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    A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel
    A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel
    A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel
    Ebook338 pages5 hours

    A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel

    By Paul Tremblay

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    WINNER OF THE 2015 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A NOVEL

    A chilling thriller that brilliantly blends psychological suspense and supernatural horror, reminiscent of Stephen King's The Shining, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.

    The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

    To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie’s descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight. With John, Marjorie’s father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

    Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface—and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 2, 2015
    ISBN9780062363251
    A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel
    Author

    Paul Tremblay

    Paul Tremblay has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, Sheridan Le Fanu, and Massachusetts Book awards and is the New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie: A Novel, The Beast You Are, The Pallbearers Club, Survivor Song, Growing Things and Other Stories, Disappearance at Devil's Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, and the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland. His novel The Cabin at the End of the World was adapted into the Universal Pictures film Knock at the Cabin. Two short stories, ""The Last Conversation"" and ""In Bloom,"" were Amazon Original shorts. His essays and short fiction have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and numerous ""year's best"" anthologies. He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts, with his family and has a master's degree in mathematics.

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    Reviews for A Head Full of Ghosts

    4/5

    1,078 ratings90 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be an incredible novel that is both terrifying and captivating. The story explores the individual emotional and delusional beliefs of a family, without revealing whether the central character is possessed or psychologically disturbed. While some readers found the book to be choppy and lacking flow, others were pulled right into the story and found it to be a true page-turner. Overall, this well-written book offers a unique and suspenseful reading experience.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      My first thought upon finishing this book were "Wow, what a great book!" It was interesting, intense, creepy, scary, I loved it! This book grabbed my attention like no book has recently.

      This is the story of Marjorie and her demonic possession, told through the eyes of her eight year old sister Merry. Being eight, Merry is not the most reliable of witnesses, and of course was not privy to all the conversations Marjorie had with their parents and her therapist. But Merry sees enough to make one heck of a scary story.

      As Marjorie's behavior becomes more and more erratic, the family moves into crisis. The father is unemployed, and the financial pressure is mounting. The family decides to allow a reality film crew to detail Marjorie's possession and the ensuing exorcism. Marjorie certainly seems possessed, but there is always a flicker of doubt in the reader's mind. This only adds to the tension produced by the book.

      The story is told in part from Merry's point of view, as she is being interviewed as an adult of twenty three. Her story is interspersed with blog posts from a writer recapping and analyzing the episodes of the reality show. I felt the blog posts were the weakest part of the book but I guess they were there to present another point of view.

      This is one of the best books I have ever read. It kept me guessing the whole way through. I thought the ending was the weakest part, but still pretty good. I would definitely recommend this book and I know it will be one of my top books on my shelf.
    • 3/5
      The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.
    • 5/5
      A Head Full of Ghosts is a creep of a book, full of youthful misremembering and the lies we tell to save ourselves from our own personal horror.
    • 3/5
      Okay, but not really what I expected. Disappointed.
    • 3/5
      This one is a toughie to review. For the most part (and it's a short book!), it feels like a modern version of "The Exorcist", which is reference frequently! Is this a case of possession or mental illness? Throw in a blog, a reality show, and religious mania, and stir! Well, it was not unique, but it was readable. Then the ending. Well... I'm still not sure what to make of it. The last two chapters really make this much more than the first twenty-four let on! So, is this a so-so read, pretty good, or dang good? I'm giving it 3 starts now, but I reserve the right to amend it, based on that ending! Hmm...
    • 4/5
      I got a lot out of this book. It got into the "can't put down; can't wait to get back to it zone," that I love. It scared me. When 8 year old Merry was describing her bigger than normal doll house, and then sort of casually - like I guess an 8 year old would put it - mentioned her crazy, possibly possessed by evil entity sister was INSIDE the doll house, covered in a blanket, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING NIGHT - yeah I got the creeps. The doll house was next to Merry's bed. YIKES. It disappointed me - in a good way. There was one scene that was foreshadowed where Merry's sister, the crazy, possibly possessed by evil entity sister, chased her up the basement stairs one night. When the scene was to be described, I actually went down into my basement at night to read it. I was hoping for some scary action, and was actually seeing similarities between the basement in the book and the one in my house. The scene played out that Merry had lied about what actually happened. Her sister, Meredith, didn't actually spit up dirt and chase her. She hid and was down there but the scene laid the framework for how this book is all about the unreliable narrator. I usually don't like that style, so am impressed the author was able to pull it off.
    • 4/5
      Intense and engrossing. If you like scary books, this is one you NEED to read.
    • 4/5
      This book is a great combination of horror and psychological thriller. Psychological horror is now one of my new favorite genres! I found it easy to get wrapped up into the characters and the plot, especially with the wonderful narration by Joy Osmanski. I couldn’t wait to find out whether Marjorie had schizophrenia, a demonic possession or something else! I’d definitely read another Paul Tremblay novel.
    • 5/5
      What a great story! I listened to the audiobook version and was disturbed and entertained. The author lets you know (more or less) what's coming as the book unfolds, but he still manages to surprise you. There's a lot going on and I'm afraid I may have missed significant plot elements so I really want to come back and read it again. You think you know what's happening, you think you've figured out the plot, and then the author surprises you. Excellent storytelling.
    • 5/5
      This book was tragic and creepy. I don’t know what was worse. The horror of what was on the page or the horror in my brain as I was constantly dragged into false assumptions. Perfect Halloween read.
    • 5/5
      I won this book on a Goodreads contest. I was drawn into it and stayed hooked until the heartbreaking end. Told by the adult sister during an interview she retells what happened to her and her family when she was eight. I loved it!
    • 4/5
      "A Head Full of Ghosts" unfolds in disturbing, relentless narration and it undermines your preconceived notions of what horror could and should be in current society. Where are the real dangers? Who are the possessed and who is evil incarnate in the real world? I'm not a big "horror" fan and I consider this book more than "genre" fiction. It grabbed me and scared me in unexpected ways. I'm grateful to Goodreads Giveways for this paperback; it has an excellent section by Paul Tremblay that connects his story to numerous references and homages to many horror books and movies. It's a good book when you're still thinking about it for days, and this one is a psychological haunter.
    • 4/5
      One thing I can attest to with this book - it will stick with you. I finished reading it a month ago, and I've waited a while to post a review for two reasons: one, exorcisms scare the hell out of me, and two, I didn't know what to make of it. The first reason is easily explained. Exorcisms freak me out. Probably has something to do with being Catholic and seeing The Exorcist. That movie kept me up almost as many nights as Poltergeist did.

