Chicagoland is a great place to looks for ghosts and ghost stories—the site of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, the site of the SS Eastland disaster on the Chicago River, the Drake Hotel, Hull House. In fact, there are so many ghost stories in and around Chicago that there is no shortage of ghost tours to experience year-round.

The ghost story I know the best is the story of Resurrection Mary. I grew up just a couple miles from the cemetery gates and still pass by on a pretty regular basis. As the story goes, Mary was killed by a hit-and-run driver in the 1920s as she walked home from a party after fighting with her boyfriend. Since the 1930s, people have reported picking up a young girl in a party dress, and when she asks to be dropped off, she vanishes inside the cemetery. I have never seen Resurrection Mary and have never met anyone who claims to have seen her, but I’ve also never gone looking.

When I was a kid, I totally believed in Mary Worth. Also known as Bloody Mary, the legend I knew goes that if you stand in front of a mirror in the dark and say, “I believe in Mary Worth” three times, she will appear in the mirror and make you claw at your face. I believed in Mary Worth, so much so that I never had the guts to try it. No one seems to know how long the Mary Worth/Bloody Mary tradition has been around, but my high-school-age daughter heard about it in first or second grade—and says she also was too scared to try it. 🤣

Ghost stories like Mary Worth and Resurrection Mary are staples at slumber parties and on camping trips. When I was a Girl Scout, we used to sit around the campfire or in our sleeping bags with flashlights trying to see who could tell the scariest story. When I was in college, I heard tales about the music room being haunted, but I never heard the music playing when it was locked up, despite the fact that I spent plenty of nights roaming the halls on security rounds.

I love a scary story—hearing them, telling them, especially late at night. Heck, the best way to watch a scary movie is in the dark. It’s no wonder that I became a Stephen King fan at a very young age.

A Mary Worth type ghost story is the major theme in a supernatural thriller by Damien Angelica Walters. If you scare easily, you might want to read it with the lights on.

Boo!

👻

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for The Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters

282 pages
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication Date: December 10, 2019
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books.

Publisher’s Description

Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face…

In 1991, Heather Cole and her friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. Obsessed with the macabre, the girls exchanged stories about serial killers and imaginary monsters, like the Red Lady, the spirit of a vengeful witch killed centuries before. Heather knew the stories were just that, until her best friend Becca began insisting the Red Lady was real—and she could prove it.

That belief got Becca killed.

It’s been nearly thirty years, but Heather has never told anyone what really happened that night—that Becca was right and the Red Lady was real. She’s done her best to put that fateful summer, Becca, and the Red Lady, behind her. Until a familiar necklace arrives in the mail, a necklace Heather hasn’t seen since the night Becca died.

The night Heather killed her.

Now, someone else knows what she did…and they’re determined to make Heather pay.

************

I’ve always been pretty particular about my horror writers—Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub. Not that I won’t read the occasional horror novel by someone else, but I won’t usually seek them out. It is time to add Damien Angelica Walters to that list! I’ll be adding her other books to my TBR list.

The Dead Girls Club made me think of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Alternating between Then and Now, the book is narrated by Heather, Then as a 12-year-old and Now at 42. Heather has it all…a great career, a loving husband, a beautiful home and life. And she has a secret that she’s never told anyone. Suspenseful enough to make you want to keep reading and well-written enough that you aren’t sure if Heather is really being tormented or if she’s going crazy, this is one that you won’t want to put down.

I won’t give anything away, so you’ll have to read this one for yourself. Make sure you do. It is fantastic!

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