It's Watching: 03/05/25

It's Watching by Lindsay Currie (2025) is about a haunting with a deadline. Josie, Jackson and Alison who have a home to themselves over Halloween weekend decide to visit the cemetery at Bachelor's Grove to see the Woman in White. When they're spooked by a police officer or ranger looking for people there after hours they're followed home by a ghost with an agenda.

Like Scritch Scratch (2020), this horror story features a real location and some real history. The attention to details, bringing in actual locations gives this horror a greater sense or urgency and tension.

The count down begins in the parking lot of Bachelor's Grove while the children are waiting for their Uber. Each one receives a pair of texts says that they are being watched and that they have a certain number of hours to complete his task.

In an era where spam texts are routine and the old chain mail hoaxes have gone digital, the children assume at first that's it's nothing more than a meme. They each delete it and go home to figure out a different story for their school paper since the Woman in White story was a bust.

When they arrive back at Josie's home the atmosphere is different. It's colder. It's dirty in places, in a home that was immaculately clean. The lights go out. The alarm acts up. Though they don't want to believe it, it becomes clear that they are being haunted.

The question becomes who is the ghost and what do they want? The clues are there but it takes research and as the answers are buried in history it's not the sort of puzzle an observant reader will solve ahead of the children.

Instead, this novel is more of a way to teach readers how to research the past, especially the parts that have fallen out of general knowledge. The answers are found in local archives and with local knowledge and the reading of old newspapers. One of the key places for solving the mystery is the Tinley Park Historical Society. It's the method for what I use in researching the slides I scan.

Like Scritch Scratch, this middle grade novel sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. The children are marginalized travelers (66). Their destination is home (66), specifically the vanishing farm house. Their route there is the cornfield as represented by the trees and creek (FF).

Five stars

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