      The second one is harder. I know A Head Full of Ghosts is a good book, that it is well written by Paul Tremblay, and I can attest that it affected me. I remember updating my wife about where I was and what was going on in the book while I read it. The scariest parts for me came early in the book, and I will admit there was a couple of days where I just set the book aside in the NOPE section while I got up the courage to read it again. Read it I did, and I think the book has some problems that deal with the nature of the reality television side of the story and its implications, and I don't like how it ended. For me, it had one too many endings. But it is the end of this book that makes it controversial and makes it stick with you, and if the basis of judging a book as good or bad is whether or not it sticks with you, well, I had a head full of ghosts long after I finished reading this book.
    • 3/5
      This isn't the scariest of books but it is one where the reader is never exactly sure what's happening. Merry is the classic unreliable narrator. You don't know if what people are telling her is true or even if what she is telling us us the truth. I give it 3 1/2 stars.
    • 4/5
      This is a good psychological horror story told from the perspective of an 8-year old girl. The narrator is an adult now, but the story is told as she remembers it from her childhood. Is her sister mentally ill or possessed? What happened to her sister and her parents? It is creepy and suspenseful without being too graphic. I would recommend this to readers who like a little scare.
    • 5/5
      Wow, what an amazing book! This story is written from the view of the youngest child in the family. She watches as her teenage sister struggles with mental illness(schizophrenia), and while she loves her sister, she fears her too. Her unemployed father reaches his breaking point and becomes obsessed with a religious outlet that brings possession and exorcism into the mix. We have to wonder at times if we can trust the account being given. We have to remember that this is a traumatized 24(or so) year old woman giving her account of the events that took place when she was 8 years old. This is a roller coaster ride that shows a incredible view of mental illness breaking down a family who was already on the brink of collapse. Just amazing writing!
    • 5/5
      The Barrett's are a normal family who live in New England. All of them are devastated when Marjorie, the 14 year old daughter, exhibits signs of acute schizophrenia. At first, they opt to use conventional psychiatry and psychology for treatment, but when her condition worsens, her father John feels that his new found devotion in religion is the key to her health. He believes his daughter is possessed by demons and modern medicine can't help. Merry, the youngest daughter at 8, is just confused. She has no idea what's wrong with her sister and becomes annoyed that no one pays attention to her anymore. The family's lives get turned upside down when they become involved in filming a reality TV show called The Possession about exorcising the demon from their daughter. Is Marjorie really possessed? Is she faking or is she simply mentally ill?A Head Full of Ghosts is a complex book that tells its story in a variety of ways. The story is being told to a best selling author who is writing adult Merry's account of the events. Some scenes are in present day with Merry chatting with the author, but her account is told through the eyes of her eight year old self. Even assuming Merry remembers everything accurately (which she admits she probably isn't) and isn't lying, she doesn't really know everything that happened. She was eight and protected from a lot of what went on behind the scenes and the decision-making processes. Of course she cared for her sister, but after a while simply became annoyed that no one really paid attention to her any longer. No one plays games with her anymore and her boundless energy is now seen as an annoyance since her sister has been sick. When horrible things start happening, Merry is of course terrified but has no idea if her sister is faking, possessed, or mentally ill. All she knows is that Marjorie isn't a fun playmate anymore and has no idea if the things she perceives are real or just imagination heightened by fear.As a result of her sister's situation, Merry's parents are also very different people. Her father John is suddenly devoutly religious and prays for long periods of time. Merry is mostly confused by it because it was never part of her life. Now she feels deficient in her father's eyes and scared of his fervor. The religious leaders that come to supervise and exorcise take complete control. If he's capable of finding such an extreme "solution" to his daughter's problem, what else is he capable of? Her mother Sarah doesn't agree with the religious solution, but she's desperate to find a cure. She isn't happy about the TV show or the exorcism, so she turns to drinking heavily and becoming moody. The TV show portrays her as confused and barely there, but she always tried to keep Merry and Marjorie (to a lesser extent) from being exploited or scared. I found Merry's narrative rings true. She's just a normal kid, not some super smart, precocious adult version of a kid and it's refreshing.This brings us to Marjorie. Most possession stories are about fear of girls turning into women, including becoming sexual, defying authority, and simply existing. This one seems to be no different. Marjorie is 14 years old, just around puberty. She used to be cheerful and eager to write stories with her little sister, but now, she wants some privacy and a life away from her family. Like normal teenage girl, she is contrary and sullen. Unlike a normal teenage girl, she is prone to fits of violence and other strange behavior. The most memorable one is after she's been sick, she graphically and messily masturbates while on her period and then urinates and defecates on the carpet. This is the most extreme and disgusting version of this type of scene in fiction. It really boils down to fear of women's sexuality by showing normal sexual expression in a grotesque way. In The Exorcist, it was Reagan stabbing her genitals and shoving her mother's face in the wound while spewing obscenities. A Head Full of Ghosts does the same thing, taking it to further extreme. She also does the requisite rebellious things turned up: physically fighting her father, obscenities, cursing the church, etc, which are an exaggerated version of normal teenage rebellion. It seems like Marjorie is faking for much of the novel, she admits it herself. However, she may be lying or delusional or