Mothman's Curse

This book for middle-school kids was given to me to read because the other, Christine Hayes, will be making an appearance at our school. I found it to be a very engaging supernatural thriller, reminding me of the days I used to read Hardy Boys mysteries or The Three Investigators. I also appreciated that Hayes does not cop out and go "Scooby Doo"--this book has real ghosts.

Josie Fletcher is the oldest of three kids in Athens, Ohio. Her father runs an auction house. Her younger brother, Fox, has found an old Polaroid camera for sale. Being young kids in 2015, they hardly know how it works, and when they take pictures they find a mysterious figure in the pictures, even though there's nobody there in real life.

They eventually figure out that the man in the figure is John Goodrich, a recluse who has recently died. Their dad is going to auction off his estate. When they visit his house, the dad ends up falling down the stairs after seeing a creature with red eyes. It is the Mothman.

The Mothman is an actual urban myth, and Hayes even references that movie that was made called The Mothman Prophecies, which dealt with a collapsed bridge between West Virginia and Ohio in 1967. It is thought that the Mothman turns up before a disaster. Hayes has cleverly given Mothman a back story, which includes a cursed pin that Josie ends up with. The ghost of Mr. Goodrich helps them avery a disaster, and breaks the curse.

Mothman's curse is well paced and has some nice scares. For very small readers there might be some nightmares, as Mothman is supposed to be seven to nine feet tall, with red eyes and leather wings, not someone you want to run into on a dark night. However, I'm not sure I will teach this book in class, for it really doesn't contribute to any literary analysis. It's simply a good read. I would recommend it to kids who like scary books to read on their own.