Minor Hauntings

Book excerpt: A cradle rocking itself in a dusty chamber; an echoing giggle from somewhere upstairs; the feeling of a small hand in yours in the wilderness of a misty moor. . . . From the haunting children of The Shining and The Grudge to Neil Gaiman's Coraline, the ghostly youth is still one of the most recognized and feared tropes of horror fiction and film. In this spine-tingling new collection, Jen Baker gathers the most chilling tales of hauntings by children, expertly paired with snippets of the folklore and urban legends which inspired them. Truly lost stories return for the first time since their original publication along with nail-biting encounters from masters of the ghost story such as Elizabeth Gaskell, M.R. James, and Frances Hodgson Burnett.