possessed. I like that Merry and the readers by extension never definitely know which one.In addition to this account, a blog by an annoying horror fan (who also turns out to be Merry writing under a pseudonym) analyzing and commenting on The Possession and descriptions of scenes from the actual TV show (edited from actual events or re-enactments aired on the Discovery Channel) are included in the story. I love how meta the story is in analyzing and picking apart itself so I don't have to do it (but I did a bit anyway). The entire narrative is through Merry's eyes. The ending throws the veracity of literally everything into question and I like it. Some may see the entire novel as pointless at that point, but I enjoyed the journey. I don't find the book scary, but it is unsettling. The suspense is built at times, but sometimes huge revelations are stated plainly. A couple of the scenes are practically burned into my brain and I enjoyed Tremblay's unique writing as he layered the story deceptively through one point of view. He took a genre I don't enjoy and made it interesting to me. IT still has misogynistic elements, but it's hard to get away from when it's an inherent part of the genre. I can't wait for his next book, Disappearance at Devil's Rock.
    • 4/5
      Very clever--intriguing combination of narrative and blog. Interesting social analysis through horror and gothic (and yay, the enclosure as a character!) of a family, but are the questions really answered? Horror fans will love the multitudes of references. I majored in English Lit with an emphasis on Gothic Fiction and loved those touches. It wasn't what I expected but ended up being so much more, and that ending...
    • 5/5
      So you think your family has problems? Meet the Barretts. 14-yr-old Marjorie Barrett is exhibiting strange, frightening, destructive behavior. Her mother believes she suffers from mental illness and has her in therapy. Her Catholic father is convinced the cause is demonic possession, and he enlists the aide of an exorcist. Being unemployed and at the end of his financial rope, he also agrees to allow a reality television to show to film the whole affair. A great idea, right?This supremely dysfunctional family's story is told by Marjorie's eight-year old sister Merry some 15 years later. Merry often bears the brunt of Marjorie's frightening behavior, and it is easy for the reader to believe that something supernatural is afoot. Poor Merry is of necessity an unreliable narrator, because she was just a little kid when it all went down and she truly didn't understand all that was happening. So it's understandable if some of her story is a little off.I really liked this book. It's a beautiful crafted little horror tale, with real thrills and chills as well as a realistic portrayal of a family in crisis.
    • 4/5
      I had to stop and think about this book after I read it. On one level it is a thriller, with a family poisoned by the unemployed father after trying to deal unsuccessfully with a child's mental illness. On another level it is about a family destroyed by a "reality" television show featuring an exorcism. Another level the family is plagued and destroyed by a manipulative teenager, frightened by her father's unemployment and decent into depression. Whatever it is, and we are shown these things through the eyes of an eight year old, this story includes madness, reality television, unemployment, poison, lies, misdirection, secrets, manipulation, and fame seeking. Personal note, I do not like reality television that invades a home watching the daily interactions between people in what should be their refuge from the world.
    • 5/5
      Anyone who enjoys Shirley Jackson will love this book. It kept me on the edge of my seat and I could not put it down. There were so may twists that kept you thinking and even the ending has you rethinking what really happened.
    • 5/5
      Despite the fact that possession stories are my least favorite horror stories, this is easily the best horror novel I've read in a while. It walks that wonderfully ambiguous line between supernatural and realistic, and draws attention to how horrific that line can be. It deconstructs its own story without falling into cliche through the brilliant structural device: the same story being told by the same woman at about the same time, but in two different contexts and with a very different emphasis. I absolutely recommend it for anyone interested in horror fiction and more specifically in possession narratives.
    • 4/5
      Picked this up thanks to a Book Riot reco. Or maybe it was EW. Or both.A favorite because it was surprising, interesting and unexpected. Without revealing to much, it's a about a seemingly happy family that hits hard times, gets an opportunity to turn around its financial fortunes by being profiled on reality TV and then...everything begins to unravel. Think The Shining and We Need to Talk about Kevin had a baby with a distinct personality.The ending was...whoa. A bit unsettling, but it plays with your mind and your perspective without resulting to shock through graphicness. Won't say more so as to not spoil it. Definitely worth a TBR for psychological suspense fans.
    • 4/5
      A chilling psychological horror story that leaves you wondering long after the book is finished, was fourteen year old Marjorie really schizophrenic, possessed or faking the whole time. Maybe it was her father who became crazy being unemployed and desperate for money did he and Father Wanderly coach poor Marjorie into the role so they could be the stars of the reality TV show the Possessed. Then again maybe it was young Merry who was really possessed all along.
    • 2/5
      This book disappointed me. It never really gives you any answers and leaves you guessing. It’s dragged out and gets boring to read after awhile. Doesn’t have a very great ending. Wouldn’t recommend.
    • 5/5
      one of the really good books I read in 2016. Review to come later!
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed the book and the three different points of narration, I just wish less of the book was "left to the imagination".
    • 5/5
      This book kept me hooked from beginning to end, definitely a great start to get me back into reading.
    • 3/5
      Not bad. Very self aware and meta. Written well and in a kinetic style that makes it compulsively readable. I finished it in 2 days. Although I wasn't a fan of this particular story overall, I'll be visiting the author's other works due to the fluidity of his writing. 3.5 stars
    • 4/5
      Part I gave me nightmares. Among other themes, the novel is a study in how quickly things can unravel.

