I have read this book twice, and I do have to admit that this book was initially very slow for me to get into, but picked up relatively fast. As a result, Ben’s true desire in recreating Thomas Edison’s experiment has been to validate his mother’s torturous existence and give her soul final peace. Ben, however, has kept the true reasons for his interest in The Spirit Telephone to himself: his recently deceased mother had spent the majority of her life in a mental hospital, tormented by ghostly visions that, in turn, had ruined Ben’s and his older brother’s childhoods.

To that end, Ben enlists the help of renowned ghost hunter and personal friend, Martin Ruben. Ben has recently acquired Thomas Edison’s Spirit Telephone and plans to recreate his long-abandoned experiment in an effort to prove, to the public at large at least, that communication with the spirit world is impossible. The house itself may have been gone, but the gruesome stories of death remained. The house at 1129 Ridge Avenue had been completely destroyed in 1927 due to a tremendous gas main explosion that damaged the houses around it very minimally. No one dared enter, until…įebruary of 1988 – Ben Kellogg and Laura Hawks decide to collaborate on a book about the hellish legend of 1129 Ridge Avenue. What transpired in the hours that the elderly inventor and his acquaintance, Freddie Parlock, were in that house, changed both men immeasurably for the rest of their lives and unleashed a terrifying and demonic evil on the world. Edison entered the house on Ridge Avenue in order to test his newest invention: The Spirit Telephone. In the spring of 1920, esteemed inventor Thomas A. Brunrichter had disappeared, leaving behind him gruesome remnants of his multiple demented experiments in the reanimation of the dead. A year later, the horrific sounds of a woman screaming followed by a huge explosion, brought firefighters into a true ‘House of Horrors’: Dr. Brunrichter purchased the house in the early 1900s. For roughly 20 years, the house stood vacant until a reclusive doctor named Adolph C. Weeks later, Lyda Congelier brutally murdered Charles and Essie after discovering her philandering husband having an affair with Essie. Number 1129 Ridge Avenue – in the winter of 1871, Civil War profiteer Charles Wright Congelier, his wife Lyda and their young servant, Essie moved into the mansion after they bought it for a song. How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 1 June 2009 Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale

Horror Mansion by J.N. Williamson