short essay about haunted house

Essay on A Haunted House

Students are often asked to write an essay on A Haunted House in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on A Haunted House

What is a haunted house.

A haunted house is a place where ghosts or spirits are believed to live. These houses often have a scary and eerie feeling. People say they hear strange sounds, see odd things, or feel a spooky presence in these houses. These experiences make them believe that the house is haunted.

Stories about Haunted Houses

Many stories are told about haunted houses. Some are from books or movies, while others are shared by people who claim to have experienced it. These stories often involve ghosts, strange noises, moving objects, and other unexplained events.

Why are Houses Said to be Haunted?

Houses are said to be haunted for many reasons. Sometimes, it’s because something sad or scary happened there, like a death or a crime. Other times, it’s because the house is old and makes strange sounds. People’s imaginations can make them think a house is haunted.

Visiting a Haunted House

Visiting a haunted house can be scary but exciting. Some people do it for fun, especially during Halloween. Others do it to try and see if ghosts are real. But remember, it’s always important to respect others’ property and feelings.

250 Words Essay on A Haunted House

A haunted house is a building where people believe ghosts live. These spirits might be of people who once lived in the house and are now gone. People often feel scared to go inside such houses because of the strange things that happen there.

Appearance of a Haunted House

Haunted houses often look old and empty. They may have broken windows, an old rusty gate, and a garden full of dead plants. At night, these houses might seem even scarier with the moonlight casting long, dark shadows.

There are many stories about haunted houses. Some people say they have heard strange sounds, like footsteps or whispers. Others tell of doors opening and closing on their own. Some even claim to have seen ghosts!

Haunted Houses in Movies

Haunted houses are popular in movies and TV shows. They make the story exciting and scary. The characters in these stories often have to face their fears and find out the truth about the ghosts.

Visiting a haunted house can be a fun adventure, especially during Halloween. Some people like the thrill of being scared. But remember, it’s all just for fun. Ghosts and haunted houses are more a part of stories and our imagination than real life.

In the end, haunted houses are interesting because of the mystery they hold. They make us wonder about what might be living beyond what we can see. But it’s always important to remember that it’s just a story, and there’s no need to be too scared.

500 Words Essay on A Haunted House

The idea of a haunted house.

A haunted house is a building often thought to be occupied by spirits. These spirits are usually the souls of people who have passed away. Many people believe that these spirits have not found peace and so they stay in the house where they once lived.

Haunted houses often look scary from the outside. They are usually old and in bad condition. The paint might be peeling off and the windows might be broken. The gardens around the house are often overgrown and unkempt. This creates a feeling of fear and unease. At night, these houses can look even more frightening because of the dark shadows and strange noises.

Inside a Haunted House

Inside a haunted house, things can be even more eerie. The rooms are often dark and filled with old, dusty furniture. Cobwebs hang from the corners and the air is heavy and cold. Some people say they can feel the presence of spirits when they enter these rooms. Strange things can happen in a haunted house. Objects might move on their own or doors might slam shut. People have also reported hearing strange noises like whispers or footsteps when no one else is around.

Stories About Haunted Houses

There are many stories about haunted houses. Some of these stories are very old and have been passed down through generations. People tell these tales to scare each other and to entertain. In some stories, the spirits in the house are friendly and just want to be left alone. In others, they are angry and try to scare away anyone who enters the house.

Visiting a haunted house can be a thrilling experience. Some people go to haunted houses for fun, especially around Halloween. There are also professional ghost hunters who visit haunted houses to try and capture evidence of the paranormal. They use special tools like voice recorders and cameras to try and capture the spirits on tape.

Haunted houses are a part of many cultures around the world. They are a source of fear, curiosity, and excitement. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the idea of a haunted house can still give you a chill. It’s a reminder of the mystery and unknown that still exists in our world.

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My Own Experience in a Haunted House

Categories: Haunted House Personal Experience

About this sample

Words: 686 |

Updated: 6 December, 2023

Words: 686 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited

Bader, C. (2014). Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture. NYU Press.
Dickey, C. (2016). Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. Penguin Books.
Hargrove, R. (2013). The Haunted House: A True Ghost Story. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Holzer, H. (2017). Ghosts: True Encounters from the World Beyond. Black Dog & Leventhal.
Klinger, L. (2014). The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft. Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Michell, J., & Rickard, R. (Eds.). (2016). Paranormality: Why We Believe the Impossible. Overlook Press.
Radford, B., & Nickell, J. (2012). The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Prometheus Books.
Randles, J., & Hough, P. (2016). The Paranormal, the new guide to understanding and working with the unexplained. Watkins Media Limited.
Tucker, E. (2016). Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses. University Press of Mississippi.
Underwood, P. (2013). Haunted London. Amberley Publishing.

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“A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf: A Critical Analysis

“A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf, published in 1921 in Monday or Tuesday, revolutionized taditional ghost story writing and its elements.

Introduction: “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

“A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1921 as part of her debut short story collection Monday or Tuesday , revolutionized traditional ghost story writing. While eerie sounds like slamming doors and spectral footsteps abound, the haunting is unexpectedly gentle, driven by a poignant quest for lost love. This innovative approach, combined with Woolf’s signature evocative language, has cemented the story’s place in literature curriculums. It now serves as a powerful exploration of memory, the enduring presence of love, and the bittersweet pain of loss, resonating with readers to this day.

Main Events in “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Haunted House: The story begins with the description of a haunted house where a ghostly couple wanders hand in hand, searching for something.
The Search Begins: The couple explores the house, checking various rooms and areas, indicating that they are searching for something they left behind.
Discovery in the Drawing Room: Although the couple cannot be seen, their presence is felt as they move objects in the drawing room.
Symbolism of Death and Treasure: The narrative delves into symbolism, suggesting death as a barrier between the living and the ghostly couple, who consider the buried treasure as their own.
Environmental Description: The setting is described vividly, with the wind roaring, trees bending, and moonbeams splashing in the rain, adding to the eerie atmosphere.
Memories of Joy: The ghostly couple reminisces about moments of joy and intimacy they shared in different parts of the house and garden.
Close Encounter: The narrative shifts to a moment where the ghostly couple pauses near the sleeping inhabitants of the house, suggesting a tender and protective presence.
Revelation: The couple reveals their presence to the sleeping inhabitants, lifting the lids of their eyes and proclaiming safety and joy.
Final Reflection: The story concludes with the realization that the true treasure is the light in the heart, suggesting a deeper metaphorical meaning.
Virginia Woolf and Context: Brief information about Virginia Woolf’s life and literary significance, providing background knowledge about the author.

Literary Devices in “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

Characterization in “a haunted house” by virginia woolf, major characters:.

Unnamed and anonymous
Represent the eternal and universal nature of love
Gentle, quiet, and peaceful
Searching for their “treasure” (memories of their love)
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!”
“Kisses without number.”
Represents the reader or an observer
Curious and searching for meaning
“What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?”
“The light in the heart.”

Minor Characters:

Personified as a living being
Represents the couple’s love and memories
“The pulse of the house beat softly.”
“The heart of the house beats proudly.”
Personified as a gentle and peaceful presence
Represents the eternal and natural world
“The trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun.”
“Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain.”

Characterization Techniques:

Imagery: Woolf uses vivid and evocative language to create powerful images in the reader’s mind, such as “the wood pigeons bubbling with content” and “the hum of the threshing machine.”
Symbolism: The house, doors, and treasure symbolize the couple’s love and memories, while the wind, trees, and moon represent the eternal and natural world.
Personification: The house, doors, wind, and trees are personified to create a sense of living, breathing entities that embody the couple’s love and the natural world.
Stream-of-consciousness: Woolf employs stream-of-consciousness narration to convey the narrator’s inner thoughts and feelings, creating a sense of intimacy and immediacy.

Major Themes in “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

Exploration of Memory and Time: Throughout “A Haunted House,” Woolf explores the fluidity of memory and the passage of time. The ghostly couple’s search for their hidden treasure serves as a metaphor for the way memories can be lost, rediscovered, and cherished over time. For example, they recall moments of joy spent together in different seasons, indicating the timeless nature of their love. Additionally, the shifting perspectives and fragmented narrative style reflect the nonlinear nature of memory, highlighting how experiences from the past continue to resonate in the present.
Symbolism of Death and Transcendence: Death is depicted as a transformative force that transcends physical boundaries in the story. The presence of the ghostly couple, who have passed into the realm of the afterlife, suggests a continuation of existence beyond death. Symbolically, death acts as a barrier between the living and the dead, yet it also serves as a conduit through which the couple can interact with the living world. Their search for the buried treasure symbolizes the eternal quest for meaning and fulfillment that transcends mortal existence.
Exploration of Love and Intimacy: Love and intimacy are central themes in “A Haunted House,” as evidenced by the tender interactions between the ghostly couple. Their affectionate gestures, such as holding hands and sharing kisses, convey a deep emotional bond that persists beyond death. The couple’s presence near the sleeping inhabitants of the house reflects a protective and nurturing love, suggesting that love has the power to transcend even the boundaries between the living and the dead. Through their actions and words, the ghostly couple affirm the enduring nature of love and its ability to bring comfort and joy.
The Quest for Meaning and Fulfillment: The search for the buried treasure in “A Haunted House” symbolizes the human quest for meaning and fulfillment. The treasure represents something valuable and significant that is sought after by both the living and the dead. However, the ultimate revelation that the true treasure is the “light in the heart” suggests a deeper, more spiritual understanding of fulfillment. This realization highlights the importance of inner illumination and personal growth as the ultimate sources of meaning and contentment in life.

Writing Style in “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

Stream of Consciousness: The story unfolds through the narrator’s fragmented thoughts and memories, blurring the lines between reality and the ghostly. (e.g., “Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting.”)
Sensory Details: Vivid descriptions evoke a sense of place and atmosphere. (e.g., “…the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine…” and “…Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain…”)
Symbolism: Objects and actions carry deeper meaning. (e.g., The closed windows represent death and separation, while the open doors symbolize the enduring presence of love.)
Figurative Language: Metaphors and similes add depth and imagery. (e.g., “…spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling—what?” and “…Death was the glass; death was between us…”)
Repetition: Woolf uses repeated phrases like “Safe, safe, safe” and “Here we…” to create a rhythmic quality and emphasize key themes.

Literary Theories and Interpretation of “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

Topics, questions, and thesis statements about “a haunted house” by virginia woolf, short questions/answers about/on “a haunted house” by virginia woolf.

Who are the true “haunters” and what is their purpose?
The story doesn’t depict traditional ghostly figures. Instead, the “haunters” are the lingering memories of a couple who once lived in the house, evidenced by phrases like “Here we slept,” she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number” Their purpose seems to be revisiting moments of their shared happiness, with the sleeping narrator and their book as a connection to the present.
How does the house itself function as a character?
The house acts as a bridge between the past and present. The repeated heartbeat-like rhythm (“Safe, safe, safe” the pulse of the house beat softly) reflects the enduring presence of the couple’s love within its walls. Additionally, the house’s reactions like “spread about the floor, hung upon the walls” when the ghostly couple searches, suggest a sentience that acknowledges their presence.
What is the significance of the shifting perspectives between the narrator and the ghostly couple?
The story constantly switches between the narrator’s present experience and the memories of the past couple. This highlights the contrast between the solitude of the narrator (“My hands were empty”) and the vibrant love that once filled the house (“Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes.”). It also hints at the narrator’s potential connection to the past through the house’s memory.
How does Virginia Woolf challenge the typical ghost story genre in “A Haunted House”?
Instead of fear, the haunting evokes a sense of poignant longing. The “ghosts” aren’t malicious entities, but representations of enduring love that transcends death. Furthermore, the focus isn’t on the narrator being scared, but rather on the beauty of the couple’s past and the possibility of the house holding a connection to it. (“Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”)

Literary Works Similar to “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

“The Dead Woman” by Georges Rodenbach : This haunting tale explores themes of loss, memory, and the persistence of the past. Set in a decaying mansion, the story follows a protagonist who becomes obsessed with the memory of a deceased woman, blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion.
“The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions : Onions’ story delves into psychological horror and the supernatural, following a writer who becomes increasingly entangled with a mysterious presence in his rented apartment. Like Woolf’s work, it explores themes of obsession, memory, and the uncanny.
“ The Yellow Wallpaper ” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman : While fairly well-known, Gilman’s story is often overlooked in mainstream discussions. It follows a woman’s descent into madness as she becomes fixated on the wallpaper in her room. Like Woolf’s work, it delves into themes of confinement, mental illness, and the oppressive nature of patriarchal society.
“The Enchanted Bluff” by Willa Cather : Cather’s story captures the magic and nostalgia of childhood through a tale told by a group of adults reminiscing about an enchanted bluff from their youth. Like Woolf’s writing, it explores the power of memory and the way it shapes our perception of the world.
“The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers : Chambers’ story is part of his collection “The King in Yellow,” which inspired aspects of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos. “The Repairer of Reputations” is a dark, atmospheric tale set in a dystopian future where the line between reality and delusion becomes increasingly blurred. Like Woolf’s work, it explores themes of madness, obsession, and the fragility of identity.

Representative Quotations from “A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf

A Haunted House Short Story Essay

“A Haunted House” is a short story highlighting the experiences of a couple who bought a house only to experience the voices of ghosts, earlier owners of the house. Virginia Woolf carefully interplays an unconventional love story with a ghost story as they are murmuring, “Here we left it” (Woolf, 2013, p.3). The ghosts’ conversation reveals a couple looking for their treasure, love, and the author creatively lets the reader intermittently shift between conscious and subconscious moments to the very end of the story.

