New Books: Three Haunted History Titles to Read This Season
"To be haunted is to glimpse a truth that might best be hidden."
What new books are out this week?
This week's new books lean straight into the shadows. We're introducing three haunted history titles that dig into the ghost stories, unexplained events, and eerie corners of local history that so many of our readers love. If you have ever wondered whether the old building down the street has a story behind those creaky floorboards, these new books are for you.
Haunted history sits at a unique crossroads. It is part folklore, part documented fact, and part unanswered question, and that mix is exactly why these stories have stuck around for generations. Our authors work to track down the real history behind the legends, the newspaper clippings, the court records, and the firsthand accounts, so that these new books give readers something more substantial than a campfire tale. Below, we're introducing all three in these new books.
Haunted government buildings, theaters, museums, restaurants, parks, and, of course, cemeteries—Minneapolis has it all. Local folklore comes to life at the Turnblad Mansion, where the piano plays on its own, and at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where the subjects of portraits move about. Spirits of victims in the disastrous 1878 mill explosion haunt Mill Ruins Park. The Foshay Tower’s elevator seemingly goes haywire for no reason, and inmates and guards in the Hennepin County Jail report sightings of an underdressed spectral figure.
Some Illinois travelers are so taken by their destination, they hunker down for eternity.
There’s something about old hotels and locales that tourists flock to. The places are experiences unto themselves, but they also thrum, sometimes quite literally, with the lingering presence of those who previously paid them a visit. At the Mineral Springs Hotel in Alton, traces of floral perfume from a woman who took her life more than a century ago greet visitors in room 220. Spirits abound at the DeSoto House Hotel in Galena, one bearing an unsettling likeness to Abraham Lincoln. At the Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago, children from the past still laugh after dark. From the polite spirit at the Inn at 835 Boutique Hotel in Springfield, who encourages guests to “turn the page,” to the specter of the jilted chambermaid at St. Charles’s Hotel Baker, author Maria Salvo Benson guides intrepid readers through hotels and getaways where previous guests never truly checked out.
With over 250 years of history, Fauquier County’s old homes and Civil War sites vibrate with ghostly energy.
Spectral figures haunt the old grounds of Grace Church. A headless ghost and a white calf appear in Throughfare Gap. The spirit of a whistling Confederate soldier appears in a home near St. Stephens, and Colonel Mosby’s wife, Pauline, has been seen wandering her home at Brentmoor. The Grey Lady of Avenel wanders through the woods to Kinloch, and the shades of the Nourse family and their caretaker, Eliza Redd, still make themselves known at Weston.
What makes these new books different from typical ghost story collections?
Unlike a lot of ghost story collections that lean purely on legend, our new books are researched the same way we approach every title in our catalog. Our authors dig through archives, interview local historians, and trace stories back to their origins whenever possible. The result is haunted history that respects both the folklore and the facts, giving readers a fuller picture of why these stories took hold in the first place and what really happened to the people behind the
Where can I find these new books?
All three new books in our haunted history collection are available now through our website and everywhere our books are sold. Keep checking back, because these new books are just the beginning of what is coming out of our catalog this season, and we always have more haunted history and local history stories on the way.
Looking for more spine tingling reads? Explore our full Haunted America collection and discover more new books as they release throughout the season.