My rating: 5 of 5 stars


One of the best ghost-stories out there that I had so much fun re-reading after God knows how many years. A vintage gem that has all the elements of a classic supernatural story with a young girl that refuses to leave the house even after her death.

Jane with her young 18 yr. old aunt is looking forward to spent the summer in Lynn at Mrs. Canfield’s house. 9-year-old Jane has lost her parents, Louisa’s sister Charlotte and Mrs. Canfield’s son John in an accident. Louisa believes the long summer would revive Jane from the melancholy that has made her withdraw into herself and thus even though she loaths to be separated from her boyfriend for such a long time, Louisa accompanies Jane to Lydia Canfield’s house. The beginning is idyllic with good weather and a lovely garden and the child taking an acute interest in everything around her but little events begin to jeopardize their much needed peace and quiet.

Emily, Jane’s aunt who is remembered as a spoilt and willful disobedient child who always manipulated people around her to get them to do things as she wants, begins to make her presence known thru the reflecting ball that is placed in the garden.

Louisa senses the eerie and unnatural presence of the spirit left behind and when her romance with Adam adds to Emily’s anger, things begin to escalate.

The story has the brooding and eerie darkness that chills the spine and even though published first in 1920’s, it still can bring joy to not just children but adults who love a good ghost story for a rainy and stormy night.




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Emily was a selfish, willful, hateful child who died before her thirteenth birthday. But that was a long time ago.

Jane is nine years old and an orphan when she and her young Aunt Louisa come to spend the summer at Jane’s grandmother’s house, a large, mysterious mansion in Massachusetts. Then one day . . . Jane stares into a reflecting ball in the garden—and the face that looks back at her is not her own.

Many years earlier, a child of rage and malevolence lived in this place. And she never left. Now Emily has dark plans for little Jane—a blood-chilling purpose that Louisa, just a girl herself, must battle with all her heart, soul, and spirit . . . or she will lose her innocent, helpless niece forever.