At times, the story does not sound like a ghostly narrative, but in some other instances, it does. Indeed, from a different viewpoint, “A Haunted House” is a visual illusion, which hugely demonstrates what it means to feel something beyond mere immediate comprehension – love. Although it does not have a clear beginning, middle, and end, the story’s plot takes the reader through subconscious dreaming and absolute consciousness. It is during the subconscious states that the narrators closely feel attuned to the imaginary ghosts. Woolf’s net of brilliance captures the slippery concepts, and the reader feels the ghosts are real, which makes the reader feel the imaginary murmurs.

Although “A Haunted House” is a short story, it has a prose-poem language, which gives it a rhythmical touch. For example, the narrator repeatedly says, “safe, safe, safe” (Woolf, 2013, p.4). The ghostly couple is so much in love, illustrated by how they move together, in the curtains, near the walls, and upstairs, holding hands, looking for their treasure. At times the coupe speaks in unison, and Woolf’s aim is to show the couple’s affection for one another. Additionally, they are looking for something they left here before, although the house has new, living occupants, indicating that they were here before.

In conclusion, a close analysis of the story rules out the possibility of it being either an unconventional love story or a conventional ghost story. Woolf creatively maintains the genre in between these two categories. Early on in the story, the reader feels the story would be explicitly scary. However, with time and the author’s poetic devices and experimental narrative style, the reader forgets about the expectation. Instead, the focus shifts to discerning what treasure they really are looking for. Thus, in “A Haunted House”, Virginia Woolf uses the ghost story pretext to write how important love is.

Woolf, V. (2013). A haunted house and other short stories (The original unabridged posthumous edition of 18 short stories) . e-artnow.

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A Summary and Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Haunted House’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Haunted House’, by Virginia Woolf, both is and is not a ghost story. In less than two pages of prose, Woolf explores, summons, and subverts the conventions of the ghost story, offering a modernist take on the genre. ‘A Haunted House’, which first appeared in Woolf’s 1921 short-story collection Monday or Tuesday , can be read here .

‘A Haunted House’ is at once easy and difficult to summarise; how we analyse the story depends on which aspects we emphasise. In summary, the narrator describes the house where she and her partner live. Whenever you wake in the house, you hear noises: a door shutting, and the sound of a ‘ghostly couple’ wandering from room to room in the house. The narrator (whom we can assume, tentatively, is female) claims to be able to hear this ghostly couple talking to each other. It’s clear they’re looking for something:

‘Here we left it,’ she said. And he added, ‘Oh, but here too!’ ‘It’s upstairs,’ she murmured. ‘And in the garden,’ he whispered. ‘Quietly,’ they said, ‘or we shall wake them.’

Next, the narrator describes reading a book outside while hearing the ghostly couple, in the background, hunting for this mysterious thing around the house. But as soon as she drops the book and goes to look for them, there is no sign of the ghostly pair – just the sound of the wood pigeons and the threshing machine.

The narrator confides that you could never see the ghosts, just reflections of apples and leaves in the sunlit windows. The house itself seems to be speaking, saying something about buried treasure. The light is fading, and the rooms are darkened. The narrator imagines the male ghost leaving the female one behind for some reason. It is now night-time, and the ghostly coupling continue to ‘seek their joy’. They appear to reminisce over the bed (where the living, present-day couple now sleep) where they once slept, centuries ago.

The narrator then imagines the ghostly couple standing over her as she sleeps, and, holding a lamp over the bed of the living couple, the ghosts pause, still seeking ‘their hidden joy’. Then, the narrator wakes up and feels that she has solved the mystery, and now understands what this ‘buried treasure’ is what the ghostly couple have been seeking: ‘the light in the heart’.

‘A Haunted House’ seems to be Woolf’s attempt to convey the feeling of sensing something just on the edge of hearing or sight: something you cannot see head-on but which you sense in the house with you, just on the periphery of your vision. We can probably all relate to the experience of being alone in a house and feeling that every creak, every hum, every far-off sound betokens something – a ghost, or an intruder, for instance.

Woolf’s story seeks to encapsulate that experience. That title, ‘A Haunted House’, is ripe with potential irony. And it is only ‘potential’ – for all we know, there may have been a ghostly couple in the house with the story’s narrator.

But it’s suggestive that the narrator seems most attuned to the presence of the ‘ghosts’ when she’s in states of semi-consciousness or her mind is somewhere else: just waking up, or engrossed in a book, for instance. Consider the very first sentence of the story: ‘Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting.’

Three things suggest themselves here, at least. First, the use of the second-person pronoun ‘you’ attempts to involve us in the narrator’s experiences, as if to suggest that we have all felt something similar to this, things on the margins of our conscious experience. Second, the fact that she begins by talking about just waking from sleep – something that will come again at the end of the story – suggests waking from a dream.

Third, the fact that she mentions waking at any hour is indicative of someone who might fall asleep at any moment – someone who daydreams in the most literal sense, falling asleep during daytime, and therefore (arguably) more prone to confusing dreams with reality.

‘A Haunted House’ might be described as a short story – and, in one way, as a ghost story – but its language is almost that of a prose-poem. The rhythmical prose beats like a heart with the repeated refrain: ‘“Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly.’ This mantra reappears later, with ‘softly’ changed to ‘gladly’, and then again in the final paragraph as the couple are reunited, with the adverb changed to ‘proudly’ and ‘pulse’ upped to ‘heart’ – and, suggestively, the tense shifted from past to present, as ‘beat’ morphs into ‘beats’:

‘Safe, safe, safe,’ the heart of the house beats proudly. ‘Long years—’ he sighs. ‘Again you found me.’ ‘Here,’ she murmurs, ‘sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—’ Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. ‘Safe! safe! safe!’ the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry ‘Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.’

Was it all a dream? The pulsing sound that beats through the prose in its almost poetic rhythms could almost suggest the quickening heartbeat of the narrator as s/he awakes. The accumulation of active present participles, of ‘sleeping’, ‘reading’, ‘laughing’, ‘rolling’, and ‘stooping’, only intensifies the here-and-now of the moment being crystallised in prose.

That final phrase, ‘The light in the heart’, looks back to the use of both ‘heart’ and ‘light’ earlier in the same paragraph. Woolf’s ‘story’ positions itself neatly between dream-vision and ghost story, reinventing both using the new style of modernism and that movement’s interest in shifting tense and perspective. As with much modernist fiction, perception, rather than objective reality, is foregrounded.

In an essay on Henry James’s ghost stories, published in 1921 – the same year as ‘A Haunted House’ – Virginia Woolf called for new writers to find fresh and original ways of arousing fear and terror in readers of ghost stories:

To admit that the supernatural was used for the last time by Mrs. Radcliffe and that modern nerves are immune from the wonder and terror which ghosts have always inspired would be to throw up the sponge too easily. If the old methods are obsolete, it is the business of a writer to discover new ones. The public can feel again what it has once felt—there can be no doubt about that; only from time to time the point of attack must be changed.

Woolf sought to do this with ‘A Haunted House’, a story which is both a ghost story and a riposte to, or analysis of, the conventional ghostly tale. But, given that final phrase, ‘The light in the heart’, it is also a love story, and – given its relative plotlessness, its brevity, and its prose-poetry style – barely a ‘story’ at all.

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4 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Haunted House’”

I hadn’t read this before and thought when it started that it was going to be the narrator herself taking on a male and female persona and looking for love. Because it seems like to me if she only hears them when she wakes or when she’s reading that they only exist in her mind and not in “reality.”

Reblogged this on Greek Canadian Literature .

Oh, this is definitely going on my TBR list. Thanks! I wonder that she suggests Radcliffe, rather than Poe, as the last “supernatural” horror writer, though. I suppose didn’t much go in for ghosts, per se, but it still seems an odd oversight.

I loved this story. I discovered it last year and read it several times, then featured it on my blog as well. I had never read a ghostly story like this before and it truly stands out. One of the lines that has remained with me was ‘Death was the glass; death was between us …’ Love the brevity of the story too—kind of like being given a private glance into the other side of reality.

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Haunted house narrative writing. The house stood on the top of lonely hill. There was no chance of taking the way through roads. I had to take the shortcut.

13 Redwood Villa

It was cloudy and the first few specks of the rain were exploding on the dark gravel. I was in the park and I knew that I was going to get drenched if I didn’t make my way quickly from there. A major storm could be heard on the distance echoing through the silent night.

I had to reach there, as quickly as possible. Just a few moments ago, I had got the message from my friend, Lucy, to go there – 13 Redwood Villa. She had asked me to reach there by 7 pm and it was already half past six. Thunder clapped overhead and the clouds burst on the horizon.

The house stood on the top of lonely hill. There was no chance of taking the way through roads. I had to take the shortcut. “What shall I do”, I pondered over it the second and decided I’d go the hill way to the top. So, I moved forwards. It was dead chilling cold and the rain had made it even more difficult to walk. The cloud had obscured the moon in the dark night and the whole way filled with sense of anger and malice.

I took a deep breath of the cool night air and walked faster towards the house. My curiosity was already beyond its limits. Now, I was almost to the top. The flickering light of the house could be seen nearby.

Finally, I reached there – 13 Redwood Villa.

The house stood, 3 storeys high, with boarded up windows and a broken chimney, giving the house a menacing look. Its door had been boarded up too but you could easily push it open between the planks at the bottom.

“Am I sure this is the house”, I thought to myself. Lucy hadn’t told me about why she wanted to see me. I was not really excited now, not after the dreadful smell and the abandoned look the house gave. “Well, I couldn’t turn back now, after all I’ve come till here”. I was stuck between fear and excitement.

But at last, a crack of thunder, a flash of lightning and slowly I pushed the door open. The rusty hinges gave a scary creaking noise. I took one last look at the outside of that fearsome house. The rain was splashing down around me. And then I had ducked under the planks of wood and was inside, peering about in the darkness.

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As my eyes adjusted in the darkness, the room slowly came into the view, the long bare corridor with doors leading to unknown rooms. I then started even forwards. Suddenly I heard a squeak. I was totally daunted. And then I heard some footsteps as if someone was wandering around me.

My heart was accelerating. Thud, thud, thud... The rain was still pattering dismally on the window panes. Although petrified, I went to the door to see who it was. No one! I again heard the noise. I looked down. Thank god it was just a cat, an abandoned little black cat.

But its look was enough for me to give a fright. I had looked at the cat’s face in the gloom and I could see its dark hair, its perfect features and a ghastly eyes staring back at me. I slammed the door close and made a run. I could hear the cat meowing back as if trying to break inside. It all seemed stupid now. I should’ve never come to this house.

I was still running and just at the moment I saw a big door on the corner of the corridor. I went inside and entered a large bare room. It was all dark and smelled of sodden clothes and rotten fruits. Running through the side of the room I noticed a flight of stairs ahead of me. I could hear someone muttering on top of stairs.

Hurriedly, I ran up the stairs and reached the second floor. The windows upstairs were covered with large, black curtains which flapped along as the gust of wind rushed inside the windows. All the walls were covered with cobwebs. The floor creaked under my feet. That corridor had even more doors that led to unknown rooms. And I could still hear the voices.

Just then I saw someone hurrying inside one of the doors. It might have been the same person of whom I had heard footsteps of. I was shocked and shivered with frightfulness. “Who else could be inside? Was it Lucy?” I decided to follow the person. But the dim light of the moon flickered and the person darted away. I missed. That must have been my imagination.

Slowly I entered the room standing just behind me. That room was such a mess, as if someone had torn it apart in rage. All the things were tipped over on the floor. Through the bars of windows I could see the sky slowly clearing up. I looked at my watch. It was already ten to seven.

I still hadn’t seen Lucy yet. “If this was her trick to scare me then I would’ve never forgiven her, but what if she wasn’t playing a trick. She should’ve been here by now!”

I left the room and marched towards another room, and another. Through more doors and up another staircase and I realised I was totally lost. I swore I was. But I knew I was now on the topmost floor.

As I stood there, stiff, I heard the owl hooting and outside and also the rustling of leaves. But beneath all the noise, was the terrible silence that overpowered every other sound.

The voices were getting louder.

I checked through almost all of the rooms until I was really exhausted. I paused for a second and went towards the windows. I needed fresh air. Outside the windows I could see the whole city as dead as doornail. There was no trace of any sound, not even a single muttering or laugh. I again turned towards the corridors. I only had two more rooms to check.

I stepped up to one door and slowly reached for the handle. Just as I was about to enter inside, a group of bats hovered outside from the room. That was scary. I screamed with terror. I closed my eyes and ducked down until every bat had flown away. Luckily it was all quiet again.

Hastily I grabbed out the torchlight from my pocket and set it alight. In the flashlight I saw a puddle of liquid on the floor. Drops were splashing into it. “Was that a blood?” I frowned.

As I looked up, I saw a large chunk of wood that had fallen out of the ceiling. The rain was seeping into through the crack. I sighed with relief. The puddle on floor was just a rain, not the blood.

Just then I noticed some white thing on the floor. I focused the light on the floor. The light shone vividly at a large pair of sharp fangs. My head snapped up. I tried to scream but no sound came up. I stumbled back, clutched my stomach and fell over on the floor. I was unable to rip my eyes away from the sight. It couldn’t have been a real Dracula!

