The Nighthouse Keeper

Lora Senf's The Nighthouse Keeper is a spooky Blight Harbor story for 11 year olds in which the town's friendly house ghosts are quietly going missing.

What happens

In Blight Harbor, ghosts are part of the family. They leave messages on the kitchen chalkboard and turn up for birthdays. So when Florence, the ghost at Evie's best friend Maggie's house, vanishes without a single word, Evie knows something's wrong.

And it isn't just Florence. Evie ends up at a secret meeting in the back room of a dusty pottery shop (a shop she's somehow never noticed before, which is a clue in itself).

The grown-ups there keep an eye on the town's otherworldly side. New doors to another world keep popping open and closing again. And more ghosts disappear every day.

Evie has been through one of those doors before, so they want to hear how she made it home. Can she join the search party? Absolutely not. Even Bird, the tiny living tattoo sparrow on her collarbone, agrees (with a sharp peck).

Then Evie finds a note from Florence in the margin of Maggie's copy of Coraline. It sends her to the town's empty Old School. What she finds on the chalkboard there will make the back of your neck prickle.

Evie tells the story herself and she's lovely company. She's stubborn and funny and REALLY doesn't like being called a child (she's nearly thirteen, thank you very much). She also cares about the town's ghosts the way you'd care about your neighbours.

The opening chapters are creepy in a cosy sort of way. There's a sunny back room that smells of lemon polish and a witch who bakes pecan blondies. Then there's an empty coat closet that starts scraping all on its own.

A heads-up on the sad bits. Evie's house burned down when she was eight and her parents disappeared. She keeps their photos in a shoebox under her bed, and seeing Maggie's family pictures on the wall brings all of that back.

For a child who's lost a parent, those moments might sting a little. If your reader likes their ghost stories with plenty of heart, the opening gets that balance just right.

This is the second Blight Harbor book and it carries straight on from everything Evie went through in the first one, The Clackity. So that's definitely the place to start.

What to read next

Florence hides her note inside a book Evie and Maggie know by heart. If your reader hasn't met it yet, Neil Gaiman's Coraline is the perfect follow-up. It's another girl and another locked door that should only open onto bricks.