IU High School

Do you like ghost stories and British humor? Then you might really enjoy the Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud. My daughter read these books this summer and begged me to read the first title, The Screaming Staircase. I read it and liked it but . . . I stayed up late to finish it (after midnight) and then I was a bit nervous about turning out the light.

The premise of the story is that, starting about 50 or 60 years ago, Britain began having a ghost problem – a SERIOUS ghost problem. Hauntings by different types of ghosts (there’s a whole breakdown of them in the glossary at the end of the book) torment the citizens. However, the people with the greatest sensitivity to ghostly activity are children and teenagers. Several agencies dedicated to finding and dealing with ghosts are active in London though most are led by adults who were ghost hunters as youngsters, before they lost their ability to sense the Visitors. However, narrator Lucy Carlyle joins a very small agency run by fellow teen Anthony Lockwood and ghostly adventures ensue.

There are five books in the series plus a (very) short story that is available as an e-book or PDF.

Have you read these books or other creepy/scary books? What titles would you recommend?