Startlingly, I crawled forward to touch the fangs. It came off onto my hand. It was just a fake pair of fangs. I was confused for a moment. Was it any trick!

It was now already five past seven and I was still wandering around the house. I still had to check in through one more room. The door stood on the farthest corner of the corridor. It looked creaky and intimidating. The illusion made it look even more sinister. Standing there, watching the quiet patience of the door, I knew it was more than a fright inside. I knew something was there. Not evil or malicious, simply dangerous!

The muttering voices were now gone. The whole house stood dead quiet. The only thing I could now hear was my own breath. Through the windows, the pale light of the moon shone beneath the dark deep clouds. Everything seemed so ghastly and unrealistic. I got up and slowly made my way towards the final door. My knees were now too weak, I had to bend and walk.

Lastly, I reached it. I grabbed the door handle and pushed myself inwards.

Oh my God! The room was so dark and so creepy. No windows, no light, nothing! I stood there in the silent darkness for a moment, holding my breath. I knew there was something hidden behind this darkness. I was now too much scared. So, I started backing away. Suddenly, something touched my back. I swore it was a human hand. “I must run away”. All these creepiness was now too much for me to bear.

But a noise behind me made me stop. I turned around slowly and tried to adjust my eyes in the darkness. Bare feet hit the floor loudly as I heard someone running towards me. “Hello, who’s there”, I shrieked with fear.

Silence! But suddenly the lights flicked open and the balloons popped out. I saw all the faces I knew. Before I could even realise anything, everyone shouted “Happy Birthday, James!”

English coursework Asmita Dhakal Page of 4

Haunted house narrative writing. The house stood on the top of lonely hill. There was no chance of taking the way through roads. I had to take the shortcut.

Document Details

Word Count 1578
Page Count 5
Subject English

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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Setting Description Entry: Haunted House (inside)

May 23, 2009 by BECCA PUGLISI

Sight Dust, cobwebs, sheets on furniture, broken tables, chairs, windows, lamps, peeling wallpaper, gaps in the floorboards, holes in the walls, flickering lights (if there’s electricity) chandelier with broken strings of crystals, broken glass on the floor, spiders, cockroaches, rust, mildew, ripped curtains, shadows, gloomy staircases, old portraits & paintings, cracked…

footsteps on the stair, creaking doors, window shutters rattling on the outside, wind scattering/rustling paper through a broken window gap, words whispered in ear, screams, crying, wailing, laughter, glass smashing, the scrap of a chair moving, the scritch of tree branches scraping at the windows, rats squeaking, movement in the walls, a…

Phantom perfume or cologne, burning smells, pipe or cigarette smoke, mildew, rot, dank, rusty or metallic smells, wet wood and stone, rancid breath, yeasty beer smell, food, dust, dry rot, rat/mice feces, urine

Sour & dry mouth from fear, dust floating in the air and coating the tongue, salty tears

A phantom hand on the shoulder, the puff of breath on the earlobe or the back of the neck, the sensation of being grabbed on the arm, pushed, pulled, pinched, poked, slapped, burned, a feeling of light-headedness and nausea, hair rising on arms or the back of the neck, the body’s reaction to a drop in temperature (chills, shivering, breath puffing out…

Helpful hints:

–The words you choose can convey atmosphere and mood.

Example 1: I cringed at each creak on the old warped stairs, but it didn’t sway my determination to make it to the bedroom on the second floor. Halfway up, a shadow flickered at the corner of my vision. I froze, and as I stood there, caught a woody scent lingering in the air. Tobacco smoke? A shiver curled through the hairs on the back of my neck then cascaded down my backbone. It was all I could do to not hurl myself back down the stairs toward the front door…

–Similes and metaphors create strong imagery when used sparingly.

Example 1: (Metaphor ) The dining room chair suddenly jolted back and tilted toward me, a gracious invitation by an invisible host…

Think beyond what a character sees, and provide a sensory feast for readers

Setting is much more than just a backdrop, which is why choosing the right one and describing it well is so important. To help with this, we have expanded and integrated this thesaurus into our online library at One Stop For Writers.

Each entry has been enhanced to include possible sources of conflict, people commonly found in these locales, and setting-specific notes and tips, and the collection itself has been augmented to include a whopping 230 entries—all of which have been cross-referenced with our other thesauruses for easy searchability. So if you’re interested in seeing this powerful Setting Thesaurus , head on over and register at One Stop.

On the other hand, if you prefer your references in book form, we’ve got you covered, too, because both books are now available for purchase in digital and print copies. In addition to the entries, each book contains instructional front matter to help you maximize your settings. With advice on topics like making your setting do double duty and using figurative language to bring them to life, these books offer ample information to help you maximize your settings and write them effectively.

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers —a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

Reader Interactions

May 14, 2021 at 1:51 pm

creepy…

May 8, 2021 at 6:48 pm

Oh wow. It hadn’t occurred to me to make a list of all the things to do with my settings. Thank you for this. Brilliant!

May 10, 2021 at 5:53 am

It’s so much easier to get the setting exactly where we want it when we know beforehand what to aim for :).

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October 21, 2020 at 7:01 pm

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March 20, 2021 at 6:59 am

October 8, 2020 at 11:51 am

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January 2, 2020 at 5:56 am

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December 3, 2019 at 2:51 pm

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March 31, 2021 at 11:41 pm

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November 18, 2019 at 1:32 pm

This is so helpful for everyone . People can use them in essays while describing a haunted house .

November 10, 2020 at 5:43 pm

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November 11, 2019 at 7:02 am

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November 11, 2019 at 10:42 am

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November 3, 2019 at 7:28 am

October 25, 2019 at 4:58 am

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July 1, 2019 at 6:21 pm

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May 25, 2019 at 11:22 am

Amazing. Im a 14-year-old writer and all these descriptions inspired me on how to write my mystery book. Thanks so much Becca

February 9, 2019 at 6:29 pm

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January 28, 2019 at 11:34 am

very good descriptions

January 3, 2019 at 11:03 pm

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November 11, 2018 at 4:21 am

Helpful!!!!!

June 6, 2019 at 2:08 am

Good descriptive terms and phrases!!

October 24, 2018 at 1:23 pm

Thank you so much you have helped me so much.

October 23, 2018 at 10:49 am

This story describes the house and starts to leave an image of what the inside of the house looks like. I get shivers reading it.

October 22, 2018 at 11:10 am

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July 22, 2018 at 8:38 am

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November 19, 2018 at 11:04 pm

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December 13, 2017 at 7:04 am

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October 25, 2019 at 12:17 pm

lmao “that much”

November 9, 2017 at 5:32 pm

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April 4, 2017 at 1:37 pm

Its just awesome because I get a idea to write it in my suspense story??

March 19, 2017 at 11:49 am

thanks alot it really helped me in my suspense story writing and it did really gave me some ideas to write it thanks 😉

December 3, 2016 at 8:15 am

Thank you very much. This is helpful to do my English HW. Zabit Khwaja

September 12, 2018 at 2:01 pm

October 25, 2016 at 2:12 pm

Thank you !! This has really helped me to do my homework and to inspire me for different t ideas.

October 6, 2016 at 9:45 am

this helped me do my English course thank u sooo much

September 1, 2011 at 9:32 am

this is awesome! 😀 helped me do my coursework for English! thanks a lot 😀

October 14, 2010 at 8:47 pm

this story is awsome i want to read another one.

September 16, 2010 at 12:48 pm

Thanks Aloot It Helped Me In My English Homework:) But I Think It Would Be Better If There Were More Examples Of Haunted Houses:D x

April 3, 2010 at 4:53 pm

this has helped me a great deal with my story for my English class 🙂

May 27, 2009 at 11:34 am

I love the image of the child riding a phantom rocking horse — very effective.

May 25, 2009 at 11:48 pm

This one was so fun to do. There are so many unusual settings to explore–stay tuned!

May 24, 2009 at 6:08 pm

You gals cover some of the greatest topics!!! Hope you can get these out in book form soon or eventually! Keep up the good work!

May 24, 2009 at 7:21 am

I can hear the wind moaning around corners…whhoooooooooowhoooooo.

May 24, 2009 at 7:14 am

Fantastic! Thanks!

May 23, 2009 at 4:09 pm

Gives me the shivers too. =)

May 23, 2009 at 1:35 pm

Gives me shivers just reading it. 😉

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The Haunted House

Student model print.

Fifth-grader Tommy includes lots of details in a story that leads up to a surprise ending.

Have you ever been trick-or-treating when you came upon an old house and wanted to explore it? Well, I’ll tell you a story about five kids, Jake, Zach, John, Bob, and Sean, who did it.

They were trick-or-treating in their neighborhood, going door-to-door, when they came upon an old house. “Let's go in,” Sean said. Everybody said they would.

They started up the walk. The grass was overgrown, and there were a couple of broken windows. They got to the door, and it opened by itself. They went inside. They had flashlights with them, so they turned them on. The house was covered in cobwebs.

They saw a sign that said, “Beware,” and it was pointing up to the second floor. They decided to go upstairs. When they got there, they saw a hallway with three rooms. One room had an old bed and a dresser. The second room was a bathroom. The third room was a sitting room.

When they entered the third room, someone said, “Hello.” All the boys screamed and ran downstairs.

When they were at the door, the voice said, “Don’t you guys want some candy?” They turned around and saw a man with candy standing in the hallway.

They ran as fast as they could to Bob’s house. When they got there, they described the man to Bob’s mom. She said, “That sounds like Mr. Craig. He lived there when I was a kid, but he died 30 years ago.”

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LAFS.4.RL.1.1
110.6.b.8.A
LAFS.4.RL.1.2
110.6.b.8.B
LAFS.4.RL.1.3
LAFS.4.RL.2.4
LAFS.4.RL.2.5
LAFS.4.RL.4.10
110.7.b.8.A
110.7.b.7.C
LAFS.5.RL.1.1
LAFS.5.RL.1.2
110.7.b.10.D
LAFS.5.RL.2.4
110.7.b.6.E
LAFS.5.RL.2.5
LAFS.5.RL.4.10
110.6.b.11.B
110.6.b.12.A
LAFS.4.W.1.3
110.6.b.11.B.i
110.6.b.11.B.ii
110.7.b.12.A
LAFS.5.W.1.3
110.7.b.11.B.i
110.7.b.11.B.ii

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English Essay/Paragraph/Speech on ‘The Haunted House’ for Kids and Students for Class 8, 9, 10, Class 12 and Graduation Examination

The Haunted House

Everyone says that the old house at the end of the road is haunted. It used to be the residence of a rich family but now none of them stays there. So the house is vacant and uncared and the compound is filled with over-grown weed and grass.

One evening, me and my friend Varun bravely entered the house and prepared to spend the night there. We brought along a powerful torchlight, two sleeping-bags, some food, drinks, and a portable stereo set. We sat on our sleeping-bags and listened to our favorite music. The darkness was oppressive and there was a strange soft whining noise coming from upstairs.

We were scared and could not dare to go up and investigate about the noise. Varun hurried out of his sleeping-bags and switched on the torchlight.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash from upstairs and the moans turned to screams. We screamed, too, and ran out of the house. The hair on the back of my head stood on end for hours afterwards. After that we never dared to go back into’ the house, net even in daytime. The next day, my uncle had to go and retrieve the things we had left behind there.

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The Story Of A Haunted House

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A Haunted House

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Narrative Writing Prompt - The Haunted House

This narrative writing prompt is sure to engage the curiosity of your students during writing in English. Children love a good, scary story! Now they have the chance to write one themselves. Will their stories from the perspective of a scared protagonist who is trying to retrieve something from a haunted house? Perhaps the main character has been dared to go into a haunted house? Maybe the main character is someone living inside of the haunted house, a lost soul from the past? There are copious amounts of ideas that can come from this story writing prompt. Encourage your students to end their scary story with a twist! It’s the perfect writing prompt for it.

Story Starter

Sarah stood on the overgrown lawn, grass tickling her knees and weeds grabbing at her scuffed Converse. The house loomed over her, casting a dark shadow over her small face. The house seemed to sway in the summer nights breeze, all of its rotting features humming with content. It’s alive; she thought, and nobody could change her mind about that. Sarah breathed in deeply, the air catching down her throat. She choked and doubled over coughing. When it was over after what felt like forever, she darted her eyes praying that nothing had heard her. Her head swivelled from left to right, the dark street etching down either side in suburban houses all identical, the only light, the flickering of the dimly lit streetlamps. She sighed softly, letting out puff of air.

Narrative Writing Example

This narrative writing example will have your students on the edge of their seat. Sarah begins her short adventure by standing in front of a haunted house. The author uses descriptive language perfectly to set the scene and keeps the reader engaged throughout. It’s an excellent story to show your students. Get them highlight 3-4 descriptive sentences that they might want to use in their writing. Also, get them to identify any figurative language, such as metaphors and personification. If they can identify figurative language, they’re more likely to use it in their own writing.

Writing Tip

Remember to ‘show don’t tell’ when you’re writing. Instead of writing “Tom was cold”, write “A cold breeze ran down Tom’s spine and shivers engulfed his aching body”. This way, readers are able to create vivid images in their mind and make the inference that Tom is cold. If you use this writing strategic throughout your text, your writing will be more engaging for readers!

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This Personification lesson includes a PowerPoint with examples, activities and a worksheet.

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The signs were loud and clear. The warnings had echoed through time, and yet my people refused to listen.

