Ghosts Unveiled!, pitch-perfect, non-fiction scares for ages 9 and up

One of our favorite books from 2019 was Creepy and True Mummies Exposed! Certainly, a major part of my initial curiosity in that book was the fact that I’ve loved mummies, the science of them, cultures that perfected them, and the ghoulish specter that exists inside my imagination of seeing them. The layout and presentation that book was perfect because it blended science, travel, adventure, and imagination into one package that was great for middle school readers and up. Author Kerrie Logan Hollihan dives into the series again with Creepy and True Ghosts Unveiled! It has the same presentation that I loved in the first book but looks at a topic that is difficult to actually prove.

Ghosts are divisive, aren’t they? We have a rule in our house that it’s OK if they’re here; just to please not make their presence known in front of us. For others, the proof might not be strong enough, yet a blurry photograph, garbled audio recording, or unstable video is concrete for some. That is the beauty of Ghosts Unveiled!, it doesn’t try to convince you that ghosts exist or not, it just presents some evidence and lets your imagination think about the possibilities. It’s just like a really effective scary movie. They don’t rely on the scares that you see on-screen to get under your skin; it’s the implied scares or spooks that do the most damage-or cause the most fun.

Creepy and True Ghosts Unveiled! is lots of fun and just the perfect level of scares for upper elementary ages and older. The book is divided up into 12 chapters, each of which has a dozen or so different ghost stories in them. Of all of the stories in the book, there were one or two that I had heard before. Thankfully, one of them was not The Black Dog, a grim tale about a dog whose sighting would bring three things, with the last one of them being your death. This story is referenced and presented in alternating formats with Hollihan setting up parts of it and actual quotes from the original presentation in 1898.  

There are so many spooky vignettes in Ghosts Unveiled! that we don’t want to spoil any of them. Readers of a certain age will appreciate that the tales are genuinely scary, as well as to the point. The stories do not embellish things or go for outlandish details like some ghostly figure going “mwahaha” in the corner. This is not the kind of book that telegraphs its scares or stoops to cheesy levels of entertainment.

Young readers will appreciate the book’s format, which is narrower than other books and easy to hold in one hand. The pages are printed on glossy paper which allows the numerous photographs to really shine. There is about one photograph every three pages, some of which are full page. From White House ghosts, school ghosts, shipwrecked ghouls, spectral pets, and more, this book really has something for every reader aged 9 and up who don’t mind a good scare.

Older readers will find genuine chills in the book also. I read Ghosts Unveiled! mostly at night and it certainly made me a bit more sensitive to noises in the house and those dark spaces in the corner. The combination of presentation and content makes this format a great hook for any ‘adventure’ type read that upper elementary students and up might be interested in. Mummies baited the hook and Ghosts Unveiled! brought the format into a full-fledged series. It will enthrall readers looking for an intelligent, non-fiction book with pacing and imagination that ages 9 and up need to keep them hooked into real-life or STEM.

Creepy and True Ghosts Unveiled! is by Kerrie Logan Holliahan and available on Abrams Books for Young Readers.

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