A spooky tale about three haunted houses that lure people inside with a perfect Halloween vibe. 

• Entertainment factor: ★★★★☆
• Halloween factor: ★★★★★
• Gory factor: ★★★☆☆
• Scare factor: ★☆☆☆☆

Old Dark Houses is a perfect tale for Halloween due to its accessible spooky writing style that sets a perfect Halloween atmosphere with monstrous and ghostly horrors. 

It consists of 260 pages

Need more Halloween books to read? The List of Halloween Horror Books offers a lot more books set at Halloween with a great Halloween vibe.

Plot

Sweet Hollow is a quiet little town that loves to celebrate Halloween. There are three old inhabited houses. The Morton Manor built in 1851. The Bannatyne House built in 1842. And the Vallancy Estate built in 1798 by Charles Vallancy. Elise Thanatos from the counsel wants these awful houses to be destroyed. They are planned to be demolished on the first of November. But Patty Keepwell from the Preservation Society wants to save these houses and restore them. 

The houses are not entirely empty for in the Vallancy house lives a drifter Thorn and he doesn’t live there alone. The ghost of Charles Vallancy still haunts the house and he doesn’t want them to be destroyed. So during Halloween he sets open his doors, and brings the houses to life.

While Harry Thanatos is creeping into the Ballantyne for one last time that morning, teenagers Anna and Kenny say goodbye all night to the Morton Manor where they fell in love. Once they are inside the door closes and they are locked inside. Worse they see themselves age every minute, while the house around them restores itself from their life essence. 

That Halloween night all the kids of Sweet Hollow are invited into the Morton and the Ballantyne, where they also get locked inside. With the whole town into panic, the sheriff and his deputies are helpless. 

But Anna and Kenny are smart and figure out that the house has come to life and must have a heart and a brain. They find the brain in the basement and the heart in the attic. All they have to do is destroy them. That’s easier said than done, while Charles Vallancy has made all the rats, bats and spiders and more creepy crawlers big, huge and deadly. 

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Short Review

The story is written in a spooky vibe. It creates a genuine spooky Halloween atmosphere, as well as outside as inside the houses. There are quite a few characters, the two teenagers, Harry, the sheriff, Anna’s father and Kenny’s mother who go look for them, Patty and Elise, deputy Johanson who gets locked inside the Ballantyne and finally four teenagers that sneak into the Vallancy. Each character, or pair or group of characters have their own experience inside one of the houses. It gives a broad perspective of what is happening, while there are not too much characters that it becomes overwhelming or confusing or chaotic. 

The writing style is simple and aims for a good spooky Halloween tale that is focused on the ghost of Charles and the spooky houses and the creepy creatures that live inside. That makes it a very accessible and atmospheric tale for Halloween for everyone who wants to get into the Halloween spirit, although the final battle in the Vallancy uses gore, brutal deaths and violence. 

Old Dark Houses is a fun entertaining Halloween tale with  gore and deaths but with a main focus on setting a spooky Halloween vibe.