Persuasive writing prompt - School Uniforms

Her skin beamed red as adrenaline rushed through her veins. Jendi could feel her new powers surging through her body. Every 5 years, the Gods gifted her with new powers which she used to protect the planet.

Since discovering the magical mask, Alexandra’s life had changed drastically. The mask gave her a special power. A power that she used to save lives.

The Book in The Attic

Sarah’s eyes widened as her grandfather’s book began to sparkle. A careless visit to the attic was about to turn into an adventure. She leaned forward…

The Magical Orb

The location of the orb appeared to Brian in a dream. Now he was standing in front of it without a clue of how to use it. Brian approached the orb with caution…

The Little Magician

Jack was a fan of all things magic, but what he created was shocking. He had managed to craft a real wand! A wand in the hand of an 8 year old was sure to have dire consequences.

Amy had seen the same sight for 5 years. Every full moon, at midnight, a witch would fly across the moon with her cat. This full moon was different. The witch never came. Instead, as the clock struck twelve, she heard a cackle at her front door.

House on The Corner

Dazed and confused, Sandy awoke to the sound of mumbles. She was bound by rope and was covered in dust. Her heart began to beat rapidly as she realized where she was and what had happened.

Princess Arrow

With her kingdom behind her, the princess moved forward. Her evil ambitions were on display. She planned to take over all of the kingdoms in the land, one by one. “Move forward!” she roared to her troops.

Sam stopped panicking. He had come to the realization that his life was over. Floating in the open ocean for over 12 hours with no sign of help had taken away his hope. However, as the blue moon rose, Sam felt something, a kind of energy surge from the moon.

Hooded Figure

He stood in the street, staring at the house. The hooded figure did not flinch. His dark cloak covered his entire body and was symbolic of the man himself. Dark energy pulsed through his veins. He had one mission in life…

Her light hair cascaded down her shoulders as she moved back and forth. The stick that she wielded was filled with power and evil. Her long nose and deep black eyes were only seen in nightmares. She was, after all, the keep of souls.

The Mission

Sam had one mission, to find his brother. He had been missing for 185 days and hope was fading. Sam’s determination had not faded. Alone in his mission, he had to succeed.

The Family Curse

The forest offered no safety from the nightmares. The loud ringing of bells and an almost too angelic voice hummed harshly in his ears, as if someone was using cymbals on his head. He felt his entire body vibrate; a low shiver ran down his spine.

Time Travel

Her heart beat uncontrollably as her time machine whirred in the background. Jenny’s invention had finally come to life and now was the time to test it. “200 years ago should do it,” she muttered to herself.

A New World

Sarah was afraid of her new home. There were things that were only found in books. She had to escape.

New Friends

The news was wild with information about the alien “invasion”. Jack watched in awe. “They have come in peace, they have come in peace!” repeated the news broadcaster.

A New Journey

It was finally Ben’s time to go. He had been contacted 5 years ago about moving to a new planet with an alien species. Ben had been chosen and was ready for the journey.

Space Explorer

Jack gasped for air, clinging onto life. His mission to establish a colony on Mars was running smoothly until his helmet cracked in a sandstorm. Now, his life and the mission was about to end.

The Takeover

First the lights came and then the sky evolved. Human curiosity changed to fear and anxiety. One spaceship turned to thousands, hovering above the earth. For days they didn’t move, just sat in the purple sky.

Green Machine

His scaly exterior was tough and the power he possessed was destructive. The “Green Machine” had already taken over 2 continents and he was on in way to ours.

Lost in Space

Vera looked up at the darkness of the sky. Hope had faded as this was not her sky. Lost and stranded on another planet meant certain death for Vera…

Bella’s life seemed normal, but it was far from it. She went to school, had friends and played sport on the weekend. The only strange thing was…she was from the past, living in the future.

His mission to explore Mars had failed. Space cat was now floating into the abyss. However, This extraordinary cat, with a human sized brain, had a plan…

The location was a secret and the employees were…odd. Area 51 was rumored to be hiding an alien. Sandy decided it was her mission to find the location and rescue the alien.

Mr Universe

Mr Universe used his powers to protect the planets in our solar system. His super strength and speed stopped all invasions from enemies only found in nightmares. Until one day, he met his match…

A Changed World

The world had changed after the asteroid. The planets had moved and the position of the Sun made life challenging. It felt like life on our planet was heading towards extinction.

Pat was the best astronaut in the world, but he was in trouble. His breathing was heavy as his eyes scanned the area. Pat’s rope to the ship had broken and his chance of survival was fading.

What's That?

Tom’s chance of survival was slim. He lay flat on his back, trappeed by an asteroid. It seem as if the sky was falling with rock parts landing all around him.

Mystery Island

The plane had crashed 3 weeks ago. 20 of us were still alive, fighting for survival. Strange noises echoed across the mysterious island. Survival seemed futile.

After a radioactive explosion, the town of Scarlet had been abandoned and was now a ghost town. 20 years had now passed, and creatures began to emerge out of the radioactive city…

The Talking Owl

“You’re going the wrong way,” whispered a voice. “You’re in grave danger,” it continued. Peter looked up to see an owl…a talking owl…

Lonely Powers

Banksy wanted to use her powers, but she was afraid. Banksy didn’t want to hurt anyone and she knew that her powers were strong.

House on The Hill

“There’s no way out!” screamed Lexi. The gates had closed and they were trapped at the house on the hill. The doors opened and a tall figured emerged.

Magic Hands

I hovered my hands over her broken leg. It usually took 20 seconds to heal the bone completely. Mary winced in pain as the bone mended. I pulled my hands back and smiled at Mary. “Magic hands,” she whispered.

Moving Houses

It was time for Sam’s family to move again. Every year before Christmas, they would prepare their land and head to a new location. It was their way of keeping safe from the warlocks.

Our entry was rough, but we finally made it to Venus. The air was hot and thick. Sweat filled my suit and my glass cover began to fog up. What was on this strange planet?

The Blizzard

This was the end. The blizzard had all but consumed us. We huddled together, ready to die.

The Acquaintance

A single woman protected our village. No one really knew her. All we knew is that when her father was killed, she mysteriously moved to the hills and watched over us.

Liz’s heart was trying to beat out of her chest, but she refused to let it. She had to get everyone out, even if it would drain her. “Help!” cried the voices.

Sweat ran through Pete’s fingers as he hung on for dear life. Thousands watched on in horror. Pete’s tight rope act had gone horribly wrong.

A Time in Space

Time was running out and Sarah had to get back through the space gate. Her mission was complete, but she was about to be stranded in space.

Magic Mountain

On Terry’s 14th birthday, she made her way up Magic Mountain. That was the age that you could journey up the mountain and claim your one wish, anything you desired.

The Invention

It was the greatest invention of all time and no one had a clue. Yensen held it up to the light and admired his creation. “What a magnificent beauty you are,” he whispered.

Hot Air Adventure

Their hot air balloon dropped around 100m in less than 3 seconds! Peter and Simon, brothers, looked at each other with panic in their eyes.

As their boats drifted on to the shore, Sam ran back to his village. His heart racing and his mind frantic. “They’re here, the pirates are here!” he screamed.

Tom was no ordinary boy. He finished high school at the age of 7 and had a degree from Harvard by 10. There was only one problem…he wasn’t human.

The Good Witch

Alexia was different from her four sisters, and she was the strongest of them all. They chose evil and she chose good. But now she was in trouble, 3 verse 1 was going to be tricky…

Stone walls and metal bars surrounded Samson. His mind remained calm. The chains that bound him were no match. He had been trained as a ninja from the age of 3.

The Magic of The Lake

It shimmered in the beautiful sunlight and sat between the tallest mountains. It’s temperature never changed, nor did its majestic blue. It was the lake that healed anyone who enetered.

Min couldn’t believe his eyes. His dog had just been eaten by a T-Rex. ‘Where am I?’ he thought. ‘This doesn’t look like home’.

Narrative writing prompt - Strange Forest

The Strange Forest

Stella and her sister had given up. They were lost in the strangest forest with no way home, until…they came across an odd shoe house…

The Cauldron

There it was, just sitting. The cauldron that they had been searching for. 6 Long years it had escaped them, but now it was within their grasp…

The Mad Scientist

“I’m not crazy,” whispered Bill as he stared down at his creation. It was a tiny little frankenstein…a horrible monster….

The Compass

Tundi’s eye’s lit up as she held the compass. “So this will lead me to the treasure, huh?” she mumbled to herself. Her heart began to race.

The Magic Bridge

The bridge seemed to shimmer in the light and its stone was etched with intricate designs. Maya took the first step on to the magic bridge found on the edge of town.

Santa's Journey

Trapped in the mountains with no way of fixing his sleigh, Santa was stuck and all alone. A cold shiver ran down his spine and the icy fingers of the wind caressed his chubby cheeks.

The Universe

While exploring the forest, Alex stumbled upon an interesting box. He opened it to find an earth shaped orb that had a luminous glow to it.

Man in The Woods

For 13 years, there lived a man in the woods. He had no house and no family. The woods were his home, but that was about to change…

The Millionaire

The millionaire who lived in the mansion on the edge of town never came out of his house. Until one day, the door opened and out stepped an old, tired man…

Found Money

What would you do if you found a million dollars in your backyard? Well, that’s exactly what happened to me and my friend, Alex.

There was once a giant who lived in a small town. He was a lonely giant because he didn’t have any friends, until one day when things changed.

The Long Journey

Audacious and kind, Oliver, the young wizard wondered through his local village in great desperation. He had to find his lost spell book.

The Dragon's Egg

Patrick held on to the egg with a tight grip. The owner of the egg soared above, screeching for its baby.

The Shining Globe

Jani looked left and right and ran for her life. Her strawberry blonde hair whipped in the wind as silence enveloped the area.

Elephant Love

The village was under attack and Sami was in trouble. Her family had died and she had no hope. In the distance, she spotted something.

The Old Hut

An old hut sat on the edge of the forest. Many thought it was abandoned, but there seemed to some life to it. One day, Jackson noticed the door was slightly open…

All was lost. The ship was on fire and the dragons still roamed above. “Jump on its back!” cried Mary.

The files would take another 5 minutes to download. After months of searching, she was just minutes away from getting the classified information she needed to free her brother.

Fork in The Path

It had to be a trick. One path was dark and the other was so bright. Sami had to decide, time was running out. “The dark one!” she whispered.

Another World

There it was, the door that was supposed to be a myth. It was glowing and a strange sound was coming from it. He approached it with caution.

The Magic Book

Arnie moved towards the book slowly, knowing the danger it possessed. She paused for a second, “Is this a good idea?” she mumbled.

The Mysterious Library

The shelves had a light glow, and the books seemed to talk to Peter. Each of them calling for him to open them, but he knew that would be a mistake.

Sandy lay flat on her back, staring up at the night sky. Trapped in a pit was not how she wanted to spend her birthday. She could sense that the rain was coming

Winter's Ghost

“There’s no such thing as the Winter’s Ghost!” exclaimed her mother. Just then, the window flew open. They couldn’t believe their eyes…

The Monster

We slowly opened the door and peeked through with caution. The monster was sitting there as expected. “Now!” Jack screamed.

We hid in the basement as the storm raged on. We were one of the last families left in town. We had decided to stay, a choice we began to regret.

The Haunted House

Sarah stood in the overgrown lawn with grass tickling her knees. The haunted house seemed to sway in the summer breeze. It was tall and daunting.

Mary noticed something different in the sky. There seemed to be a message written in the stars. “R…U…N” it read.

“We have to go now!” Adelaide shouted at the top of her lungs. The water continued to rise and there seemed to only be one way out.

Peter had a decision to make. Jump into the portal and risk everything, or turn and walk away. Sweat ran down his forehead as the Sun cast a long shadow behind him. He clenched his fist and walked forward…

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The Haunted House Story Writing For Kids

Children love to read ghost stories and this amazing story about a haunted house should be a great addition to their story collection.

Read the story about a family that moves into a house that is supposed to be haunted.

It is a story that is about facing the facts and destroying myths.

Haunted Story In English

Kids, do you believe in ghosts? Do you think that monsters and spirits exist? Well, if not then you will be correct. Sometimes, we might come across things that people think are haunted. But it is up to us and our beliefs that matter in that case. This is an interesting story about a young boy who comes to live in a supposedly haunted house. Do you want to know what happens next in the story? Does he get to see any ghosts in the house? Was the house actually haunted? Well, read the haunted house story till the end and you will find out.

Introduction to the Short Story on Haunted House

There was a young boy named Peter who was very excited that day. Finally, he was going to move in with his parents to a new house. All his things were packed and he was waiting for the car to arrive. This new house was very big and grand. It had all the luxuries that one would want from a big house. The house also had a big backyard where Peter could play with his friends. Peter was extremely glad to be going to the new house.

The haunted house

Peter Comes to the New House

When the family arrived to live at their new house, the neighbours warned them that the house was haunted. But the family didn’t believe the people and still moved into the house. Peter was very excited to meet his new friends and play with them. But he saw that no one would come to the house.

Everyone thought that the house was haunted and hence they stayed far away from it. Peter was sad about the fact that his friends wouldn’t play with him but his mother made him understand that people are just scared. Once they realize that the house is not actually haunted, they will come to play with Peter. So, Peter agreed to wait.

Is There A Ghost in the House?