    Book preview

    A Head Full of Ghosts - Paul Tremblay

    CHAPTER 1

    THIS MUST BE so difficult for you, Meredith.

    Best-selling author Rachel Neville wears a perfect fall ensemble: dark blue hat to match her sensible knee-length skirt and a beige wool jacket with buttons as large as kitten heads. She carefully attempts to keep to the uneven walkway. The slate stones have pitched up, their edges peeking out of the ground, and they wiggle under her feet like loose baby teeth. As a child I used to tie strings of red dental floss around a wiggly tooth and leave the floss dangling there for days and days until the tooth fell out on its own. Marjorie would call me a tease and chase me around the house trying to pull the wax string, and I would scream and cry because it was fun and because I was afraid if I let her pull out one tooth she wouldn’t be able to help herself and she’d pull them all out.

    Has that much time really passed since we lived here? I’m only twenty-three but if anyone asks I tell them that I’m a quarter-century-minus-two years old. I like watching people struggle with the math in their heads.

    I stay off the stones and walk across the neglected front yard, grown wild and unbounded in spring and summer, now beginning to retreat in the new cold of autumn. Leaves and weedy fingers tickle my ankles and grab at my sneakers. If Marjorie were here now, maybe she’d tell me a quick story about worms, spiders, and mice crawling underneath the decaying greenery, coming to get the young woman foolishly not keeping to the safety of the pathway.

    Rachel enters the house first. She has a key and I don’t. So I hang back, peel a strip of white paint off the front door, and put it in my jeans pocket. Why shouldn’t I have a souvenir? It’s a souvenir that so many others have helped themselves to by the looks of the flaking door and dandruffed front stoop.

    I didn’t realize how much I missed the place. I can’t get over how gray it looks now. Was it always this gray?

