Author: Betty Ren Wright
Date: 1993
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 0-590-43602-3
Length: 172 pages
Quote: "They might think she was glad to be riding along with them...and if they thought that, they would be very wrong."
Gwen is an orphan for the third time: she's outlived both parents and an elderly great-aunt she loved. Her brother is old enough by now to be her guardian, but he's more interested in his "young, blonde bride." So she's still a ward of the state. That hurts, and Gwen plans to dislike the whole Mercy family. Then she sees the ghost who haunts the cellar.
In my day, ghost stories for children usually debunked the ghost. Even if there was a sad story to "haunt" an old house, the book as it unfolded would carefully show how the musty odor came from natural mold and dampness, the creaking sound came from damp wood, the tricks of the light, etc., etc., etc., but since it all led the child characters to look up the history and bond with one another, no harm was done. I remember a favorite ghost story in which the character saw a long white shape reach in through the window to steal an apple out of the fruit bowl--and in the morning the apple was gone!!!--so then the characters sat up and watched and realized that the old grey mare had found a way to sneak quietly out of the pasture.
Or, if the ghostly effects weren't just quirks of nature, there might be something really scary going on--like a mean person trying to scare the character on purpose. In a story about orphans or stepsiblings, like this one, one child would eventually confess to having wanted to scare the newcomer away. Or, as in Scooby-Doo
, the ghostly effects would be produced by criminals trying to distract attention from their activities.Then there was a separate category that might be called Goofy Ghosts, like Casper, who weren't identified with dead humans and didn't need to be laid to rest, whose function was just to play with various features of the idea of ghostliness. They usually appeared in funny stories and the focus was usually on weightlessness or transparency or some such thing.
Serious stories that asked readers to accept that dead people's spirits needed living people's help to rest were marketed to adult and teen readers, but in stories for middle school readers everyone understood that that premise was a Religious Controversy. Publishers knew they wouldn't lose many readers if a child character said prayers or went to church, but they would if they took sides on a question like whether it's possible for a ghost to get stuck in our world.
For, of course, it's part of the doctrine of some churches--including some I attended when I was the age for this book--that "the dead know not any thing." Most things that seem to be ghosts are, of course, natural phenomena. Wispy-looking ghosts are reported in foggy places; wailing ghosts are found in places that get a lot of wind, or are inhabited by night-calling birds. That sound just like your dear old dog Rover clicking across the porch might be your fond imagination, or a hungry stray whose nose tells him that a dog used to be well fed here and isn't here any longer, or--are you sure Rover's dead? Could he have merely been lost, and found his way home? And of course, the only "spirits" that ever communicate with most of the people who claim to channel messages from the spirit world are the unholy spirits of avarice, sloth, and malice: "I sense that you've lost a loved one, recently...was it a brother, a sister...Oh no, a dog, of course, I meant to say a dog. I'm quite sure now that this spirit is a dog. He says..."
Historically a great deal of "channelling" has been done with consciously evil intentions--intentions of collecting a lot of money for "finding" something during the time it takes the channeller to make use of it, e.g., or for "tracking" criminals for as long as it takes the real criminals to get away.
But, according to what I was solemnly taught in church, once in a while something that does seem to be a spirit being really does show or tell someone something s/he would not otherwise have known...and these are the Deceiving Spirits, and their intentions toward humans are never very good. Deceiving Spirits are allowed to confuse people who ought to know better, especially when those people's own natural "spirits" aren't very nice, either. They vie for chances to help unfit leaders lose battles but are likely to have to settle for less impressive assignments like convincing you that your newspaper "horoscope" gave sound advice enough times that you'll let your "horoscope" guide you to waste some time or money. And even if a Deceiving Spirit is human-friendly enough to warn you that a bridge is flooded, once, it's likely to guide you straight down the dead-end road the next time you need to get somewhere fast. Deceiving Spirits particularly like to pretend to be ghosts of departed people, in order to distract people from the need to prepare themselves for Eternity...they can do this by seeming kind and friendly, but friendship is not their real goal.Some churches used to be extremely strict about the importance of paying no heed to Deceiving Spirits. Some of those churches still exist so it must be ignorance that motivates Scholastic to publish a book that flouts their beliefs.
That's what you might like, or might not like, about The Ghosts of Mercy Manor. It does. What distracts Gwen's mind from resenting the Mercy family is letting Rose, the friendly ghost, show her where two less friendly ghosts buried Rose's remains. Wright doesn't give herself the loophole of suggesting that Gwen has heard or read something about the (probably accidental homicide) of a long-ago foster child and imagined how it might have happened. The reality of the story is that Rose's spirit can't rest until she's led Gwen and foster brother Jason into danger to show them where she was buried without the appropriate ceremonies.
Harmless fiction, or confusion that might have been positively designed to leave young readers vulnerable to the frauds and possibly even to Deceiving Spirits? I'd have no problem with the idea of leaving that judgment call for parents to make...if I believed Scholastic would be willing to market, along with The Ghosts of Mercy Manor, a story about a child who knew an innocent victim wouldn't be hanging around as a ghost, so she rebuked that "ghost" in the name of the Lord and asked God to help her practice lovingkindness toward her foster family.
I have no problem with the fact that some Christians believe the spirits of the departed may, in some special cases, linger on some sort of spiritual plane from which they can communicate with us in some limited way. I have no problem with the fact that people use all sorts of premises that they don't believe are true as bases for creative fiction. My problem is strictly with the fact that Scholastic, as a publisher that markets primarily to public school classes, has Taken a Side. I wouldn't quibble with a mass-market publisher distributing this book in bookstores, but with Scholastic publishing this book I quibble. It's too controversial to be peddled through classroom "book clubs."
If your reaction to my quibble is "Oh good grief, it's only a silly storybook," then you're likely to enjoy The Ghosts of Mercy Manor and I don't mind selling it to you. This web site's minimum price of $5 per book, $5 per package, plus $1 per online payment, applies to this book. You could fit at least five and probably seven books of this size into one $5 package, which may add up to bargains depending on the other titles you choose. Unfortunately, Betty Ren Wright no longer needs a dollar; this web site encourages you to browse and add other books whose authors still have a use for the 10% of the cash price we send to living authors, or the charities of their choice, when you buy their vintage books here.
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