about the book
Deep in the forest, just outside the town of Hedston in the Catskill Mountains, there is a place where the young with mental disorders were supposed to get better. Graylock Hall, a psychiatric hospital, once housed over a thousand patients. Now it is abandoned and no one dares to go there…ever!
The legend starts on a stormy night, with a missing girl and the hospital plunged into darkness. To everyone’s horror, the girl is found floating in the pond’s reeds, drowned. Several months later, another storm strikes, another power outage blackens the building, and another child drowns. It can’t be a coincidence. People suspect just one person, Nurse Janet. Since there is no proof, no one says a thing…until another child dies.
Nurse Janet is arrested and the next morning she is found hanging in her cell.
Even after the huge spooky place is locked and left to rot, horrible things still happen. Legend has it that Nurse Janet still stalks the halls and, infected by the insanity of the place, she maniacally grins as she murders her victims, happy to end the suffering of the insane. You’d really have to be insane to enter such a dark place and pursue its secret!
Fifteen years later, Neil and his older sister Bree are sent to Hedston to live with their aunt.
Learning about the legend and armed with a camera and flashlight, Neil, Bree, and new friends, Wesley and Eric, set out to do a little ghost busting on their own. They are not prepared for the nightmares they find…and for what happens in room 13.
And though they escape alive, they are not alone. Something spectral has followed them out of the asylum, and now the murderer is intent that the truth will never be uncovered!
about the author
Dan Poblocki was born in Providence, Rhode Island. When he was eleven, his family moved to Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and it was there that he and his friends would gather and try to freak each other out with the scariest stories. Dan’s were always the best. As a matter of fact, his friends’ moms started calling his mother, complaining that her son’s horror stories where scaring the pants off their kids and causing all sorts of nightmares!
Dan loved living in small towns and exploring dark woods or whatever else was just beyond the horizon. That and his great spooky stories eventually sparked the need to put words down on paper. He never shared what he wrote. He just didn’t think he was good enough. But in 1999, he met some people who offered helpful criticism, and he submitted his first manuscript to a publisher. Now he is the author of eight heart-pounding novels!
Life is good! Though Dan still keeps very busy with a full-time day job, you can find this Syracuse University drama graduate up way before dawn in his tiny one-room Brooklyn apartment. That is where he writes and battles his own neighborhood monsters…with a little help from his cats, Pedro and Tavi!
Sources:
Author website
Author interview : Jean Book Nerd
Author interview : Book Critic
Author interview : Middle Grade Ninja
Also by Dan Poblocki:
The Book of Bad Things. Scholastic. 2014.
The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe. Scholastic. 2013.
Monsters and Mischief (Mysterious Four, Book 3). Scholastic. 2011. Clocks and Robbers (Mysterious Four, Book 2). Scholastic. 2011.
Hauntings and Heists (Mysterious Four, Book 1). Scholastic. 2011.
The Nightmarys. Random House Books for Young Readers. 2010.
The Stone Child. Random House Books for Young Readers. 2009.
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