    I slink inside so that the front door is a whisper behind me. Standing on the scuffed hardwood of the front foyer I close my eyes to better see this initial snapshot of my prodigal return: ceilings so high I could never reach anything; cast iron radiators hiding in so many of the corners of the rooms, just itching to get steaming angry again; straight ahead is the dining room, then the kitchen, where we mustn’t ever linger, and a hallway, a clear path to the back door; to my right the living room and more hallways, spokes in wheels; below me, under the floor, the basement and its stone and mortar foundation and its cold dirt floor I can still feel between my toes. To my left is the mouth of the piano-key staircase with its white moldings and railings, and black stair treads and landings. The staircase winds its way up to the second-floor in three sets of stairs and two landings. It goes like this: six stairs up, landing, turn right, then only five stairs up to the next landing, then turn right again and six stairs up to the second-floor hallway. My favorite part was always that you were completely turned around when you reached the second floor, but oh, how I complained about that missing sixth stair in the middle.

    I open my eyes. Everything is old and neglected and in some ways exactly the same. But the dust and cobwebs and cracked plaster and peeling wallpaper seem faked somehow. Passage of time as a prop to the story, the story that has been told and retold so often it has lost its meaning, even to those of us who lived through it.

    Rachel sits at the far end of a long couch in the almost-empty living room. A drop cloth protects the couch’s upholstery from anyone careless enough to sit on it. Or perhaps Rachel is the one being protected, with the cloth saving her from contact with a moldy couch. Her hat settles in her lap, a fragile bird that has been bullied from its nest.

    I decide to finally respond to her nonquestion, even if it has expired.

    Yes, this is difficult for me. And please, don’t call me Meredith. I prefer Merry.

    I am sorry, Merry. Maybe our coming here is a bad idea. Rachel stands up, her hat flutters to the floor, and she hides her hands in her jacket pockets. I wonder if she has her own paint chips, or strips of wallpaper, or some other pieces of this place’s past hidden in her pockets as well. We could conduct the interview elsewhere, where you would be more comfortable.

    No. Really. It’s okay. I willingly agreed to this. It’s just that I’m—

    Nervous. I totally understand.

    No. I say no in my Mom’s lilty, singsong. That’s just it. I’m the opposite of nervous. I’m almost overwhelmed by how comfortable I feel. As weird as it sounds, it’s surprisingly nice to be back home. I don’t know if that makes sense, and I normally don’t carry on like this, so maybe I am nervous. But anyway, please, sit, and I’ll join you.

    Rachel sits back down on the couch and says, Merry, I know you don’t know me very well at all, but I promise that you can trust me. I will treat your story with the dignity and care it deserves.

    Thank you, and I believe you will. I do, I say and sit on the other end of the couch, which is toadstool soft. I’m thankful for the drop cloth now that I’m sitting. "It’s the story itself I don’t fully trust. It’s certainly not my story. It does not belong to me. And it’s going to be tricky navigating our way through some of the uncharted territories." I smile, proud of the metaphor.

    Think of me as a fellow explorer, then. Her smile, so unlike mine, is easy.

    I ask, So, how did you get it?

    Get what, Merry?

    The key to the front door. Did you buy the house? Not a terrible idea at all. Sure, giving tours of the infamous Barrett House didn’t quite financially work out for the previous owner, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work out now. It’d be great promotion for the book. You or your agent could start the tours again. You could spice things up with readings and book signings in the dining room. Set up a gift shop in the mud room and sell clever and ghoulish souvenirs along with the books. I could help set up scenes or live action skits in the different rooms upstairs. As—how was it worded in our contract again?—‘creative consultant,’ I could supply props and stage direction. . . . I lose myself in what was supposed to be a light joke, which goes on way too long. When I finally stop babbling, I hold up my hands and fit Rachel and the couch between the frames of my thumbs and fingers like an imaginary director.

    Rachel laughs politely the whole time I’m talking. Just to be clear, Merry, my dear creative consultant, I did not purchase your house.

    I am aware of how fast I am talking but I can’t seem to slow down. That’s probably smart. No accounting for the deteriorated physical condition of the place. And what is it they say about buying houses and buying other people’s problems?

    Per your very reasonable request that no one else accompany us today, I managed to persuade the very kind real estate agent to lend me the key and the time in the house.

    I’m sure that’s against some sort of housing authority regulations, but your secret is safe with me.

    Are you good at keeping secrets, Merry?

    I’m better than some. I pause, then add, More often than not, they keep me, only because it sounds simultaneously mysterious and pithy.

    Is it okay if I start recording now, Merry?

    What, no notes? I pictured you with a pen at the ready, and a small black notebook that you keep proudly hidden away in a coat pocket. It would be full of color-coded tabs and bookmarks, marking the pages that are research bits, character sketches, and random but poignant observations about love and life.

