story and made up for it by doing the nastiest thing he could do at the climax. And that doesn't really make up for the poor story-telling and character-building throughout. If you're looking for a fun 80's horror book, give this one a pass unless you are collecting books with cool covers.

[Scott Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was better read than anticipated

It's a bit slow on grisly happenings until the marionette massacre but has some good creepy moments.

It would probably have been quite a good TV movie

[Shea Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The devil made me do it!
I like this book!