One night when Peter is sleeping, he heard a noise coming from the attic. The sound was very strange and it felt like someone was moving there. Peter got really scared and screamed for help. He was worried that the ghost had arrived and would harm him. Hearing Peter’s screams, his parents rushed into the room. Shivering with fear, Peter said that he heard the ghost in the attic. Now he was completely sure that the house was haunted. So, to calm him down, Peter’s father went to check the attic. Do you know what happened next in the Haunted story in English?

The Ghost Reveals Itself

When Peter’s father climbed up to the attic to check whether there is a ghost or not, he found something very surprising. A mouse was running in the attic from here and there. The rustling sound was from the mouse itself.

The Mouse in the Attic

When Peter saw the mouse run, he laughed loudly. For a moment, he had thought that there was a ghost in the house. Peter’s parents then made him understand that there is no such thing as ghosts.

The Haunted House Story Summary for Kids

Children can learn a lot from the haunted house story writing . This story will help them understand that the existence of ghosts is simply a myth and we shouldn’t believe in these things. The boy, Peter almost believes that there is a ghost in the house but it turns out to be just a mouse. So, children can read the story and understand that ghosts don’t exist.

FAQs on The Haunted House Story Writing For Kids

1. Why was Peter excited?

According to the haunted house story PDF , Peter was a young boy who was finally going to move into a new house with his family. He was excited because the new house was quite large and had a backyard where he could play.

2. Why wouldn’t anyone play with Peter in his new house?

Every single one of Petr’s friends thought that the house was haunted. So, they decided to stay far from it. That is why no one came to Peter’s house to play with him.

3. What made Peter scream for help?

At night when Peter was sleeping in his room, he heard a very strange sound coming from the attic. Peter thought that it was the ghost of the house and screamed for help.

60 Short Middle Grade Books That Kids Will Love

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Recently, I tweeted about the long lengths of recently published middle grade books . The tweet went viral, and I was invited to write for Publisher’s Weekly to expand on my concerns. My essay shared my opinion about too many long middle grade books at a time when kids are reading less and middle grade books sales are decreasing. I said that while we need both short and long books, right now, we need MORE short middle grade books to get our growing readers reading; books around 200 pages.

Why? Because the majority of children aren’t excited about reading 400-page middle grade books! Shorter books appeal to more readers for a variety of reasons. First, the size looks manageable, and second, the writing is generally tighter and better-paced than the longer counterparts.

Why else am I calling for shorter books? Attention spans are getting shorter. In addition, kids want the satisfaction of finishing a book in a timely manner. (Not after four months!) Short books work for children’s decreasing attention spans and the goal to read more books.

Teachers, librarians, and parents want this, too. Short books mean that kids can read more books in a variety of genres. Shorter books also allow for rereading books for deeper learning purposes and enjoyment.

And as a book reviewer, I am tiring of long, wordy books that get sluggish in the middle. (Most kids don’t want books like this either.)

So without further ado, here are SHORT, well-written (fictional) middle grade books you’ll want to share with your readers, ages 9 to 12. I hope you find something wonderful to read next!

Please leave a comment if you have more book ideas to add to this list!

Oh, and one last thing — don’t forget about nonfiction books and novels in verse. I didn’t include either on this list because they deserve book lists of their own. So here are 25 middle grade novels in verse you don’t want to miss! And here is a list of engaging but short nonfiction books .

Happy reading!

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50 Short Middle Grade Books Kids Will Love

Legends of Lotus Island: The Guardian Test by Christina Soontornvat, illustrated by Kevin Hong 160 pages FANTASY (series) Plum is thrilled with the opportunity to go to a Guardian school where she hopes she’ll turn into a Guardian to protect the natural world. At the Academy, she struggles to focus; she worries that she’ll never get her animal bond like the other students. But she learns how to fight, talk to animals, and hopes she can prove herself. Readers will love the cool world-building, the captivating illustrations, and the engaging story!

The Magical Reality of Nadia by Bassem Youssef and Catherine R. Daly, illustrated by Douglas Holgate 176 pages MAGICAL REALISM (series) Nadia unexpectedly discovers an ancient Egyptian teacher (Titi) trapped in her hippo amulet. He comes out onto a paper and TALKS! Tita helps Nadia with problems she faces at school, including the new kid who is rude and prejudiced about her Egyptian culture. Totally wonderful, heartfelt, and relatable– don’t miss this new series!

Plague Thieves written by Caroline Fernandez HISTORICAL FICTION / SHORT MIDDLE GRADE 200 pages If you’re like me and you love Thieves essential oil and historical fiction, then you will LOVE this fascinating historical fiction story about the origin of Thieves during the Bubonic Plague in London . Rose’s dad owns a spice shop in London in 1665, but he and her mom suddenly die of the plague. Her dad gives Rose instructions to make a spice and oil blend that will protect Rose and her older brother. He sends them into the streets to steal and survive, burning their building as to not spread the disease. Rose is abandoned by her gambling addict brother and she lives under a bridge with other street kids– but she’s hunted because adults are desperate to get their hands on her so-called cure. It’s a harrowing time of hunger, suspicion, survival, and death, but the engaging story is written in an age-appropriate way and recommend it for 9 to 12 year olds.

Boo Hag Flex written by Justina Ireland SCARY / SHORT MIDDLE GRADE 208 pages In a story within a story, after Tasha’s mom dies, she’s sent to stay with her grandmother and deadbeat dad. Mostly Tasha hangs out with her new friend Ellie. The girls soon realize that a boo hag is killing the old folks at the trailer park and Tasha’s grandmother is next. They read in a hoodoo legends book how to stop the boo hag but they could never imagine who the boo hag is. Tasha will need her wits and bravery to save her grandmother and stop the murderous creature trying to live forever. Thankfully, this was not as scary as I thought it would be (I did save if for daytime reading) but still is a bit creepy. It’s a quick read with an interesting plot and believable, likable characters.

Kingdom Riders is created by Shannon Eric Denton and Marcus To FANTASY GRAPHIC NOVEL / SHORT MIDDLE GRADE 208 pages The exquisite illustrations in this exciting fantasy adventure graphic novel feel cinematic. The story is about a poor, low-born girl named Kayla who wants to earn enough money to buy her best friend’s freedom. She and her frog steed enter a race that earns enough money to get her friend out of servitude and earns the a spot on a team for the kingdom’s race to the death. Filled with unique magic, danger and betrayal, cool cretures, and a sinister ruler, this is a must-read epic fantasy starring a heroic main character whose kindness toward others shocks the kingdom and inspires her team.

The Terrible Two by Mac Barnett and Jory John, illustrated by Kevin Cornell 224 pages HUMOR (series) If you like funny books , you’ll LOVE these books! Plus, in this first book, you’ll learn valuable cow trivia. But, it’s mostly the hilarious adventure of two pranksters who start as rivals but eventually work together to pull off the biggest prank of all time — a prank that will ensure they get April Fool’s Day off from school.

Once Upon a Tim by Stuart Gibbs 160 pages FANTASY (series) Hilarious, illustrated, and perfect for fantasy and adventure fans! Tim and his sister Belinda are peasants who hope to improve their lot in life, so they sign up as knights for a not-very-brave prince and his so-called magician sidekick. Helpful foreshadowing, a strong narrative voice, humor throughout, helpful life lessons from the princess Belinda about the patriarchy, and great vocabulary words (which are helpfully indicated so your parents will know the IQ benefits) add up to a stellar start for this new series.

Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Skottie Young 128 pages HUMOR If you like quirky humor, then this is your perfect book. Because you will never believe what happens when the kids’ father goes out to get more milk. He doesn’t even get the milk, but he does run into pirates, aliens, and all sorts of incredible things! It’s totally hilarious and quite short–which makes for a great reading option — and read aloud choice.

Bob by Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead 208 pages MAGICAL REALISM In the sweet story of friendship, 10-year-old Livy meets Bob, a green zombie-looking monster wearing a chicken costume living in the closet at her grandma’s house. He’s been waiting for her to return for the last five years. The problem is that Livy can’t remember him at all. Even when she leaves the house for an errand, she forgets him again. But she’s determined to help Bob find his way back home. Wherever that may be. So heartwarming!

Snow & Rose by Emily Winfield Martin 224 pages FANTASY Snow and Rose are two sisters who live with their mother live in the woods where their father disappeared. The girls befriend both a young boy from a mushrooming family and a large bear. Then danger arrives with a Huntsman hunting the bear and a sinister Little Man seeking to enchant or kill them. Surprisingly, this is a MARVELOUS Grimm story with a happy ending!

Thirst by Varsha Bajaj 192 pages REALISTIC Set in Mumbi, this is a deftly narrated, hope-filled story of the inequities around water with themes of advocacy, education, and community. 12-year-old Minni’s community has access to water only a few hours per day with severe water shortages. When Minni is forced to leave school to work as a maid, she sees the water (and other) iniquity first-hand and discovers that the family’s dad is the water mafia boss. Her decision and action to report him makes a difference — and gives us hope that one person can make a difference.

Ghost by Jason Reynolds 192 pages REALISTIC (series) Ghost accidentally gets on a track team, and it’s life-changing. His coach becomes a mentor and father figure who pushes Ghost to take responsibility for his mistakes (stealing sneakers) and to start dealing with the ghosts of his past. Well written and hopeful about growing up and growing into yourself.

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman 128 pages MYTHOLOGY If your child hasn’t learned about Norse mythology , this will be a great intro! To end the long winter, Odd must journey to find Asgard, a city under siege from the Frost Giants. It’s a wonderful, nail-biting adventure packaged in a short middle grade book.

The Last Kids on Earth by Max Brallier, illustrated by Douglas Colgate 240 pages SCI-FI / HUMOR (series) It’s the end of the world! Jack and his best friend Quint live in an upgraded, well-defended treehouse. Currently, their plans only include rescuing June (who can rescue herself) and fighting zombies. Illustrations throughout make this even more appealing to read and imagine. Tons of fun! BOXED SET HERE

Mythics: Marina and the Kraken written by Lauren Magaziner, illustrated by Mirelle Ortega FANTASY 144 pages (lower middle-grade ages 7 – 10) What an exciting start to what is sure to be a smash-hit series of adventure, girl power, and mythical creatures! When Marina doesn’t get matched with a familiar like the other kids, she and four other 10-year-old girls discover their familiars aren’t everyday animals but mythical creatures and together, they’re destined to save Terrafamiliar. The girls start their search by boat to look for Marian’s familiar. But they’re chased by a golden jumpsuit lady who wants to steal their mythical powers. As they evade their pursuer, Marina discovers that her familiar is a kraken– a kraken who accidentally capsizes their ship. Now she and her kraken must save her friends from drowning and escape the sinister lady.

Haru Zombie Dog Hero by Ellen Oh 176 pages PARANORMAL Edge-of-your-seat writing and action, the bond between a dog and boy (and family) grounds this paranormal adventure in love even though it’s also about evil scientists and zombies! Luke loves his dog, Haru, more than anything. So he’s devastated when their family’s mean landlord gets Haru taken away by the pound. But instead of going to the pound, Haru is sent to a sinister laboratory where scientists experiment on dogs. (This part is hard to read for us animal lovers — but hang in there, Haru will be okay.) Instead of dying like the other dogs, Haru wakes up changed. Violent. A stray cat named Penelope reminds Haru of his people, which helps his impulses. Then, the other more violent zombie dogs escape the lab — and Haru knows he must protect his people no matter what!

The Enchanted Life of Valentina Mejía by Alexandra Alessendri 224 pages MYTHOLOGICAL When their papi gets stuck in a crevasse after an earthquake, Valentine and her brother Julián go for help but they accidentally enter another world. In this world, the Queen hates humans since her son was stolen by them so she sealed the portals so the kids can’t get back to their world. The siblings journey to the Queen’s castle to convince her to unseal the portals. Readers will love the magic and excitement in this Colombian mythological adventure with talking animals, a one-legged vampire, a helpful water dragon, new friends, and a surprising plot twist!

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle 256 pages SCI-FI (series) A Wrinkle in Time is a remarkable, well-written adventure in space that deals with the overarching theme of good vs. evil. Meg and her brother, Charles Wallace, and friend, Calvin, leave Earth for space in order to find her scientist father who disappeared while researching tesseracts.

Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo 240 pages MAGICAL REALISM Quirky and delightful, this is the tale of a girl named Flora who rescues a squirrel and keeps it as a friend . Together they experience the world in a unique, funny, and wonderful way and straighten it out, too — especially Flora’s mother.

Restart by Gordon Korman 256 pages REALISTIC After a head injury, Chase has no memory. But he starts to get clues about his personality when his little sister is scared of him and his two best friends act like it’s funny to torment other kids. Just what kind of person was he? Chase doesn’t think he likes what he’s learning about himself. Now he’ll have to decide what kind of person he wants to be going forward. It’s a thought-provoking novel that will challenge kids to consider how their behavior influences the way other people perceive them.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar 163 pages FUNNY Old school humor at its best! These short middle grade humorous book series describe a wacky school with crazy teachers and even crazier students and events. BOX SET

Garvey’s Choice by Nikki Grimes (Also read Garvey’s Choice: The Graphic Novel written by Nikki Grimes , art by Theodore Taylor III) 120 pages REALISTIC Grimes wrote this entire book in tanka poem. The story is so engaging that you don’t even notice it’s written this way. Garvey wants to connect to his father, but it seems like the chasm is too big. Garvey likes reading and chess, while his father likes sports. But when Garvey finds an interest in music, will that be the bridge that connects him to his dad? I loved this painful, sweet story of redemption and belonging!