    Ha! That’s so not my style. Rachel visibly relaxes and reaches across and touches my elbow. If I can share a secret of my own: I can’t read my own scribbles. I think a large part of my motivation for becoming a writer was to stuff it in the faces of all the teachers and kids who made fun of my handwriting. Her smile is hesitant and real, and it makes me like her a whole lot more. I also like that she doesn’t color her pepper-gray hair, that her posture is correct but not obnoxiously so, that she crosses her left foot over her right, that her ears aren’t too big for her face, and that she hasn’t yet made a remark about what a creepy, empty old house my childhood home has become.

    I say, "Ah, revenge! We’ll call your future memoir The Palmer Method Must Die! and you’ll send copies to your confused and long since retired former teachers, each copy illegibly signed in red, of course."

    Rachel opens her jacket and pulls out her smartphone.

    I slowly bend to the floor and pick up her blue hat. After politely brushing dust from the brim I place it on top of my head with a flourish. It’s too small.

    Ta-dah!

    You look better in it than I do.

    Do you really think so?

    Rachel smiles again. This one I can’t quite read. Her fingers tap and flash across the touch screen of her phone and a bleep fills the empty space of the living room. It’s a terrible sound; cold, final, irrevocable.

    She says, Why don’t you start by telling me about Marjorie and what she was like before everything happened.

    I take her hat off and twirl it around. The centrifugal force of the rotations will either keep the hat on my finger or send it flying across the room. If it flies off, I wonder where in the whole wide house it will land.

    I say, My Marjorie— And then I pause because I don’t know how to explain to her that my older sister hasn’t aged at all in fifteen-plus years and there never was a before everything happened.

    CHAPTER 2

    THE LAST FINAL GIRL

    Yeah, it’s just a BLOG! (How retro!) Or is THE LAST FINAL GIRL the greatest blog ever!?!? Exploring all things horror and horrific. Books! Comics! Video games! TV! Movies! High school! From the gooey gory midnight show cheese to the highfalutin art-house highbrow. Beware of spoilers. I WILL SPOIL YOU!!!!!

    BIO: Karen Brissette

    Monday, November, 14, 20 _ _

    The Possession, Fifteen Years Later: Episode 1 (Part 1)

    Yes, I know, it’s hard to believe that everyone’s favorite (well, my favorite) reality TV crash ’n burn The Possession originally aired fifteen years ago. Damn, fifteen years ago, right? Oh those heady days of NSA surveillance, torrent, crowdfunding, and pre-collapse economy!

    You’re going to need a bigger boat for my grand deconstruction of the six-episode series. There’s so much to talk about. I could write a dissertation on the pilot alone. I can’t stand it anymore! You can’t stand it anymore! Karen, stop teasing usssssss!!!!

    Insert authorial voice here: As late as the mid-2000s a midseason replacement in the fall/holiday season meant the show was being dumped. But with the success of Duck Dynasty and many other cable networks’ so-called redneck reality TV shows, any time slot could be the time for a surprise hit reality show.

    (aside: these redneck reality—a bourgeois term if there ever was one—shows filled the lack of blue-collar sitcoms or dramas . . . remember Green Acres or The Dukes of Hazzard, nah, me either)

    The Discovery Channel bet big on The Possession, though at first glance it didn’t exactly fit the redneck mold. The show was set (yes, I’m using the word set as I’m treating the show like fiction, and that’s because it was, like all the other reality TV, fiction. Duh.) in the well-to-do suburb Beverly, Massachusetts. Too bad the Barrett family didn’t conveniently live in the town next door, Salem, where, you know, they burned all them witches back in ye olde days. I hereby request the sequel be made and set in Salem, please! I kid, but they might as well have set The Possession in a town that infamously tortured improper young women to death, right? But I digress . . . So, yeah, at first glance, the show had no rednecks, no backwaters, no ponds with snapping turtles, no down-home, folksy wisdom, or dudes in giant beards and overalls. The Barretts were a stereotypically middle-class family at a time when the middle class was rapidly disappearing. Their fading middle-classness was a huge part of the show’s appeal to blue-collar folks and the down-and-outers. So many Americans thought and continue to think they’re middle class even when they’re not, and they are desperate to believe in the middle class and the values of bourgeois capitalism.

    So here came this 1980s sitcom-esque family (think Family Ties, Who’s the Boss?, Growing Pains) who were under siege from outside forces (both real and fictional), and where The Possession nailed that blue-collar sweet spot was with John Barrett, an unemployed father in his early forties. The family’s financial situation, like so many other folks, was in the shitter, shall we say. Barrett had worked for the toy manufacturer Barter Brothers for nineteen years but was laid off after Hasbro bought out the company and closed down the eighty-year-old factory in Salem. (Salem again! Where are all the witches at?) John wasn’t college educated and had worked at the factory since he was nineteen, starting out on the assembly lines, then working his way up through the place, climbing that toy ladder until he was finally in charge of the mail room. He’d received thirty-eight weeks of severance pay for his double-decade of servitude, which he’d managed to stretch out into a year and a half of living wage. There was only so much stretching the Barretts could do to maintain two daughters and a big house and real estate tax bill and all the hope and promise and yearning that comes with the middle-class lifestyle.

