The Titanic Locket

March 3, 2014
As she did in her YA novel Distant Waves, Weyn spins a Titanic-themed story with supernatural underpinnings in this hair-raising first book in the Haunted Museum series, part of the Hauntings line. After viewing an exhibit of Titanic memorabilia at the Haunted Museum in Southampton, England, sisters Jessica and Samantha Burnett board Titanic 2, a replica liner whose maiden voyage will follow the route of the original ship. The re-enactment starts off innocently enough: a crew member assigns the girls the identities of fictional sisters who were passengers on Titanic and encourages them to wear period costumes from the ship’s wardrobe department. But soon a string of creepy incidents occur: tapping from behind their cabin wall, mysterious reappearances of an eerie locket the siblings spotted in the museum, a maid who shape-shifts into a skeleton, and Jessica’s near-drowning in the bathtub by an invisible force. Weyn keeps unexpected chills coming, nimbly linking past and present with visits by the spirits of Titanic passengers, including the ghosts of Jessica and Samantha’s 1912 alter egos. A quick, jittery read. Ages 8–12.

February 1, 2014
Spectral voyagers practically outnumber the living ones on a re-enactment of the Titanic's cruise in this ghost-happy series opener. A visit to a creepy museum just before boarding a replica of the famous liner leaves sisters Samantha and Jessica saddled with a locket salvaged from the original ship that keeps coming back despite their increasingly frantic efforts to get rid of it. Worse yet, they begin to notice sudden chills, scratching and whimpering sounds in the walls and a weirdly mutable number on their cabin door. Frequent encounters with supernatural figures (some historical, such as John Jacob Astor's dog, Kitty) escalate until Jessica is nearly drowned in the bath by a poltergeist, Samantha is trapped in the elegant ballroom with dancers who rot before her eyes, and both sisters are forcibly possessed by the spirits of former passengers with personal scores to settle. Weyn ratchets up the eeriness by pairing off several of her living characters with strangely similar dead ones and quickly builds to a stormy climax that the sisters narrowly survive thanks to timely intervention by a powerful medium. After that, it's smooth sailing--at least until the next episode. Mild goose bumps for readers who prefer their ectoplasm served up in buckets. (Horror. 8-10)

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