BSC #9: The Ghost at Dawn's House

Front Cover: Creaky stairs, spooky noises, secret passages - it must be a ghost!

Back Cover: Dawn has always thought there was a secret passage hidden in her house. But she never thought there was a ghost... until now. All kinds of creepy things go on whenever Dawn's at home. There are even spooky noises behind her bedroom wall!

Dawn is sure there's a ghost in her house. And so are the other Baby-sitters. But they're so busy with their baby-sitting jobs that they hardly have time for a ghost hunt. Will Dawn and her friends ever solve the mystery, or will Dawn have to share her house... with a ghost?

It's the last two weeks of summer, and the girls are all reunited after their adventures in the last book. Dawn is back from her vacation in California, and she decides that now is the perfect time for her to really dedicate herself to the search for a secret passage in their old farmhouse. We're treated to several chapters of Dawn scaring herself silly, between the search, reading ghost stories, and the stormy weather.

But then one day, when trying to find a place to read in the barn, Dawn stumbles upon a hidden trap door. Following the passageway, Dawn finds that it leads straight to her own bedroom! She's excited, and continues to explore it periodically. However, Dawn starts to notice things: things start to show up and then disappear in the passageway. But if Dawn is the only who knows about the passage, how is this happening? The only thing Dawn can think of is this: her house must be haunted!

The subplot in this book is actually connected to the main plot: over at the Pikes, Nicky is feeling left out, because the triplets always want to hang out together and their own friends, leaving Nicky alone with all the girls. Mr and Mrs Pike decide to let Nicky assert his independence by letting him wander around the neighbourhood alone, so long as he adheres to a 2-block radius. Despite Nicky insisting that he does, Dawn can never find him whenever she sits for the Pikes and goes out looking for him (after the events of Buddy from book 5, she suitably sensitive about this). Eventually though, Dawn realizes that her own house is within a 2-block radius and concludes that Nicky must be using her passage. Sure enough, he has been. She says he can continue to do so, and everything ends well. However, Dawn still isn't entirely convinced that her house isn't haunted.

Another thing to note in this book is that we meet the Perkinses for the first time. They moved into Kristy's old house, next to Mary Anne.

Random Thoughts:

• I have always loved Dawn on the cover of this. I love her outfit (I would totes wear something like that; back then AND now!) and I just think she looks super pretty and realistic. The cover also reminds me of the mystery/horror novels I used to read as a child, specifically Betty Ren Wright's The Dollhouse Murders.
• ...yes, I admit it: I just Googled the book Dawn is reading at the beginning Ghosts and Spooks, Chills and Thrills: Stories NOT to Be Read After Dark. It sounded good! I was hoping it'd be real haha it's exactly the kind of book I would have read at her age.
• I always imagined Dawn to be one of the taller girls, but either AMM has no concept of height, or Mary Anne and Kristy are MIDGETS, and Dawn is just as short as them: "Although I'd only fallen about five feet, it felt like five thousand. I was in darkness, but above me I could see a square of light". By grade 8, I was 5'2", and I pretty much stopped growing at that point (only gained a cumulative inch over the next 3 years, so I settled in at 5'3"). In grade 8, I was average height for the girls. There were a few girls a few inches taller than me, and a few girls a few inches shorter than me. But I don't recall anyone being much shorter than 4'11.
• I love Dawn's description of "Disneyland Daddy". It's so perfect: "...a guy who hasn't seen his kinds in months and feels really guilty. Guilty enough to take time off from work and give them a whirlwind vacation of beaches, amusement parks, shopping, dinners in restaurants, movies, treats, surprises... It was spectacular - except for the fact that a Disneyland Daddy doesn't feel like your father anymore. But I guess he's better than no father at all."
• I love the Perkinses. I think they're my favourite of the kids' charges. They are so not realistic kids at all, but they're adorable and I love them.
• We're also introduced to the Trip-Man in this book. While I don't entirely find it weird that Sharon is dating someone other than Richard (especially since the Trip-Man is the son of her parents' friends), I do find the overall timeline of everything to be weird. She essentially dates him off and on up until like, 6 months before finally marrying Richard. Maybe adult relationships are different, especially when it's a second marriage to a guy you already dated/knew for a long time earlier in your life, but it just seems sudden to me.
• I have always pronounced Myriah Perkins's name like Mariah Carey's. It has never occurred to me to pronounce it any other way. But in the past few years, through discovering fandom and what not, it came to my attention that it could theoretically be pronounced like "Maria" (think West Side Story and Sound of Music).

[Although I read and reviewed one of the original copies of this book, I currently also own one of the updated copies, with the Notebook Pages in the back.]

Author's Note

AMM talks about how as a child, she was obsessed with finding a secret passage in her house (even though it was a new house at the time!) and how she loved ghost stories. She decided to give these traits to one of her characters, and thus Dawn was born. AMM figures that her readers would love reading about things that interest her as a little girl. Again, we get a mention of how much she loved Nancy Drew and mysteries.

Notebook Pages


Dawn's new house is big and spooky. The spookiest place I've ever been is the old jail in Ottawa, Canada, that's now a hostel

It gave me the creeps because even though the lower half has been renovated to be a hostel, the upper half is still creepy as fuck, with the original jail cells and deathrow on display

The spookiest thing that ever happened to me was when I first moved into my house. I lived alone, and it was my first time not living with my parents. The house made all sorts of weird sounds, but the scariest thing was when I heard a crashing sound in my backyard. I woke up the next morning to find a giant weathered wood plank in my backyard. I have no idea where it came from

When this happened, I did nothing haha I just told myself that the plank must have always been there, that the wind just knocked it around, that everything was normal

One person who really scares me is Chuckie

This person scares me because he seems completely normal, wears button up shirts, mild-mannered and polite... but then every now and then... when you least expect it... he'll say something very disturbing or very not accepted by society... and he'll say it in a totally nonchalant, matter-of-fact tone, and then carry on like he hadn't said anything weird.

If I wanted to scare this person back, I would do nothing; I don't think Chuckie is scarable haha  

Dawn likes to read scary books. The scariest book I ever read was I don't know if they were the scariest books I've ever read, but Michael Grant's Gone series has always stuck with me and haunted me and once gave me nightmares haha

My favourite kinds of books are young adult sci-fi and horror

I like them because of the escapist factor. The things that happen in those books will never happen to me in real-life. I like being able to use my imagination

Dawn has a sleepover at her house. I've been to not that many, but a few sleepovers.

The most fun I've ever had a sleepover was when my friends and I did the 30 Hour Famine in high school

During Dawn's sleepover, the girls tell scary ghost stories. The scariest ghost story I've ever heard was about children. Children are always scary haha