All The Lovely Bad Ones

A middle-aged couple named Mr. and Mrs. Jennings book a room right before dinner. Corey and Travis try to guess why they are staying at the inn. They soon notice that the couple is reading a copy of Haunted Inns of Vermont at dinner. Grandmother introduces Travis and Corey to Tracy, the high school waitress and maid. Tracy tells the children that she has not had any luck in seeing ghosts at the inn. Grandmother waves her off, dismissing all talk of ghosts as nonsense.

After dinner, the Jenningses ask Grandmother about the supposed haunting, eager to experience a paranormal event themselves. Grandmother tells the Jenningses that “no one has seen a ghost here for at least three years” (17). Corey tells the Jenningses that she once saw the ghost of a friend’s grandmother, lying so well that the older couple believes her completely. The story is one that Corey saw on a TV show about paranormal experiences. Everyone at the inn–the bike riders, Tracy, the Jenningses, Grandmother, and the children–begin sharing their respective ghost stories. After, the children meet Henry Brewster, Martha’s husband, and he carries their luggage back into their bedrooms on the first floor. According to Grandmother, both Brewsters are incredibly taciturn and keep to themselves, despite running the inn.

Grandmother shows them to their small bedrooms. Left alone, both Corey and Travis discuss their plans to impersonate ghosts to help Grandmother drum up business for the inn. The children are beyond excited about their plan, jumping up and down in Corey’s bed until Grandmother returns to tell them to quiet down. After Grandmother leaves, Travis finds Corey in her room holding a white nightgown. They plot to dress Corey up as a ghost so she can “haunt” the inn with white makeup on her face. They go to bed thinking about a summer filled with pranks and how to help Grandmother attract more guests to the inn.

At breakfast the next morning, Corey lies to the Jenningses, pretending that she’d seen a ghost at 3 AM. She claims to have seen a woman in white and as she tells Jenningses this tale, Travis thinks he sees a shadow out of the corner of his eye. The Jenningses plan to stay up that night so they can catch a glimpse of this supposed ghost themselves. To prepare for their impersonation of the ghosts, Travis and Corey ride their bikes to a tourist shop in Middlebury. There, they buy “white and green face makeup, black stuff for Corey’s eyes, dark purple lipstick” and other Halloween decorations to help them execute their plan (29).

At dinner that night, they meet Mr. Nelson, a long-time frequenter of the inn. He does not believe in ghosts and is annoyed at ghost hunters for causing a fuss whenever he visits. Late that night, Corey puts on the white dress and face make-up in order to look like a ghost. Together, Corey and Travis sneak through the lawn before going to the grove of trees. There, she screams, moans, and points up at the inn in a dramatic performance of an angry ghost. Grandmother wakes up at the noise and goes to check on Travis and Corey, who run back inside and pretend to be asleep. The children are delighted with the success of their plan; Travis thinks to himself, “We’d done it—ghosts had returned to Fox Hill” before falling asleep (33).

The Jenningses are beyond excited that they have had a brush with the paranormal. The bikers wonder aloud if the noise they heard could have been a cougar, but Mr. Brewster insists that he would have recognized what a cougar sounds like. Tracy is nervous at the mention of ghosts, but Grandmother insists that the scream must have belonged to an escaped peacock from the farm down the street. Grandmother is intent on finding a rational explanation for everything. The Jenningses are offended by the implication that they imagined the ghost. When Grandmother learns that Corey told the Jenningses that she saw a ghost, she instantly becomes suspicious of the siblings. She warns them both to stop talking about ghosts so they don’t scare the inn’s guests. Despite the warning, the topic of ghosts is unavoidable.

Three other couples check into the inn after the Jenningses tell them about the ghost sighting. Grandmother is disgruntled with all the new guests asking about the ghosts. Tracy, on the other hand, insists that ghosts cannot hurt the living. Mrs. Brewster tells Travis to leave Tracy alone unless he wants to help her with the dishes. Leaving the kitchen, Travis goes to the haunted grove. While Travis is there, he feels like he’s being watched by someone he cannot see. This moment foreshadows the presence of supernatural entities at the inn, larger forces at play that neither Travis nor Corey understand quite yet.

Travis wakes up in the middle of the night to Corey leaving for the grove, dressed up as a ghost. Travis feels extremely creeped out in the grove, like something is watching them from the darkness. Just like the night before, Corey turns toward the inn and screams before racing back into the house. Unlike the previous night, however, Travis senses something following them back into the inn. Both children run back into their respective rooms and dive under the covers. Grandmother checks on them both, making sure that they are asleep. After Grandmother returns to her room, Travis desperately tries to talk himself out of the dread he felt in the grove. While Travis attempts to convince himself that the sounds are only a figment of his imagination, he hears a creak, a giggle, and a soft breath of air across his face.

The next morning at breakfast, all the guests are talking about the ghost from the night before. Tracy, on the other hand, tells the siblings that she will be camping out in the grove to try and see the ghost. She laughs at the possibility of a ghost hurting her, while Travis and Corey discuss the other tricks they’ll be playing indoors instead. The siblings confess to each other that they both felt like someone had been watching them the night before. On their way back to the inn, they find rows of small square stones, each with worn out two-digit numbers carved into them. Though the siblings are not yet aware of it, they have stumbled upon a graveyard.

More guests have joined them by lunchtime, brought by the Jenningses so that they can experience more paranormal events. Miss Eleanor Duvall, a self-proclaimed psychic and ghost hunter, is one of the newcomers. Grandmother orders both Travis and Corey not to talk to Miss Duval about the ghosts. She has a disdain for Duvall, whom she assumes is merely a fraud. Despite Grandmother’s warning, Corey immediately begins to play the part, telling the newcomers all her fake ghost stories. They then lead the adults to the grove, where Miss Duval begins to call upon the spirit. Nothing happens, and they return to the inn to wait for Miss Duvall’s assistant, Chester Coakley.

That night, they watch Tracy head outside to the grove. They both decide to play tricks indoors instead, waving a flashlight, feigning sobs and deep laughter. Upon hearing and seeing these incidents, the guests wake up in a frenzy. Miss Duvall declares these tricks as legitimate, “Sobs, rappings, laughter, footsteps, a blue light–a classic visitation!” (52). The siblings rush back to bed, but Tracy’s scream summons them back out into the lobby, where Grandmother and the guests are gathered around her. Tracy is sobbing, telling everyone that she felt a ghost in the grove, that it was evil. The guests begin chiming in around her, claiming to have seen lights, had their doors rapped on, and heard sobbing. Grandmother leads Tracy back to bed, telling everyone else to go back to sleep. After seeing Tracy so upset, for the first time, the siblings do not feel like talking about the ghosts at Fox Hill inn.