SOLVED. Ghost story for Children in which a little girl gets possessed. [s]

[Eliot]

I realise this is a little vague, but I have a strong recollection of reading this book as a child and loving it. From what I remember, a family moves into an old house - I think it was a single mother and two children - and swiftly become aware that there is a "presence" living there with them.

The youngest child, a little girl, makes friends with another little girl - the ghost, naturally - and starts spending a lot of time with her. Her mother treats it as a game at first, but begins to feel unsettled when her daughter starts singing songs that she claims the ghost taught her (one song in particular was the hymn "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam"). When the mother asks her daughter to stop playing with her new friend, the daughter becomes uncharacteristically aggressive.

Eventually, the daughter allows herself to be temporarily possessed so that the ghost can experience what it's like to be alive again. During these possessions, the ghost wreaks havoc on the house (trashing the playroom, eating immense amounts of food/candy and then leaving the daughter to suffer through the resulting sickness, stuff like that). She soon becomes increasingly malevolent and starts possessing the daughter without her permission.

I know it all sounds fairly generic, but it's driving me mad that I can remember it so clearly and yet can't recall the title or author!

[SamSpayedPI]

Eliot (sorry about the spam; it will be removed eventually):

Can you tell us around when you read the book? You don't need to be exact; a range of years is fine. But it helps us narrow our searches if you read it in the 1970s versus the 2000s or whatever.

Also, what age would you say it was directed to? It sounds a little scary for young children; was it a sort of middle-grade book like Goosebumps?

[Eliot]

I read it when I was around ten or eleven, so approx. 2007; but my reading was fairly advanced for my age, so it could easily have been a middle-grade book. The closest analogue I can think of in terms of age-range, genre and tone is Cliff McNish's "Breathe" - which is to say, scary and quite mature in terms of theme, but nothing that would be overtly unsuitable for a ten-year-old.

[Rainbowheart]

The Ghost of Sadie Kimber

[Eliot]

Rainbowheart wrote: "The Ghost of Sadie Kimber"

Oh my gosh, yes!!! That's the one! Thank you so much, I can rest easy now lol

[Rainbowheart]

No prob, glad to help out!