What Lane? by Torrey Maldonado 144 pages REALISTIC Short and fast-paced, this is the story of a boy who learns to think for himself instead of being influenced by friends . In addition, Stephen notices he’s living in a world that treats him differently than his white friends. Stephen concludes that he gets to decide what lane he’s in– and that the world and his peers don’t get to choose his lane.

Cress Watercress by Gregory Maguire, illustrated by David Litchfield 244 pages ANIMAL FICTION With delicious figurative language and deliberate word choice, I adore everything about this beautiful story about family, community, grief, and stories. Cress and her family leave their cozy burrow after the death of her father. They move to the Broken Arms oak tree ruled by a cranky Owl with a noisy neighbor squirrel family. Cress navigates her new environment, the natural world, and the stories around her, all of which help her understand her inner world, especially how grief waxes and wanes like the moon’s cycles. Filled with immensely lovable characters, a gentle storyline of adventure and discovery, and lavish illustrations. (Read my interview with Gregory Maguire here .)

How to Stay Invisible by Maggie C. Rudd 240 pages (ages 10+) REALISTIC A heartbreaking and hopeful survival story . Raymond’s neglectful parents abandon him completely so he takes his dog Rosie, and they set up camp in the woods behind his middle school. There, he survives on his own, foraging in dumpsters and fishing for food as he continues to attend school. When a playful coyote hurts Rosie, he meets an old man who helps them both — which is especially significant because it’s over the Christmas break when he can’t get dumpster food from school. Raymond doesn’t want to tell anyone, including the old man or his two friends at school, what he’s surviving, but the truth comes out when another boy discovers his campsite and a snake bite almost kills him. HOW TO STAY INVISIBLE is a powerful story of grit, survival, and longing for family.

Fenway and Hattie by Victoria J. Coe 176 pages ANIMAL FICTION Narrated by Fenway, a young Jack Russell terrier, Fenway isn’t happy that his best buddy, a human girl named Hattie, isn’t playing with him anymore. Fenway’s perspective is hilarious — and will encourage readers to make inferences to figure out what’s going on.

Gossamer Summer by H.M. Bouwman 192 pages MAGICAL REALISM Since her grandmother died, Jojo has lost the magic of the stories she told her three sisters. Now at her grandmother’s house, unsupervised because their mom is on deadline, Jojo, her sisters, and their new neighbor see a muddy fairy that seemingly stepped out of a previous Jojo story. The fairy needs their help, so they enter fairyland and see bone birds, the same birds Jojo made up in another story. Grumpy, sad Jojo is forced to reckon with her grief so she can find a way to save the fairies. If you love stories with tight sister bonds, imaginative play adventures, and the power of stories, read this book next.

Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn 196 pages SCARY Well-written and scary! Molly and Michael’s new step-sister Heather befriend a sinister ghost-child named Helen, but Helen influences Heather toward malevolent actions. Building in suspense little by little, readers will be freaked out by her creepy warnings that when Helen comes, they will get what they deserve…YIKES!

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park 128 pages BIOGRAPHY / CURRENT EVENTS This is the amazing & powerful biography of a boy with courage and hope who walked across Africa to find a better life. We also learn the story of an African village for whom water is a two-hour walk and how the boy, now a man, builds a well for the village.

Killer Species by Michael P. Spradlin 240 pages ADVENTURE /SCI-FI (series) Get ready for a fast-paced adventure series about a mad scientist who creates a hybrid crocodile-dinosaur-bird killer creature to stop visitors from entering the Everglades. Emmet and his father arrive to investigate but when his father is kidnapped, Emmet and his friend, Calvin, know it’s up to them to find where the kidnapper is holding Emmet’s father. GREAT for reluctant readers — and anyone who loves an action-packed sci-fi mystery!

The Giver by Lois Lowry 240 pages SCI-FI (series) Set in a dystopian society, this Newbery medal winner grabs your attention and keeps it until the end. What is going on in this strictly controlled community? When Jonas is assigned his job as “Receiver of Memory” he learns just how much the government has suppressed from the people’s knowledge, not to mention that they’re giving pills meant to control people’s behavior and that they murder so-called defective babies and older people. When his foster baby brother is up to be killed, Jonas must decide how he will save them both.

Gaby, Lost and Found by Angela Cervantes 224 pages REALISTIC Gaby’s mom is deported, and now Gaby lives with her disinterested, neglectful father who forgets to feed her. Gaby’s only solace is in the animal shelter where she volunteers. Her hope is that when her mom comes home, she’ll (series) have a real home again…and get to adopt a cat of her own.

Wishing Season by Anica Mrose Rissi 240 pages REALISTICish It’s Lily’s first summer vacation since her twin brother Anders died of cancer. But she still sees Anders in the woods, an overlap of their worlds, so she spends every day there with him — playing like they used to. But little by little, the overlap is shrinking, and she’s trying to map it so she can get it back. Only Anders wants her to let it go so they can be together and play for whatever time they have left. Lily can’t let go of her panic that she’s losing Anders once and for all. Then her mom comes out of her room and starts to interact again, and Lily makes a new friend. Ultimately, as the overlap disappears, Lily learns to live with the weight and space of the pain of grief. It’s a heartbreaking and beautiful grief journey that will probably make you cry. (I did!)

Three Tasks for a Dragon by Eoin Colfer, illustrated by P.J. Lynch 112 pages FANTASY In a short middle grade novel that feels like high fantasy, our hero, Prince Lir, is tricked by his stepmom and stepbrother, a dark sorcerer, to forfeit his kingdom and embark on a quest to rescue a girl supposedly kidnapped by a dragon. Prince Lir uses his wits to avoid death by solving the dragon’s problems, like cave mold and a broken wing…and he stays alive. When the dragon fails to kill Prince Lir, the evil stepbrother arrives to do it himself. But the girl, Cethlenn, calls the wolfhounds to herself, and they save Lir just before the stepbrother dies, cursing Lir and the dragon and freezing Cethleen. Wonderfully complex language, vivid imagery, and lovely world-building, this book transports readers into a magical world of good versus evil. Will our heroes get a happy ending?

Everyday Angel by Victoria Schwab 198 pages REALISTIC (series) My daughter loved these sweet, short middle grade books about an angel named Aria who is earning her wings by helping girls who are struggling. In the first book, Aria helps Gabby. Gabby’s brother is hospitalized indefinitely and her mom is totally focused on her brother. It’s up to Aria to help Gabby at her new school and discover who she is. These are sweet, uplifting stories.

The Remarkable Rescue of Milkweed Meadow by Elaine Dimopoulos 192 pages ANIMAL ADVENTURE Butternut grows up in a close-knit rabbit family with lessons, rules, and storytelling. Although, when he ignores his family’s rules, everything changes for the better. Breaking the rules, Butternut befriends a talkative, kind-hearted robin, and a wounded fawn. When they discover coyote cubs without their mother, Butternut must decide how far his kindness toward others will extend — will it include predators? Metafiction elements about stories, plotting, and narrative twists add extra playful fun to this story as well. This is a sweet story of kindness, friendship, and community.

Wild Survival: Crocodile Rescue! by Melissa Cristina Marquez 240 pages ADVENTURE / ANIMAL RESCUE (series) Adrianna’s parents have an animal sanctuary and host an animal rescue that is moving from YouTube to television. On this trip, which is being filmed for the new show, the family goes to the mangrove forest of Cuba to help an injured crocodile. (The book is interspersed with factual information about all the wildlife they encounter!) Andriana messes up and gets grounded . Then she realizes something the grown-ups missed– that the rescued crocodile had a nest of eggs. She convinces her brother to help her save the eggs but they have a very close call with poachers, adding in suspense and a touch of danger. Engaging and interesting!

Dragon Vs. Unicorns: Kate the Chemist by Dr. Kate Biberdorf with Hillary Homzie 144 pages STEM (series) Exciting from the first page (a fire-breathing science experiment!!), these awesome new STEM chapter books for 4th graders are hard to put down. There are many things happening in Kate’s busy life every day. Whether she’s dealing with science, the school play, or friends, she’s a determined problem solver. When she tries to figure out who is sabotaging the school musical, it’s going to take all her skills to find the culprit.

Katerina Ballerina by Tiler Peck and Kyle Harris, illustrated by Sumiti Collina 192 pages REALISTIC (series) An earnest young girl loves ballet , but since her dad can’t afford lessons, she watches YouTube videos and practices in her room. After a disastrous talent shows Katerina’s dad her bravery, Katrina’s dad stretches the budget for lessons. It’s not a great start when she shows up in a red swimming suit and homemade tutu! But she makes a friend who helps her learn ballet terms and adjust to formal classes. As Katrina becomes more serious in her dancing, a competition reminds Katrina that she needs to balance both working hard and enjoying dancing.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay 224 pages MAGICAL REALISM Worth reading and rereading because there are layers of meaning, skillful writing, and a haunting truthtelling that resonates with us all. Ever since Conor’s mom got breast cancer, a wild, ancient tree monster visits Conor’s nightmares. The monster demands that Conor admit the truth about his mother, but Conor refuses. In the awake world, Conor moves in with his cold, unfriendly grandmother. The metaphorical nightmare echoes Conor’s real-world experiences as we journey with him into pain, loss, and eventually… healing. Astonishing and powerful, this is one of the best books I’ve EVER read.

The Sheep, the Rooster, and the Duck by Matt Phelan 240 pages HISTORICAL FICTION In this illustrated historical adventure, Benjamin Franklin’s young assistant Emile teams up with a sheep, a rooster, a duck, and a girl his age to thwart a dastardly villain and a sinister secret society who want to use one of Franklin’s inventions for nefarious purposes.

The Worst Class Trip Ever by Dave Barry 244 pages HUMOR (series) Hilarious. While on a class trip to Washington D.C., Wyatt and his best friend, Matt, are positive they’ve discovered a plot to blow up the White House. Wyatt’s crush, Suzanna, helps the friends make a plan, and as you can imagine, disaster and hilarity strike. I totally loved this book and know your kids (especially those who like humor) will as well.

Hands by Torrey Maldonado 144 pages CONTEMPORARY (SHORT) Trev thinks a lot about throwing hands. He starts learning how to box so he can protect his mom and sisters when his stepdad gets out of jail. But when his Uncle Larry, Quick and Uncle Frankie all ask him why and encourage him to use his brain, Trev sees how fighting could make things even more of a mess. And that if he wants to have a future, he can use his hands differently than fighting, including for his drawings. Maldonado writes shorter books so keep that in mind if your reader is looking for a short middle grade book.

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes 224 pages REALISTIC This book brilliantly addresses the very real issue of police violence against black children , but it does not vilify or stereotype. The author shows us the complexity of issues and the humanity of a police officer from the perspective of his daughter. After Jerome is shot by her father, he becomes a ghost. Sarah, the policeman’s daughter, is the only one who can see and talk to him except for the other ghost boys who were also killed in racially motivated violence. It’s a well-written, fast-paced read but one that is going to stay with you as you ponder the important topics it addresses.

Carry Me Home by Janet Fox 208 pages REALISTIC / HOMELESSNESS Lulu tries to take care of her little sister after their dad abandons them at the RV park where they’ve been living, making paper cranes and to bring her dad back. They go undiscovered by adults for several weeks, but one day when she misses her sister’s pick-up time, Social Services is called and the truth comes out. When it does, Lulu learns what community means, that adults aren’t the enemy and that her dad is never left them — he’s been a John Doe in the hospital.

100 Best Books for 6th Graders (Age 11 – 12) PATINA

Patina by Jason Reynolds 240 pages REALISTIC Patina’s anger sometimes gets the best of her but running helps. She’s mad about her dad dying, her mom’s legs being amputated, and her new school. When her track coach makes Patty work with her teammates in a relay, she’s forced to rely on them. And that changes things. Patina is a beautiful coming-of-age story that will tug at your emotions.

Louisiana’s Way Home by Kate DiCamillo 240 pages REALISTIC What a luminous, sparkling gem of a book with quirky, complex characters! Granny drags Louisiana out of bed in the middle of the night, insisting that they leave their home to confront the family curse. Not only does Louisiana not want to leave her friends and home, but things get even worse when Granny abandons Louisiana at a motel along the way. Forced to fend for herself, Louisiana figures out how to survive miles from home while worrying that the family curse has destined her for an unhappy life.

Black Brother Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes 240 pages REALISTIC Twins with very different skin colors, one whiter and one darker, are treated differently, most noticeable at their school. Donte is unfairly accused of something and when he tries to defend himself, the police are called, and he’s suspended from school. Not to mention, a popular guy at his school calls Donte “black brother” because he’s darker than his twin, Trey. Donte starts fencing to get revenge but as he trains, he finds that he’s smart, good at fencing, and courageous. If you think the world still isn’t racist and colorist, read this compelling story, and you’ll see that we still have a long way to go.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman 208 pages SCARY This book showcases Gaiman’s incredible storytelling ability. It’s about a girl, Coraline, who discovers an alternative reality identical to her own — same house, same mother and father — through a little door in her house. It’s a world that at first seems wonderful yet it becomes frightening when Coraline realizes she might not get to leave. Very creepy. (With a real haunted house!)

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome 112 pages HISTORICAL FICTION Langston is a former country boy who moves with his dad to Chicago in the 1940s after his mother passes. It’s a hard transition, yet when he discovers the library, he also discovers himself through the poetry of Langston Hughes. This is a beautiful story of redemption, healing, and the power of words.

