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Review: The House by the Cemetery

The House by the Cemetery (Fiction Without Frontiers) - John Everson

I received a copy from Netgalley.

 

This book was immensely fun in a twisted way. Haunted houses are my favourite type of horror movie, from the downright creepy to the laughably bad and gory to the what the fuck did I just watch? This book reads like a combination of all of the above.

 

Down on his luck Mike is in desperate need of a job, his buddy Perry has a plan to renovate a spooky old house into a Haunted House attraction in time for Halloween. The house is in the perfect creepy location next to a cemetery and there are boundless rumours of the house being haunted. Satanic rituals and murders on the property. Anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie or read a horror novel should know that to logical people building a haunted house in a place with this kind of history should scream bad idea, bad idea! Something is going go hideously wrong!

 

And of course, therein, lies the fun.

 

Mike starts building the house, a girl Katie, and her creepy friend appear and random intervals, Katie is pretty and younger than Mike. She and her friend start helping Mike with the renovations. Weird things start happening, odd noises, strange…things…turning up out of nowhere.  Meanwhile a host of other characters are introduced, the people who are getting involved in designing and making the haunted house.  The set designers, the costume makers and prop-makers, the actors, the makeup artist and her boyfriend. They get together and start working on their project.

 

And at the same time, two paranormal investigators are ranting about what a spectacularly bad idea this haunted house thing is. Restless spirits, a dark place etc. Their attempts at getting into the house fail miserably.  Katie has a secret. Halloween night arrives and with it, a blood bath! Not a lot happens until the opening night of the attraction, its short chapters, lots of characters. And the plot doesn’t require any kind of thinking or figuring out deep ulterior movies or anything.  It’s atmospheric and has some creepy moments. The characters have absolutely no depth to them. The secret behind the old murders, and weird things happening is just stupid. And there is a murderous rampage of epic proportions. But it doesn’t matter how ridiculous it all is.

 

It’s entertaining, and daft haunted house fun is the whole reason for reading it. Thoroughly enjoyable.

 

Thank you to Netgalley and Flame Tree Press for approving my request to view the title.