Cursed Grounds

We’re in the midst of a supernatural nonfiction book rush, but few are as genuinely hair-raising as the Scary Places series. As with the publisher’s similarly creepy HorrorScapes series, the high-interest text is ideal for reluctant readers, with each two-page spread focusing on a single horrifying habitat. While not especially sophisticated, the layout is nonetheless effective, with cunning integration of stock art, photographs, period illustrations, gritty textures, and—scarier than anything else—the prevalent use of grainy snapshots showing the interiors of various abandoned buildings and cellars. Cursed Grounds digs deep for some strange ones: Utah’s Highway 191, Australia’s Babinda Creek, and even Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Monstrous Morgues of the Past turns up some stories that will have young readers agape: the Parisian morgue that became a tourist sensation, the haunted lab where 1,400 brains of the mentally ill were kept in jars, the shipwreck disaster that haunted Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios. Shuttered Horror Hospitals is rife with evil sanitoriums, plus one particularly nasty tale of the 160,000 who died from leprosy on an island near Venice, Italy. Boxed factoids (or folklore) ratchet up the thrills throughout, and a map and glossary cap off the fine back matter.