Stef Soto, Taco Queen by Jennifer Torres 192 pages REALISTIC In a sweet story of figuring out who you are and taking pride in your culture, Stef Soto feels embarrassed by her dad’s taco truck, especially when he picks her up at school. But that changes when she learns that new city regulations could force her dad to sell the truck and get a different job. Filled with relatable middle school angst, Spanish words, Latinx culture, friendship troubles, and a loving family, this yummy read is a savory treat.

Bernice Buttman, Model Citizen by Niki Lenz 240 pages REALISTIC This genuinely sweet story about a girl who goes from a bully to a trying-to-do-better model citizen will make you laugh and warm your heart. When Bernice’s mom sends Bernice to live with her nun aunt, it’s a chance for this former bully without any friends except the town’s librarian, to reform her mean-spirited ways. Bernice does it — she makes a friend, becomes nicer, and finds an unexpected home with the nuns.

Number the Stars written by Lois Lowry 150 pages HISTORICAL FICTION Lowry does an excellent job at writing about the Danish resistance during WWII in a way that isn’t too scary or inappropriate for kids. Annemarie’s best friend hides Annemarie’s Jewish family . But tensions are high as the Nazis look everywhere for Jews or Jewish sympathizers. It’s challenging to hide, knowing that every day you could be caught and sent to a death camp. Finally, the family escapes to Sweden, where they will be safe from the Nazi death camps.

Link + Hud Heroes by a Hair by Jarrett Pumphrey and Jerome Pumphrey REALISTIC 240 pages (on the Short Books list and Illustrated MIddle-Grade book list ) Jarrett and Jerome are brothers with BIG imaginations. When they go on imaginary adventures, the format is told as a graphic novel. And they use their powers — to get rid of babysitters. Now they’re working on terrorizing their older babysitter, Ms. Joyce. But she’s smart–and saves their dad’s failing hair product business by turning it into a cleaning product. Kids will love the action, humor, and fun!

The Many Fortunes of Maya by Nicole D. Collier REALISTIC 240 pages (on my Short Books list) Because MJ adores her soccer-loving dad, she tries to be the best soccer player she can be while secretly still playing the flute. When her parents separate, it forces her on a summer journey of self-discovery at soccer camp where she tries too hard, in the swimming pool where she can’t swim well enough to go in the deep end, and at home with her family, including her music-teacher uncle. Eventually, MJ realizes that her dad will love her even if she picks the flute and not soccer– and that she can figure out what she likes and who she is without trying to please anyone except herself.

Hero Rescue Mission by Jennifer Li Shotz 192 pages ADVENTURE (series) In this Hero the police dog story, Ben’s dad is captured by escaped convicts. Ben and Hero set off to find Ben’s dad. Ben’s already injured and Hero’s too emotional to track the scent so they’re going to need help if they’re going to find his dad. Action from the first page to the last. Kids who love adventure and animals will love this book and series.

The Kicks Saving the Team by Alex Morgan 192 pages REALISTIC (series) Finally, a fantastic book for soccer girls ! If you have a soccer player in your house, and I think a LOT of you do, you’ll want to get your soccer lover this book –actually, buy her the entire series. Written by Olympic Gold Medalist and U.S. Soccer team member (among other things), Alex Morgan , it’s a realistic story of life, friendship, and playing soccer. Box set here .

Clayton Byrd Goes Underground by Rita Williams-Garcia 176 pages REALISTIC Clayton feels happiest with his grandfather, playing the blues. Unfortunately, his mom hates everything about the blues because it represents her father’s abandonment of the family. When Clayton’s beloved grandfather dies, and his mom takes his harmonica, Clayton ditches school to find his grandfather’s old band. Instead of musicians, he encounters a gang of boys and gets picked up by the police. This is a superbly crafted short middle grade book about grief, family, and forgiveness.

Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono, illustrated by Emily Balistrieri 208 pages FANTASY As a huge fan of the movie, I was so impressed with the book, too. This sweet story is about a 13-year-old half-witch named Kiki who leaves home for her year-long apprenticeship to a town. She flies with her cat and they find a seaside town that needs a witch. There, Kiki settles above a bakery and uses her wits and magic to endear herself to the town as a helpful delivery girl. Lovely, lovely, lovely!

Wish by Barbara O’Connor REALISTIC Charlie Rose does not want to live with her aunt and uncle or make friends with the friendly neighbor boy named Howard because she wants to go back to her mom. She relies on superstition and wishes, yet as the story progresses, Charlie’s relatives show her love and kindness, and the wishes start to seem less meaningful. After some time, Charlie sees that her mother is never going to change and begins to soften into her new family…what she always wanted. It’s a powerful story about finding love and belonging.

Rosetown by Cynthia Rylant 160 pages REALISTIC / WHOLESOME This is an atmospheric, small-town slice-of-life story in Rosetown, Indiana about 4th grader Flora’s life after her parent’s separation , her friendship with Yury, and reading in the used bookstore where her mom works. Flora’s struggling to adjust to two different homes but no matter where she goes, she brings her cat, Serenity. Flora does things like take piano lessons and help Yury with his dog training classes. The story ends with Flora’s parents working things out and starting their own business together.

The Jolly Regina: The Unintentional Adventures of the Bland Sisters by Kara LaReau, illustrated by Jen Hill 176 pages ADVENTURE / HUMOR (series) Even before their parents disappeared, Jaundice and Kale Bland loathed excitement and adventure. But their boring existence is rudely disrupted when they are kidnapped by all-female pirates. Who would have thought they could adapt to pirate life, search for their long-lost pirate parents, and return home with the exact same desire for boring as when they left? Funny and very entertaining!

The Loser’s Club by Andrew Clements 240 pages REALISTIC Ever been called a bookworm or a loser? Well, Alec has been called both — because he IS an avid reader. In fact, he gets in trouble for reading during class. As far as the loser comment? Alec decides to claim that word. He makes an after-school care club just for reading (not a book club because who wants to talk?), calling it the Loser’s Club. Surprisingly, the club attracts other kids (despite the name). As it does, Alec starts noticing life outside his stories — the cute girl, the needs of other kids, the feelings! Book lovers, you’ll want to read this genuine story with all your favorite books, relatable characters, and the growing pains that happen when we look up from a book.

Eddie Red Undercover Mystery in Mayan Mexico by Marcia Wells 224 pages MYSTERY (series) Eddie, his best friend Jonah, and his parents are on vacation in Mexico. When Eddie’s dad becomes the primary suspect in a theft of a stolen Mayan mask, so Eddie and Jonah decide to solve the mystery themselves. Only they don’t speak Spanish all that well, and there’s more to this mystery than just a stolen mask. You’ll love the Spanish words throughout, the well-paced action, and the characters.

The Friendship Code #1 Girls Who Code by Stacia Deutsch 144 pages STEM REALISTIC (series) Lucy joins coding club so she can make an app for her uncle to remember his medications. But the class is moving TOO slow. Then, a mysterious letter arrives on her locker with instructions in code. The subsequent messages in code put her back in touch with old friends and help her build a new friendship. Whoever is sending messages is teaching Lucy and her friends about input/output, conditionals, loops, and variables. To solve the mystery, the girls decide to write their own code…

In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall III, illustrated by James Mark Yellowhawk 186 pages REALISTIC / HISTORICAL Jimmy McClean’s grandfather takes him on a road trip where he shares the stories of Crazy Horse — his life and battles up to his death. They travel from the Dakotas (home of the Lakota) to Wyoming and other places significant to Crazy Horse’s life. I thought that following the duo traveling to the sites and then hearing the grandfather’s mesmerizing stories made this book easy to follow and very interesting. It’s a sobering, powerful story based on historical events.

Not Your All America Girl by Wendy Wan-Long Shang and Madelyn Rosenberg 256 pages REALISTIC Lauren, a girl with Jewish and Chinese heritage, tries out for the school play but, despite her talent, she doesn’t get cast as the lead since she doesn’t look the part of someone “all-American”. Her best friend Tara, who is not as talented, gets the leading role because she fits the look of a so-called American girl. The story is filled with both micro-aggressions and overt racism. Tara finds solace in the music of Patsy Cline and finds her voice.

Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt (ages 10+) 192 pages REALISTIC Joseph is an abused boy with a violent father, a parent at age thirteen, and is now living as a foster kid with Jack’s family on their organic farm. As he learns to trust them, we slowly learn about Joseph’s deep love for a rich girl named Maddie, his daughter named Jupiter, who he’s never seen, and his shattering heartbreak. This is an amazing story– painful yet filled with redemption and hope — beautifully written and will make you cry!

50 Short Middle Grade Books That Kids Will Love

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Melissa Taylor, MA, is the creator of Imagination Soup. She's a mother, former teacher & literacy trainer, and freelance education writer. She writes Imagination Soup and freelances for publications online and in print, including Penguin Random House's Brightly website, USA Today Health, Adobe Education, Colorado Parent, and Parenting. She is passionate about matching kids with books that they'll love.

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Quantum dialectics

When quantum mechanics posed a threat to the marxist doctrine of materialism, communist physicists sought to reconcile the two.

by Jim Baggott + BIO

The quantum revolution in physics played out over a period of 22 years, from 1905 to 1927. When it was done, the new theory of quantum mechanics had completely undermined the basis for our understanding of the material world. The familiar and intuitively appealing description of an atom as a tiny solar system, with electrons orbiting the atomic nucleus, was no longer satisfactory. The electron had instead become a phantom. Physicists discovered that in one kind of experiment, electrons behave like regular particles – as small, concentrated bits of matter. In another kind of experiment, electrons behave like waves. No experiment can be devised to show both types of behaviour at the same time. Quantum mechanics is unable to tell us what an electron is .

More unpalatable consequences ensued. The uncertainty principle placed fundamental limits on what we can hope to discover about the properties of quantum ‘wave-particles’. Quantum mechanics also broke the sacred link between cause and effect, wreaking havoc on determinism, reducing scientific prediction to a matter of probability – to a roll of the dice. We could no longer say: when we do this , that will definitely happen. We could say only: when we do this, that will happen with a certain probability.

As the founders of the theory argued about what it meant, the views of the Danish physicist Niels Bohr began to dominate. He concluded that we have no choice but to describe our experiments and their results using seemingly contradictory, but nevertheless complementary, concepts of waves and particles borrowed from classical (pre-quantum) physics. This is Bohr’s principle of ‘complementarity’. He argued that there is no contradiction because, in the context of the quantum world, our use of these concepts is purely symbolic. We reach for whichever description – waves or particles – best serves the situation at hand, and we should not take the theory too literally. It has no meaning beyond its ability to connect our experiences of the quantum world as they are projected to us by the classical instruments we use to study it.

Bohr emphasised that complementarity did not deny the existence of an objective quantum reality lying beneath the phenomena. But it did deny that we can discover anything meaningful about this. Alas, despite his strenuous efforts to exercise care in his use of language, Bohr could be notoriously vague and more than occasionally incomprehensible. Pronouncements were delivered in tortured ‘Bohrish’. It is said of his last recorded lecture that it took a team of linguists a week to discover the language he was speaking. And physicists of Bohr’s school, most notably the German theorist Werner Heisenberg, were guilty of using language that, though less tortured, was frequently less cautious.

It was all too easy to interpret some of Heisenberg’s pronouncements as a return to radical subjectivism, to the notion that our knowledge of the world is conjured only in the mind without reference to a real external world. It did not help that Bohr and physicists of Bohr’s school sought to shoehorn complementarity into other domains of enquiry, such as biology and psychology, and attempted to use it to resolve age-old conundrums concerning free will and the nature of life. Such efforts garnered little support from the wider scientific community and attracted plenty of opprobrium.

Albert Einstein famously pushed back, declaring that, unlike quantum mechanics, God does not play dice . He argued that, while quantum mechanics was undoubtedly powerful, it was in some measure incomplete.

In 1927, Bohr and Einstein commenced a lively debate. Einstein was joined in dissent by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who devised the conundrum of ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ to highlight the seemingly absurd implications of quantum mechanics. But although both Einstein and Schrödinger remained strident critics, they offered no counter-interpretation of their own. Despite their misgivings, there was simply no consensus on a viable alternative to complementarity.

C omplementarity also fell foul of the principal political ideologies that, in different ways, dominated human affairs from the early 1930s, through the Second World War, to the Cold War that followed. Both Bohr and Einstein were of Jewish descent and, to Nazi ideologues, complementarity and relativity theory were poisonous Jewish abstractions, at odds with the nationalistic programme of Deutsche Physik , or ‘Aryan physics’. But the proponents of Deutsche Physik failed to secure the backing of the Nazi leadership, and any threat to complementarity from Nazi ideology disappeared with the war’s ending. Much more enduring were the objections of Soviet communist philosophers who argued that complementarity was at odds with the official Marxist doctrine of ‘dialectical materialism’.

Vladimir Lenin, who had led the Bolshevik Party in the October Revolution of 1917, was a dogmatic advocate of the materialist worldview expounded by the German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto , first published in 1848. The world according to Marxism consists of objectively existing matter in constant motion, bound by laws. Such laws govern different levels of existence that we attempt to describe through different scientific disciplines that are not necessarily reducible one to another. For example, sociology – regarded as an empirical science – is not reducible to physics and is therefore bound by its own laws of human social and economic behaviour.

Marx and Engels observed that such behaviour breeds functional contradictions within an organised society. To survive, people submit to exploitative relationships with the means of economic production and those who own them. Distinct classes emerge: masters and their slaves, lords and their serfs, business owners (the bourgeoisie) and their low-wage workers (the proletariat).

