The Tale of the Restless House

Are You Afraid of the Dark? #3

by John Peel

Time-Warped!

Nathan Forrester plans to scare Adam Ingram out of his wits. He's found the perfect place: haunted Hawkins House. And gorgeous Kendra Collins has agreed to bait the trap.

But when Adam and Kendra and their friends open the door, they find only Nathan's backpack, loaded with Halloween tricks. Nathan is missing. Then they hear a scream. . .

It's up to Adam to discover the secret of Hawkins House, where a terrifying past lurks behind each door. Where their only way out is death. . .

Genres: Horror

128 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1995

About the author

John Peel is the author of Doctor Who books and comic strips. Notably, he wrote the first original Doctor Who novel, Timewyrm: Genesys, to launch the Virgin New Adventures line. In the early 1990s he was commissioned by Target Books to write novelisations of several key Terry Nation Dalek stories of the 1960s after the rights were finally worked out. He later wrote several more original Daleks novels.

He has the distinction of being one of only three authors credited on a Target novelisation who had not either written a story for the TV series or been a part of the production team (the others were Nigel Robinson and Alison Bingeman).

Outside of Doctor Who, Peel has also written novels for the Star Trek franchise. Under the pseudonym "John Vincent", he wrote novelisations based upon episodes of the 1990s TV series James Bond Jr..

Reviews

[Lacy Lovelace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love stories about haunted houses. I think ghosts are more my brand of horror than all of that gory, killer stuff. I really liked the premise of this book and as I was reading it, I got a Ray Bradbury vibe. He is one of my favorite authors and it is definitely a kind of story that he would of wrote-being a science fiction writer. I didn’t think it fit as a story for the Midnight Society though, especially not being told by Sam. If anything, this would have been a story that Tucker, Frank, or Betty Ann would have told. The only part that screamed Sam was the love interest between Kendra and Adam.

It kind of reminded me of one of the Goosebump episodes where the kids get trapped in the house and they have to play for their life because the house is set up like a board game. Nicole, Josh, and Nathan convince Kendra to lure unsuspecting Adam into the Hawkins House so they can scare him. Little do they realize, the House has other plans. They will be the ones to look like the wimps because once you go in, you’ll never be able to come out.

I think it’s because I have a kiddo now but I can’t get over the books we had as kids. The stuff in them was definitely not age appropriate because I know I would have read this in 4th or 5th grade and I think this series is definitely more appropriate for a late middle schooler.

[J.B. Mathias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the tv show as a kid but didn't know these books even existed. This one was pretty decent, a little goofy and cliche at times but sufficiently creepy without going overboard for a kids book. The themes were a little heavy handed but not bad.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

None of these Are You Afraid of the Dark books are really “good”, but they’re usually at least fun to read. This one, on the other hand, was just bizarre.

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.75, rounded up for the nostalgia factor

[Adam Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh it’s okay. There are better kid horror books but it was fun to revisit this series.

[?0?0?0 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie this book is a bit nostalgic but is terrible nonetheless. The characters are thin, the editing is atrocious, and the story is not really a story so much as it is a set up to characters wandering aimlessly, slowly, so the cast of kids can small talk about the house and gossip over the most senseless, non-story driven plot points in a dialogue so alien a reader would not be mistaken for misunderstanding that this could have turned out to be that the kids were truly aliens, but that's not the case here etc. Comic movies from 60 - 70 years ago aimed at kids have more complex character relations and believable dialogue, elements that this book needs but lacks, and thus I repeat myself and end this ...

Oh, the title: "Are You Afraid Of the Dark: The Tale of the Restless House" and it does.not.fucking.glow.in.the.dark...

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

How dorky, I can't believe I remember reading this! I loved the kids' tv show "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" so much that when I happened to stumble across this novel in the kids' section of a bookstore, well, I just had to read it. I don't actually recall too much about it, except that it's about a group of kids who get trapped in a house that is somehow physically keeping them from leaving. And all I remember about the ending is that some of the kids manage to break the walls of the house so they can get out. Maybe.

[Stephanie]

This story has haunted me for YEARS. I could NOT recall the name of it, and all of my childhood books were packed away and inaccessible until now. I am going to reread this darn thing just to get it out of my head, as all I remembered were bits and pieces.