    The pilot episode opens with John’s tale of woe. What a brilliant choice by the writers/producers/show-sters! Opening with one of the many supposed possession-reenactments would’ve been too cliché, and frankly, too goofy. Instead they gave us grainy black-and-white photos of John’s old factory in its days of prosperity, photos of the workers inside happily making their foam and rubber toys. Then they cut to a montage with the images flickering by almost subliminally quick: DC politicians, angry Occupy Wall Street protestors, Tea-Party rallies, unemployment charts and graphs, chaotic courtrooms, ranting talking heads, crying people filing out of the Barter Brothers factory. Within the first minute of the series, we’d already witnessed the new and all-too-familiar American economic tragedy. The show established a sense of gravity, along with an air of unease by using only realism and by first introducing John Barrett: the new and neutered postmillennial male; a living symbol of the patriarchal breakdown of society and, gosh darn it, he symbolized it well, didn’t he?

    Ugh, I didn’t intend to introduce this series of blog posts about THE series with politics. I promise I’ll get to the fun gory horror stuff eventually, but you have to indulge me first . . . BECAUSE KAREN SAYS SO!!!

    If The Possession was going to emulate so many of the archconservative possession movies and horror movies that had come before it, then it was going to do so while standing on those sagging shoulders of the man of the house. The message was already clear. Daddy Barrett was out of a job and consequently the family and society as a whole was in full decay mode. Poor Mom, Sarah Barrett (stalwart bank teller), only gets a brief background check in the opening segment. Her being the sole breadwinner in the family isn’t mentioned until later in the pilot when she offhandedly mentions her job during one of the confessional (see what they did there????) interviews. Sarah is barely a prop in the opening as we see a montage of wedding photos and pictures of the two daughters, Merry and Marjorie.

    In the photos everyone is smiling and happy, but ominous music plays in the background . . . (dun, dun, DUN!)

    CHAPTER 3

    I TELL RACHEL that there is no starting point or ground zero for what happened to Marjorie and our family.

    If there was, the eight-year-old me was not aware of it, and the almost quarter-century-old me cannot find it with the supposedly clear lens of hindsight. Worse, my memories mix up with my nightmares, with extrapolation, with skewed oral histories from my grandparents and aunts and uncles, and with all the urban legends and lies propagated within the media, pop culture, and the near continuous stream of websites/blogs/YouTube channels devoted to the show (and I have to confess to reading way more online stuff than I should). So all of it hopelessly jumbles up what I knew and what I know now.

    In a way, my personal history not being my own, being literally and figuratively haunted by outside forces, is almost as horrible as what actually happened. Almost.

    Let me give you a small example before we really start.

    When I was four my parents attended two church-sponsored Marriage Encounter weekends. I’ve learned from second-third-fourth-hand accounts that Dad insisted they go with the hopes of getting them through a rough patch in their marriage and to rediscover God in their relationship and lives. Mom, at the time, was no longer Catholic or practicing any religion at all and was very much against the idea, but she still went. Why she went is subject to total speculation as she never told me or anyone else why. That I’m talking about it now would totally embarrass her. The first weekend went well enough with their A-frame cabin, walks in the woods, their group discussions, and dialogue drills; each couple would take turns writing down and then sharing their answers to questions concerning their marriage, with those questions framed within the context of some biblical lesson or text. Apparently the second weekend didn’t go so hot, with Mom walking out on Marriage Encounter and Dad when he reportedly stood before the entire gathering and quoted an Old Testament verse about the wife having to submit herself to the husband.

    Now, it’s certainly possible that story about Mom’s weekend walkout is an exaggeration based on a couple of facts: My parents did leave the second weekend early and ended up staying a night in a Connecticut casino; while Dad famously found religion again when we were older, he (and we) did not attend church, Catholic or other, for many years prior to the attempted exorcism. I mention these facts in the interest of accuracy and context, and to point out that it’s possible his quoting the Bible didn’t actually happen even if enough people believe it did.

    But I am not saying it isn’t probable that Dad quoted the offending verse at Mom, as it sounds totally like something he’d do. The rest of that particular story is easy to imagine: Mom storming away from the retreat cabin, Dad running to catch up with her, begging for forgiveness and apologizing profusely, and then to make it up to her, taking her to the casino.