It was not enough just to interpret the world, Marx claimed. Philosophers must also seek to change it

These functional contradictions are ultimately resolved through inevitable class struggle resulting in irreversible changes in social organisation and the means of production. The classical antiquity of Greece and Rome had given way to feudalism. Feudalism had given way to capitalism. And capitalism was destined to give way to socialism and communism, to the utopia of a classless society. But the necessary changes in social organisation would not happen by themselves. The path led first through socialism and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, supported by an autocratic state that would eventually no longer be needed when the communist utopia was realised. For Lenin, the ends justified the means, which included the violent repression of bourgeois capitalist and counter-revolutionary forces.

In Marxist philosophy, the method of studying and apprehending both social and physical phenomena is dialectical, and the interpretation of natural phenomena is firmly materialistic. It was not enough just to interpret the world, Marx claimed. Philosophers must also seek to change it, and this could not be done in a world built only from perceptions and ideas. Any philosophy that sought to disconnect us from material reality, by reducing the world to mere sensation and experience, posed a threat to Marxism.

In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), Lenin had berated the physicist Ernst Mach and his Russian followers, and the German philosopher Richard Avenarius, who had formulated the positivist doctrine of empirio-criticism. The philosophy of positivism was anathema, as it sought to reduce knowledge of the world to sensory experience. Lenin argued that such thinking led only to a subjective idealism, or even solipsism. To him, this was just so much ‘gibberish’.

Complementarity looked just like the kind of positivist gibberish that Lenin had sought to annihilate. A reality accessible only in the form of quantum probabilities did not suit the needs of the official philosophy of Soviet communists. It appeared to undermine orthodox materialism. Nevertheless, an influential group of Soviet physicists, including Vladimir Fock, Lev Landau, Igor Tamm and Matvei Bronstein, promoted Bohr’s views and for a time represented the ‘Russian branch’ of Bohr’s school. This was not without some risk. Communist Party philosophers sought their dismissal, to no avail, largely because they could not agree on the issues among themselves.

T he situation in the Soviet Union changed dramatically a few years later. As his health declined, Lenin had tried to remove the Communist Party’s general secretary, Joseph Stalin, whom he deemed unfit for the role. But Stalin had been quietly consolidating his position and had placed loyalists in key administrative posts. After a brief power struggle following Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin became supreme leader. In 1937-38, he tightened his grip by unleashing a reign of terror, known as the Great Purge, in which many of the old Bolsheviks who had fought alongside Lenin in 1917 were executed. Although the total death toll is difficult to determine, a figure of 1 million is not unreasonable. Physicists were not exempt. Bronstein was arrested, accused of terrorism offences, and executed in February 1938.

Stalin put his own stamp on the political ideology of Soviet communists in his short text titled Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), a formulation of Marxist philosophy that would be adopted as the official Communist Party line. Those intellectuals who resisted the official doctrine now faced real risks of losing more than just their jobs.

An outspoken commitment to complementarity became positively dangerous

The distractions of the Second World War meant that little changed for physicists until Andrei Zhdanov, the Party’s philosopher and propagandist-in-chief, who was thought by many to be Stalin’s successor-in-waiting, specifically targeted the interpretation of quantum mechanics in a speech delivered in June 1947. ‘The Kantian vagaries of modern bourgeois atomic physicists,’ he proclaimed, ‘lead them to inferences about the electron’s possessing “free will”, to attempts to describe matter as only a certain conjunction of waves, and to other devilish tricks.’ This was the beginning, writes the historian Loren Graham, ‘of the most intense ideological campaign in the history of Soviet scholarship’. An outspoken commitment to complementarity became positively dangerous.

Soviet physicists scrambled to defensible positions. Fock retreated from complementarity as an objective law of nature, and criticised Bohr for his vagueness. Others sought ways to ‘materialise’ quantum mechanics. Dmitry Blokhintsev, a student of Tamm’s, favoured a statistical interpretation based on the collective properties of an ‘ensemble’ of real particles. In such an interpretation we are obliged to deal with probabilities simply because we are ignorant of the properties and behaviours of the individual material particles that make up the ensemble. Einstein had used this conception in the opening salvo of his debate with Bohr in 1927. Yakov Terletsky who, like Tamm, had studied under the Soviet physicist Leonid Mandelstam, favoured a ‘pilot-wave’ interpretation of the kind that had initially been promoted by the French physicist Louis de Broglie before it was shot down by Bohr’s school in 1927. In this interpretation, a real wave field guides real particles, and probabilities again arise because we are ignorant of the details.

A s the 1930s progressed towards world war, many Western intellectuals had embraced communism as the only perceived alternative to the looming threat of Nazism. Numbered among the small group of Jewish communist physicists gathered around J Robert Oppenheimer at the University of California, Berkeley was David Bohm. As Oppenheimer began to recruit a team of theorists to work on the physics of the atomic bomb at the newly established Los Alamos National Laboratory in early 1943, Bohm was high on his list. But Bohm’s communist affiliations led the director of the Manhattan Project, Leslie Groves, to deny him the security clearance necessary to join the project.

Bohm was left behind at Berkeley and joined with his fellow communist and close friend Joseph Weinberg in teaching the absent Oppenheimer’s course on quantum mechanics. His long discussions with Weinberg, who argued that complementarity was itself a form of dialectic and so not in conflict with Marxist philosophy, encouraged him to accept Bohr’s arguments, although he was not free of doubt. In his textbook Quantum Theory (1951), derived in part from his experiences teaching Oppenheimer’s course, Bohm broadly adhered to Bohr’s views.

Bohm had by this time moved to Princeton University in New Jersey. Einstein, who in 1933 had fled from Nazi Germany to Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, asked to meet with him sometime in the spring of 1951. The meeting re-awakened the Marxist materialist in Bohm. As Einstein explained the basis for his own misgivings, Bohm’s doubts returned. ‘This encounter with Einstein had a strong effect on the direction of my research,’ he later wrote, ‘because I then became seriously interested in whether a deterministic extension of the quantum theory could be found.’ Was there, after all, a more materialistic alternative to complementarity? ‘My discussions with Einstein … encouraged me to look again.’ Although there is no documented evidence to support it, Bohm later claimed he had also been influenced ‘probably by Blokhintsev or some other Russian theorist like Terletsky’.

Bohm’s theory sought to restore causality and determinism to the quantum world

But Bohm’s relationship with Weinberg had by now returned to haunt him. In March 1943, Weinberg had been caught betraying atomic secrets by an illegal FBI bug planted in the home of Steve Nelson, a key figure in the Communist Party apparatus in the San Francisco Bay Area. This evidence was inadmissible in court. In an attempt to expose Weinberg’s betrayal, in May 1949 Bohm had been called to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, set up by the House of Representatives to investigate communist subversion in the US. He pleaded the Fifth Amendment, a standard means of avoiding self-incrimination, which only raised more suspicion.

Bohm was arrested, then brought to trial in May 1951. He was acquitted (as was Weinberg a couple of years later). Now caught in the anti-communist hysteria whipped up by Joseph McCarthy, Bohm lost his position at Princeton. Only Einstein tried to help, offering to bring him to the Institute. But its new director – Oppenheimer, now lauded as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’ and increasingly haunted by the FBI’s interest in his own Leftist past – vetoed Bohm’s appointment. Bohm left the US for exile in Brazil, from where he published two papers setting out what was, in effect, a re-discovery of de Broglie’s pilot-wave theory. The theory sought to restore causality and determinism to the quantum world and was firmly materialist. Oppenheimer rejected Bohm’s efforts as ‘juvenile deviationism’. Einstein, who had once toyed with a similar approach and might have been expected to be sympathetic, declared it ‘too cheap’.

Under a barrage of criticism, Bohm gained support from the French physicist Jean-Pierre Vigier, then assistant to de Broglie in Paris. He was just what Bohm needed: a resourceful theorist, a man of action, a hero of the French Resistance during the war, and a friend of the president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh. Invited to join Einstein in Princeton, Vigier’s communist associations had led the Department of State to forbid his entry into the US. He worked with Bohm on another variation of the pilot-wave theory and persuaded de Broglie to rekindle his interest in it, sounding alarm bells among the Bohr faithful: ‘Catholics and communists in France are uniting against complementarity!’

B ut Bohm’s mission to restore materiality to quantum mechanics amounted to more than demonstrating the possibility of a deterministic alternative. In 1935, working with his Princeton colleagues Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, Einstein had set up a stubborn challenge, a last throw of the dice in his debate with Bohr. In the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) thought experiment, a pair of quantum particles interact and move apart, to the left and right, their properties correlated by some physical law. Schrödinger invented the term ‘ entanglement ’ to describe their situation. For simplicity, we assume that the particles can have properties ‘up’ and ‘down’, each with a 50 per cent probability.

We have no way of knowing in advance what results we’re going to get for each particle. But if the particle on the left is found to be ‘up’, the correlated particle on the right must be ‘down’, and vice versa. Now, according to quantum mechanics, the entangled particles are mysteriously bound together no matter how far apart they get, and the correlation persists. Suppose the particles move so far apart that any message or influence sent from one cannot get to the other even if it travels at the speed of light. How then does the particle on the right ‘know’ what result we obtained for the particle on the left, so that it can correlate itself?

We could assume that when they are sufficiently far apart the particles can be considered separate and distinct, or ‘locally real’. But this conflicts with Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which forbids messages or influences from travelling faster than light, as Einstein himself explained: ‘One can escape from this conclusion only by either assuming that the measurement of [the particle on the left] (telepathically) changes the real situation of [the particle on the right] or by denying independent real situations as such to things which are spatially separated from each other . Both alternatives appear to me entirely unacceptable.’ (Emphasis added.) Particles that do not exist independently of each other are said to be ‘nonlocal’.

A prospective Soviet spy codenamed ‘Quantum’ attended a meeting at the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC

Einstein was known for his pacifist and Leftist inclinations. Podolsky was Russian-born, and Rosen was a first-generation descendant of Russian émigrés. Both of Einstein’s assistants were sympathetic to the Soviet cause. Six months after the publication of the EPR paper, Rosen asked Einstein to recommend him for a job in the Soviet Union. Einstein wrote to the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Vyacheslav Molotov, praising Rosen for his talents as a physicist. Rosen was at first delighted with his new home, and soon he had a son. ‘I hope,’ Einstein wrote in congratulation, ‘that he too can help in furthering the great cultural mission that the new Russia has undertaken with such energy.’ But by October 1938 Rosen was back in the US, having discovered that his research did not prosper in the people’s paradise.

Podolsky had earned his PhD at the California Institute of Technology and had returned to the Soviet Union in 1931 to work with Fock and Landau (and the visiting English theorist Paul Dirac) at the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkiv. From there, he joined Einstein at the Institute in Princeton in 1933. Ten years later, a prospective atomic spy assigned the codename ‘Quantum’ by Soviet intelligence attended a meeting at the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC and spoke with a high-ranking diplomat. Quantum was seeking an opportunity to join the Soviet effort to build an atomic bomb, and offered information on a technique for separating quantities of the fissile isotope uranium-235 . He was paid $300 for his trouble. In Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) files made public in 2009, Quantum was revealed to be Podolsky.

B ohm examined the EPR experiment in considerable detail. He developed an alternative that offered the prospect of translation from a thought experiment into a real one. With the Israeli physicist Yakir Aharonov, in 1957 he sought to demonstrate that real experiments had in fact already been done (in 1950), concluding that they did indeed deny independent real situations to the separated particles, such that these cannot be considered locally real.

This was far from the end of the matter. Befuddled in his turn by Bohrian vagueness and inspired by Bohm, the Irish physicist John Bell also pushed back against complementarity and in 1964 built on Bohm’s version of EPR to develop his theorem and inequality. The experiments of 1950 had not gone far enough. Further experiments to test Bell’s inequality in 1972 and in 1981-82 demonstrated entanglement and nonlocality with few grounds for doubt.

It began to dawn on the wider scientific community that entanglement and nonlocality were real phenomena, leading to speculations on the possibility of building a quantum computer, and on the use of entangled particles in a system of quantum cryptography. The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the three experimentalists who had done most to expose the reality of entanglement and its promise of ‘a new kind of quantum technology’. The projected value of the quantum computing industry is estimated to be somewhere between $9 billion and $93 billion by 2040. I doubt there is any other example in history of such a high-value industry constructed on a physical principle that nobody understands.

Marxism powered many objections to Bohr’s complementarity, and so helped to shape the development of postwar quantum mechanics. Soviet physicist-philosophers lent their support by finding positivist tendencies in Bohr’s teaching in conflict with dialectical materialism. Some sought an alternative materialistic interpretation. Podolsky and Rosen both admired the Soviet Union and in different ways sought to contribute to its mission. Bohm laboured at a time when there was little appetite for what many physicists judged to be philosophical, and therefore irrelevant, foundational questions. It says much about Bohm’s commitment that he resisted the temptation to leave such questions to play out in the theatre of the mind. The Marxist in Bohm sought not only to show that a materialistic alternative was possible, but also to find a way to bring the arguments into the real world of the laboratory.

It was not enough just to interpret the world. Bohm also sought to change it.

This essay is dedicated to the memory of my colleague, co-author and friend, John Heilbron, who died on 5 November 2023.

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Haunted house narrative writing. The house stood on the top of lonely hill. There was no chance of taking the way through roads. I had to take the shortcut.

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