A fiendish scarecrow walks and talks. . . . On a stormy night, the Hardys' only hope of rescue is a ship piloted by ghosts. . . . The dungeon of a Scottish castle is haunted by a cruel and notorious pirate. . . . Frank and Joe are about to confront the powers of darkness in six terrifying tales of Halloween fright.

Big Ben helps the Kooties Club members with their science projects.

On November 30th 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood's mighty Army of Tennessee marched down Winstead Hill to launch a full frontal assault on Federal Forces entrenched at the Carter House, a half mile from the Franklin Square. The subsequent bloody battle overwhelmed the town, leaving thousands of abandoned dead soldiers to bury, and even more broken and tattered men to tend to. In addition to all the death and carnage from the war, Franklin was rocked by a series of fires in the 19th century as well as several gristly murders that jolted the sleepy little Southern town. From sprawling plantations to a charming town square, tales of ghostly activity are around every corner. Some of the entities in these stories are playful, while others are quite restless and mischievous. With each ghostly tale, Southern Ghost Stories: Franklin, Tennessee dives into the city's complicated history and invites you to explore the town to see what you might find.

The true story of the greatest mystery of Arctic exploration—and the rare mix of marine science and Inuit knowledge that led to the shipwreck's recent discovery. Ice Ghosts weaves together the epic story of the Franklin Expedition—whose two ships and crew of 129 were lost to the Arctic ice—with the modern tale of the scientists, divers, and local Inuit behind the incredible discovery of the flagship's wreck in 2014. Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led the discovery expedition, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story: Sir John Franklin and the crew of the HMS Erebus and Terror setting off in search of the fabled Northwest Passage, the hazards they encountered and the reasons they were forced to abandon ship hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of Western civilization, and the decades of searching that turned up only rumours of cannibalism and a few scattered papers and bones—until a combination of faith in Inuit lore and the latest science yielded a discovery for the ages.

Detective brothers Frank and Joe work to uncover a pirate ghost hoax in the seventh book in the interactive Hardy Boys Clue Book series. The Hardy Boys are super excited when their friend Jason Wang wins the “Talk Like a Pirate Contest” at Bayport’s annual Pirate Palooza. Jason’s prize is a map to the legendary pirate, Captain Scurvydog’s buried treasure. Expert detectives Frank and Joe offer to help him find it. But the next day, Jason tells the brothers that he won’t be doing any treasure hunting. He says the ghost of Captain Scurvydog has been haunting him; his parrot is singing pirate songs he’s never been taught, pirate coins appeared on his windowsill, and there’s a mysterious note in a bottle warning Jason to stay away from buried treasure. To Jason, the message is clear: stay away from Captain Scurvydog’s booty! Frank and Joe don’t believe in ghosts. They’re sure someone is tricking Jason so they can dig up the buried treasure themselves. The only question is, who?

In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.