If you guys will remember, back in September of 2022 I talked about a book called Faces in a Window, the second novel by Pennsylvania-based author Oliver C. Seneca. The writer himself was kind enough to send me a copy to review, and I quite enjoyed the story, though I had a few minor issues with it.
Just recently, Oliver contacted me again and asked if I’d like to have a gander at his latest novel Shaded Grove, released in early September of 2024. Since free books are always a good thing, and since I had liked his previous work, I obviously accepted.
Oliver told me that this latest work is YA horror; however, though the main characters are teenagers, in my opinion there’s no reason adults wouldn’t dig the story as well, as there was nothing in there that struck me as particularly geared toward a younger demographic.
I have to say that I think the author really knocked this one out of the park; the prose here is much leaner and more assured than his previous novel, and the plot is a lot more engaging and propulsive, even though it largely takes place in one location. The two main protagonists are both likable and relatable, the situation they find themselves in is intriguingly harrowing, and the descriptions of the surroundings are so vivid you can almost smell them. As much as I enjoyed Faces in a Window, Shaded Grove is a significant leap forward.
The plot revolves around two sisters, Megan and Dianne Willis, who are similar in age but quite different in personality. Dianne is besotted with paranormal topics, and her favorite thing to do is go on ghost tours, taking along her trusty EVP recorder to try and catch evidence of ghostly activity. Megan, on the other hand, is skeptical, outspoken, and sarcastic, and has no patience for woo-woo stuff of any kind. She’s also not shy about giving Dianne endless grief about her belief in spirits and the afterlife.
In spite of Megan’s rejection of all things spooky, she does still love her sister, and at the beginning of the novel, she’s actually driving Dianne to the next town to do an extra-special ghost tour for Dianne’s birthday. Unfortunately, though, the weather has taken a turn for the craptastic, and the GPS isn’t quite cooperating, so the girls soon become lost in the middle of nowhere in a raging thunderstorm.
Naturally, Megan is livid about this, blaming Dianne for wanting to come on this stupid ghost-hunting expedition in the first place and getting them hopelessly lost. The pair begin arguing, and though Dianne manages to maintain a mostly even keel, Megan just keeps needling her until Dianne also starts laying into her sister about what a cranky joykiller she is.
This goes on for the first page or two, but almost immediately, some shit hits the fan in the form of a crazed-looking old woman suddenly looming in front of their speeding car. Megan slams on the brakes and avoids hitting the old bat, but of course the girls are pretty shaken up.
The woman then approaches the vehicle, and the girls herd her inside to get her out of the rain, apologizing profusely. The old woman also apologizes, saying she didn’t mean to get in their way, but she seems oddly unaffected by almost getting mowed down by a careening Ford. She also doesn’t seem to be playing with a full deck, claiming she was just tidying up her room and then she was suddenly out in the middle of the street with no memory of how she got there.
The sisters offer to take her to a hospital, but she tells them she just wants to go back to her room. The only problem is, the woman won’t tell them her name or where she lives, and moments later, she starts looking like she’s having a seizure or a stroke. The panicked sisters try to call 911, but the old woman then flips the fuck out, screaming at them that they better not call the authorities and all she wants is to go back to her room.
Megan and Dianne aren’t quite sure what to do, but to placate her, they tell her they’re going to take her back home, while actually planning to drive her to the nearest hospital, which is about twenty miles away. While they’re driving, the old woman starts saying weird, borderline threatening shit to them as though she knows who they are, even though they’ve never seen her before in their lives.
Well, only a few minutes after this, the old woman completely loses her marbles again, getting grabby with the girls and generally being a wildly gesticulating menace inside the moving car. The long and short of it is that the woman acts up so much that Megan ends up losing control on the wet road, and the car flips and ends up in a ditch.
Both Megan and Dianne are wounded but still able to walk, although their phones are lost or broken in the crash so they have no way to call for help. Strangely, when they free themselves from the wreckage, the old woman who caused all the trouble is nowhere to be found, a problem that becomes less pressing as the sisters realize how much of a pickle they’re in.
Not sure what else to do, they decide to walk a bit to see if they can find a house where they can call an ambulance. Luckily for them, or so they think at first, they almost immediately see a light shining through the trees a little way off, so they make their way toward it.
Once they arrive, they find what appears to be an abandoned facility of some kind, and a sign informs them that this was once Shaded Grove Mental Hospital. Since the place looks like it closed years ago, they’re convinced they won’t find any help here, but then they’re surprised by the appearance of a security guard named Todd who seems friendly and instructs them to come inside to use the phone and bandage their wounds up.
The girls are wary, but don’t have much choice in the matter, so they go along with Todd. A few things seem off once they get inside the hospital, though; for one thing, everything looks decades out of date, including the phone, which of course is totally dead. Not long after getting inside, the power goes out, and Todd goes off to restart the generator but never reappears.
The sisters wait for him for a bit, but they start getting creeped out in the dark, and what’s more, think they see someone skulking around outside the windows. Megan finally says fuck this and tells Dianne they need to get the hell out of Dodge. They make it as far as the front gates, but because of the power outage, the gates won’t open, and the girls realize they’ll have to go back inside the hospital to see if they can find Todd, or the keys to unlock the gate.
Once they get back inside, though, the real nightmare begins, as they start encountering all kinds of crazy shit, including people who seem to be doctors and patients, and a building that appears to be shifting and deteriorating in front of their very eyes.
As the sisters fight to get out of the mental hospital, a battle that comprises the bulk of the story, there are occasional flashbacks to the girls’ past, and in particular some previous ghost tours they went on that end up having significance to what’s happening to them inside Shaded Grove.
As I said, this was a giant leap forward from Oliver Seneca’s last novel, and kept me interested all the way through. Even though almost the entire story takes place inside this crumbling mental hospital, it never got boring or repetitive, as there was always some new terrible thing happening to the girls that kept you wondering what was going to happen next. The prose was also very action-focused, with minimal unnecessary dialogue, and though there was a bit of ambiguity at the end about what exactly happened to all the spirits, this was a very satisfying, fun horror story with some creepy moments and characters you were really rooting for. I would recommend it if you’re into stories about abandoned mental hospitals with crazy ghost shenanigans occurring therein.
Also, not sure who designed the cover, but it’s gorgeous and I love it.
Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.
The Scare Salon 