The Ghost of Graylock is a 2012 Gothic fiction novel written by the American author Dan Poblocki. Targeted at young adult readers, the story concerns a haunted insane asylum that attracts the attention of some local kids. The book is divided into three parts. The first part, "Hideaway," begins as brother-and-sister Neil and Bree Cady go to stay at their aunts' house in the wake of their parents' separation. After their father left, their mother began to suffer from mental illness and so their aunts, Claire and Anne, took the children in to their home in the town of Hedston. Looking for thrills in the sleepy town, someone suggests to Neil that they visit the old abandoned insane asylum, Graylock. Supposedly, if you visit at night, you will hear the ghost of Nurse Janet. Excited but not entirely expecting to see a ghost, Neil and his new friend Wesley resolve to see Graylock. They are accompanied--against Neil and Wesley's will at first--by Bree and Wesley's brother Eric. Even though they don't see or hear any ghosts, the experience is intense and frightening. The group becomes separated. Neil frantically searches for his sister and finds her in the ominously-named Room 13. He enters the room to retrieve her, but the door closes behind him, locking the two of them inside. Unfortunately, his flashlight also goes out around this time. So Neil takes out his camera and sees the ghostly visage of a woman through the viewfinder. Neil and Bree scream and panic, but eventually they are able to open the door and escape unhurt. They run frantically through the dark halls until reaching a room with weak, wooden planks as a floor. Neil falls through the floor and badly cuts his leg. Despite the injury, Neil's adrenaline pushes him up to escape the building and the group reconvenes outside. After the group realizes how badly Neil is cut, they take him to see Dr. Simon, with the help of a man named Andy whom they encounter in the woods. While in Dr. Simon's waiting room, Eric reveals that he stole a folder full of medical files. They aren't able to ascertain much from the files when Dr. Simon enters and anxiously confiscates the files, arousing the group's suspicions. The next day, Neil and Wesley convene to discuss the events of the previous night. When looking at the pictures he took, Neil notices three that he swears he didn't take: one of a piano, one of a fireplace, and one of deer antlers. They are sitting on a swing-set while discussing the pictures, and suddenly Neil feels like he's being pushed. He turns around and sees a ghostly woman in white. Later on, Neil and Wesley decide the next move is to learn more about Nurse Janet. They visit the library where the librarian, Gladys, says there's no information about a Nurse Janet but there is a woman named Janet Reilly they should consider checking out. She lives in a nursing home called Whispering Knoll. In Part Two, titled "Drowning Dreams," the kids decide to visit Janet Reilly. At first, Bree is too scared to go. But then she sees a hallucination of the woman in white telling her to go, and she decides it's scarier to stay. At the nursing home, they learn that Janet is in fact Nurse Janet. Her reputation was tarnished because a number of children died on her watch, but she swears she is innocent. Not long after, Janet's son arrives and tells the kids they need to leave. Neil and Wesley decide they need to go back to Graylock and look at some files. While there, they see the woman in white more clearly and see that it is actually a girl who calls herself Rebecca. They retrieve some files and bring them to Dr. Simon, remembering how suspicious he acted around the files earlier. Dr. Simon admits he was Rebecca's doctor, and mutters a bit about how she couldn't swim and she was scared of the dark. Apparently, Rebecca ran out of Room 13 one night and into the water where she drowned. After another scary encounter with the ghost of Rebecca, the kids find a poem she wrote. The kids notice something strange about the poem: It turns out to be an Acrostic in which the first letter of each line spells, "DADDY DID IT," suggesting that her father killed her mother, Alice Curtain. Other scary supernatural things occur, like when the television turns on by itself, displaying the pictures Neil discovered on his phone, only now with one extra picture showing a pool of blood. In Part III, titled "Pins and Needles," a very scared Neil and Bree are found by Andy and brought back to his house. Once there, the kids notice that the pictures of a piano, a fireplace, and antlers are images from Andy's own house, where they currently are. When Neil asks to call his aunts, he notices something that says "Andy Curtain," meaning that Andy is the "daddy" who killed Alice. Neil and Bree run off and Andy chases them in his car. They all end up at Graylock. Andy catches Neil in the neck with a fire poker, injuring him. Just when Andy is about to deliver a possible killing blow, the ghost of Rebecca appears and asks, "Daddy, Why?" Then Rebecca breaks the floor under Andy, causing him to fall to his death. Months later, a television series calls Neil and Bree and asks if they would be interested in coming on a TV show to discuss their experiences at Graylock. The Ghost of Graylock is an effective suspense thriller that's able to appeal to seasoned genre veterans and younger newcomers alike.

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Dan Poblocki

Middle grade

Novel

Fiction

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The Ghost of Graylock

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