Helpful ghosts, hungry ghosts and ocean ghosts are just a few of the spirits that readers meet in this thematic collection of 25 very short tales. Interspersed with “true ghost stories” ostensibly told by real people (first names and home locations appear at the ends) are explanatory accounts of traditional specters that include the tidy British silky that clears up messes, the Chinese egui in search of food because it has no descendents to leave offerings for it and the Japanese sake-drinking sea spirits. Rated with one to three skulls, most of the tales aren’t very scary due to their brevity. Mongeau’s atmospheric, swirling watercolors occasionally inspire horror (the painting of the bloody puddle with the Saudi Arabian Afrit has a gruesome quality), but many exhibit a touch of whimsy, not the shock factor that true ghost lovers seek. Día de los Muertos in Mexico and Halloween in the United States and Canada are described, and the book can always be used in the fall, but the stories deserve to be told in gorier detail. No index or sources. (map) (Folklore. 8-10)