    Regardless, what I remember of those Marriage Encounter weekends is only that my parents went away with the promise that they’d be back soon. Away was the only word the four-year-old me remembered. I had no concept of distance or time. Only that they were away, which sounded so weirdly menacing in an Aesop’s Fables way. I was convinced they went away because they were sick of my eating pasta without spaghetti sauce. Dad had always grumbled about his not believing that I didn’t like the sauce while he added butter and pepper to my macaroni elbows (my preferred pasta shape). While they were away my dad’s younger sister, Auntie Erin, babysat Marjorie and me. Marjorie was fine but I was too scared and freaked out to keep to my normal sleep routine. I built a meticulous fortress of stuffed animals around my head while Auntie Erin sang me song after song after song. What song didn’t really matter, according to my aunt, as long as it was something I’d heard on the radio.

    Okay, I promise I will generally not footnote all the sources (conflicting or otherwise) of my own story. Here in the pre-beginning, I only wanted to demonstrate how tricky this is and how tricky this could get.

    To be honest, and all the external influences aside, there are some parts of this that I remember in great, terrible detail, so much so I fear getting lost in the labyrinth of memory. There are other parts of this that remain as unclear and unknowable as someone else’s mind, and I fear that in my head I’ve likely conflated and compressed timelines and events.

    So, anyway, keeping all that in mind, let’s begin again.

    What I’m not so delicately saying with this preamble is that I’m trying my best to find a place to start

    Although, I guess I already have started, haven’t I?

    CHAPTER 4

    I HAD A playhouse made out of cardboard in the middle of my bedroom. It was white with black outlines of a slate roof and there were happy flower boxes illustrated below the shuttered windows. A stumpy, brick chimney was on top, way too small for Santa, not that I believed in Santa at that age, but I pretended to for the benefit of others.

    I was supposed to color the white cardboard house all in, but I didn’t. I liked that everything on the house was white and that my blue bedroom walls were my bright sky. Instead of decorating the outside, I filled the inside of the house with a nest of blankets and stuffed animals, and covered the interior walls with drawings of me and my family in various scenes and poses, Marjorie often as a warrior princess.

    I sat inside my cardboard house, shutters and door shut tight, small fold-up book light in my hand, and a book spread across my lap.

    I never cared about the pigs and their silly picnic. I wasn’t interested in the dumb banana mobile, the pickle car, or the hot dog car. Dingo Dog’s reckless driving and Officer Flossy’s endless pursuit annoyed me to no end. I only had eyes for that rascally Goldbug even though I’d long ago found and memorized where he was on every page. He was on the cover, driving a yellow bulldozer, and later in the book he was in the back of goat-Michael-Angelo’s truck and he was in the driver’s seat of a red Volkswagen Beetle that dangled in the air at the end of a tow truck’s chain. Most of the time he was just a pair of yellow eyes peering out at me through a car window. Dad had told me that when I had been very little, I’d work myself into a lather if I couldn’t find Goldbug. I’d believed him without knowing what a lather was.

    I was eight years old, which was too old to be reading Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go as my parents constantly reminded me. What I was or wasn’t reading was once a big deal and the main source of familial Barrett angst before everything that happened with Marjorie. My parents worried, despite my doctor’s assurances, that my left eye wasn’t getting stronger, wasn’t catching up to her socket sister on the right, and it was why I wasn’t excelling in school and didn’t show much interest in reading books more appropriate for my age. I could and did read just fine, but I was more interested in the stories my sister and I created together. I’d placate Mom and Dad by carrying around various chapter books, as my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Hulbig, called them, pretending to be reading beyond my grade level. More times than not my pretend-reads were from this endless series of corny adventure books, each with its simpleminded plot essentially outlined in the title and usually involving a magical beast. Answering Mom’s what’s the book about question wasn’t difficult.

    So, I wasn’t actually reading and rereading Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. My quiet and private refinding of Goldbug was a ritual I performed before Marjorie and I would write a new story in the book. We’d added dozens and dozens of stories, one for almost all of the random bit players in Richard Scarry’s world, each story written in the actual pages of the book. I certainly can’t remember all the stories, but there was this one we wrote about the cat driving a car that had gotten stuck in a puddle of molasses. The brown goop leaked out of a truck with its tank conveniently marked MOLASSES in big black letters. On the cat’s face I’d drawn a pair of blocky black-framed glasses that were just like the ones I wore, and I’d drawn those same glasses on all of the other characters for which we’d created stories. In the space around the cat and between the molasses truck, and in my small, careful handwriting (but with terrible spelling), I’d transcribed the following story: "Merry the cat was late for work at the shoe factory when she got trapped in the sticky molasses. She was so mad her hat flew off her head! She was stuck all day and all night. She was stuck there in the middle of the road for days and days until a bunch of friendly ants came and ate all the molasses. Merry the cat cheered and took the ants home with her. She built them a huge ant farm so they would stay. Merry the cat talked to them all the time, gave them all names that began with the letter A, and she always fed them

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