From the series Scary Places
Shuttered Horror Hospitals
Reading Level Grades 4-5Interest Level Grades 4 – 8Copyright 2011
Reviewed
From the series Scary Places
Reading Level Grades 4-5Interest Level Grades 4 – 8Copyright 2011
ReviewedGreat medical triumphs have taken place at hospitals. But are these medical buildings also a great place to go looking for ghosts? According to some, they are. Ghost hunters believe that the spirits of dead people often linger in the locations where they spent their final moments. So what better place to look for these restless souls than in a hospital? Among the 11 hospitals in this book, children will discover a huge medical facility abandoned by everyone but the ghosts of long-dead patients; a hospital that is so creepy it was used as a set for horror movies; and a temporary hospital built on a Civil War battlefield that is now considered one of the most haunted spots in America. Chilling tales and the dark histories surrounding these medical buildings will keep readers eagerly turning the pages for more.
We're in the midst of a supernatural nonfiction book rush, but few are as genuinely hairraising as the Scary Places series. As with the publisher's similarly creepy HorrorScapes series, the highinterest text is ideal for reluctant readers, with each twopage spread focusing on a single horrifying habitat. While not especially sophisticated, the layout is nonetheless effective, with cunning integration of stock art, photographs, period illustrations, gritty textures, and - ”scarier than anything else - ”the prevalent use of grainy snapshots showing the interiors of various abandoned buildings and cellars. Cursed Grounds digs deep for some strange ones: Utah's Highway 191, Australia's Babinda Creek, and even Chicago's Wrigley Field. Monstrous Morgues of the Past turns up some stories that will have young readers agape: the Parisian morgue that became a tourist sensation, the haunted lab where 1,400 brains of the mentally ill were kept in jars, the shipwreck disaster that haunted Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios. Shuttered Horror Hospitals is rife with evil sanitoriums, plus one particularly nasty tale of the 160,000 who died from leprosy on an island near Venice, Italy. Boxed factoids (or folklore) ratchet up the thrills throughout, and a map and glossary cap off the fine back matter.
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