Books with title The House That Jack Haunted

A mysterious light in an upstairs window of a "haunted" abandoned farmhouse just outside of Lloydminster, Saskatchewan attracts the attention of 12-year-old Parker Taylor and stirs his and his twin sister Paige's imaginations. They've repeatedly been told to stay away from the house because of the potential dangers, but their curiosity gets the better of them on Thanksgiving Day and they decide to investigate. What will they discover, and will they get more than they bargained for? What will the consequences of their disobedience be?

Having moved into an abandoned haunted house, the narrator—undaunted by the warnings of the locals—sets before a group of friends the task of driving the ghosts out of the house’s various rooms before reconvening on Twelfth Night. The resulting ghost stories form the basis of a thrilling narrative. Initially commissioned for his periodical All the Year Round, Dickens enlisted some of the period’s most famous writers—including Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins—to collaborate with him on this Victorian supernatural classic.

This is a very nice rendition of the classic nursery rhyme, illustrated by the nineteenth-century children's book illustrator Randolph Caldecott (the 19th-century children's illustrator for whom the Caldecott award was named). There are more modern versions of the nursery rhyme, but this one captures visually the flavor and mood by portraying the words and characters in a cultural context that made sense when the rhyme originated.

The Haunted House is a story published in 1859 for the weekly periodical All the Year Round. It was "Conducted by Charles Dickens", with contributions from others. It is a "portmanteau" story, with Dickens writing the opening and closing stories, framing stories by Dickens himself and five other authors: "The Mortals in the House" (Charles Dickens) "The Ghost in the Clock Room" (Hesba Stretton) "The Ghost in the Double Room" (George Augustus Sala) "The Ghost in the Picture Room" (Adelaide Anne Procter) "The Ghost in the Cupboard Room" (Wilkie Collins) "The Ghost in Master B's Room" (Charles Dickens) "The Ghost in the Garden Room" (Elizabeth Gaskell) "The Ghost in the Corner Room" (Charles Dickens)

Dickens's opening story, The Mortals in the House, is the strongest of the collection and demonstrates his mastery of storytelling and characterisation. When the narrator sees a deserted house from his railway carriage he becomes determined to take up residence there. However, the house is said to be haunted and the servants gradually become agitated. The narrator sends them away and invites a group of his friends to stay with him and fend for themselves. On Christmas Eve the friends arrive with the aim of discovering evidence of the supernatural. Secluded in their rooms for the holiday, the friends agree to keep silent about any ghostly experiences until they gather on Twelfth Night. The ghosts the characters see have no connection with the house, and are not even really ghosts; the stories are of injustice, terror, or regret. The tales are all very different, but each has an element of the strange and scary. Some of the house guests have heard stories from ghosts while others have had out-of-body experiences. Wilkie Collins tells a seafaring story of Spanish pirates and the torment of a candle that, as it burns, takes the narrator ever closer to explosion and death. Dickens himself contributes The Ghost in Master B's Room, a very peculiar tale of the ghost of innocence that hints at the author’s own feelings of melancholy. Elizabeth Gaskell contributes a strong story of working people in the north of England. The stories by the other authors are adequate. The closing story, The Ghost in the Corner Room, is again by Dickens.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.