The Last Day of October Phil Hickes 9780008748517

Bored with trick-or-treating, three friends venture into the woods on Halloween night to hunt for the haunted McBride House in this spine-tingling horror story from Phil Hickes.

If you go down to the woods today, you're in for a nasty surprise ...

Seeking creepy thrills instead of candy, Cody and his friends set out on Halloween to search for the ruins of the haunted McBride House in the woods near his home in Oregon.

The house has taken on a sinister legendary status after it burned down a hundred years ago with tragic consequences, and it's said that the ghosts of the family who lived there return each year on the last day of October.

But when they find the house, the truth of what is happening on this eerie autumn night is more terrifying than the three teenagers could ever have imagined ...

Particularly suitable for readers aged 9+ with a reading age of 8.

Phil Hickes has a passion for horror, ghosts and all things that go bump in the night. His short stories have been published in adult horror anthologies, but Phil turned his hand to writing middle grade as he wanted to and emulate the same visceral thrill he got from reading authors like Alan Garner and Susan Cooper. The Haunting of Aveline Jones was his first middle grade novel and his most recent is Shadowhall Academy: Ghost Story Society, which is the second in a two-book series.

"Nobody does spooky stories better than Phil Hickes ... I love it when horror stories for young readers aren't afraid to be proper scary." - Dan Smith