Ghost Eaters

 

Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman 304 pages

 

Want to get haunted? That is the new phrase in Richmond. Instead of getting high, teens and young adults want to get haunted.

 

What does that mean? Instead of getting high and the munchies…or hallucinating gosh know what…takers of a new pill, GHOST, can actually see dead people. Not those they want to see necessarily, but all those who are around them. Considering its past with slavery and the Civil War, there are a LOT of ghosts tethered to the Richmond area.

 

Erin’s small band of friends, of people she trusts---most of the time---includes her ex-boyfriend, Silas, Tobias and Maura. Erin cannot let Silas go. She wants to, but she runs anytime he needs/wants her. She also has a habit of pulling him out rehab when the going gets tough. After all, says Silas, “rehab is for quitters.” When she rescues (?) him this time, he turns up dead under an overpass, and Erin is consumed with guilt.

 

Tobias tells Erin about a new drug, GHOST, that he and Silas have created that enables a person to speak to the dead. Erin leaps at the opportunity to see Silas again…and a whole bunch of other zombie-like creatures. He takes her and Maura to an abandoned subdivision so that the ghosts will have a place to haunt. The séance is successful; Erin can see and talk with Silas.

 

However, the Silas-sighting is only temporary, but the other dead follow her, trying to get close to her, trying to swallow her life force. There are times that these descriptions border less on horror and move the needle to the high-gross factor. I retched on more than one occasion.

 

Erin wants that experience again. She needs that experience. She begins to take more and more pills, desperate to have Silas reappear. Her life spirals out of control while more and more ghosts try to get close to her. They follow her wherever she goes.

 

It's been about a month since I finished this book, and yet it still haunts me. I felt like Erin---I didn’t want to finish, but I had to see what happened. This book is the grossest, not the scariest, book I have ever come across, but it is well done. The things that happened had to happen—a sign of a great plot. Ghost Eaters receives 4 out of stars in Julie’s world. I can still hear Silas say, “Want to
get haunted?”