The house came furnished with an occult library and ominously breaking figurines.

123. The Woman Who Would not Die – Carolyn Busey Bauman

Okay, so, technically the titular “woman who would not die” is mostly dead. Just a spoiler there for this book from 1969 about a newlywed couple – an artist and a cat-hater, who end up enveloped in the occult and require their neighbors to save them from a ghost cat and a ghost who wanted her portrait painted.

You see, in a confusing history lesson about who has lived in Calder’s Cottage before, it turns out Jeanette, who lived there with her mother and is not the lady who kept losing children and was an actual Calder, Jeanette aka “the Bad One,” wanted to have a new body because her moon-based occult evil is still in the house and what else are artists for except to paint you an ideal body and be manipulated into giving up their life force?

Norman the artist played right into her ghost hands while insinuating his new wife Lorrie’s encounters with the ghost cat (which she really hates, she like super hates cats, her description of it on her ankle is really visceral) are just her imagining things because no one can find the cat. Also, I learned that possession causes a feeling of stiffness in the spine, thanks psychologist ESP studying neighbor Guy.

A lot of this reminded me of the early parts of Messiah of Evil where she’s narrating to herself, staring at the beach, and wandering around the house like she’s wading through quicksand until something bad happens. There’s just a very weirdly dramatic tone that isn’t earned right away in both that movie and this book, like whatever happens in the story, Lorrie is going to freak out dreamy-style and that’s that.

I saw a house for sale recently that was decorated in 1975 and had a bathroom that is in Peregrine’s exact colors. No mention of any ghost cats either.