I’m so sorry, Curious One! I couldn’t help myself! I really wanted the next look into J.L. Bryan’s Ghost Trapper world! I literally was itching to continue reading the series, so I went ahead and divulged. The Crawling Darkness couldn’t have been better! Again, like with the second book, I was skeptical on it keeping me fully entertained and not becoming a repetitive series that changes names and houses and entities, but doesn’t change anything else.
I couldn’t be happier to have been wrong again with The Crawling Darkness. One of the best things that I think is working in its favor is the fact that these books are picking up within a few days of where the previous one left off. And maybe it’s because I am reading them so fast, but they aren’t annoying yet and I think that can be attributed to the timeline.
Also, The Crawling Darkness has some humor in it for me. I know, I know. You’re probably thinking to yourself, ‘how can she be amused or laugh in the middle of such a story,’ but come on! The Scooby-Doo jokes and Michael’s room scenes?! Absolutely giggle-worthy to me! Sometimes you just have to find the smile, even when surrounded by the crawling darkness…
Yes…that was a joke… hah!
You can’t forget the fact that The Crawling Darkness had an even darker undercurrent to it as well. We finally got the big reveal on how exactly Calvin (the owner of Eckhart Investigations) became paralyzed, were introduced to a case that they failed to solve over a year earlier and were given a glimpse into how Ellie would react to her own nemesis ghost from her childhood.
We also got some insightful background into Stacey and her younger years as well as her strained relationship with her family (especially her mother).
So, let’s dig in!
The New Client in The Crawling Darkness
We began with a sinister plot (after a quick recap on Stacey’s date with Jacob). The current haunted home was located right next to a home that Eckhart Investigations has failed to cleanse about 18 months earlier from the setting of The Crawling Darkness. Eckhart was now being called in to investigate for a young mother of two.
Alicia (the mom), her oldest son Kalil (age 11) and her youngest daughter Mia (age 9) had just moved in a few months ago. Her husband was killed recently by a drunk driver and unable to pay the bills, she moved into a cheaper and smaller unit. Their apartment was part of an old house that had been converted and they were being dangerously haunted.
Mia saw the “closet man” who resembled a faceless figure right from my own nightmares – that is until she saw a horror movie called Fleshface. After seeing the movie, the ghost turned into Fleshface himself, watching her from her closet and standing over her bed. I actually had to look up Fleshface to see if it was a real horror movie. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything on it!
Kalil saw little gray aliens with big black eyed. The same thing though, watching from his closet and bathroom doorway and standing over his bed.
Alicia herself saw a wispy, crawling figure that moved through the house.
With growing horror, Ellie realized it’s the same ghostly entity that they were unable to stop in the Wilson house down the street. The ghost takes the shape of your own greatest fear; personified. It slips through doors and watches you, feeding off you, waiting to take you.
Insight on Stacey
After the initial meeting with Alicia and her family, Stacey and Ellie break into the Wilson house (the home Calvin and Ellie were unable to cleanse). This is where we got some insight into Stacey finally!
Before, we were told that she happened upon a ghost sighting in graveyard when she was filming for a school project, but that wasn’t the whole truth. When she was younger, much younger, she forced her brother to take her with him when he went out with his friends on a Halloween night.
They came upon an old, scary house with friends that they were daring each other to go into. Suffice it to say, it was a bad idea. Her brother was very brave and walked fearlessly into the home, opening a door that had a scratching noise on the other side. A ghost came out of nowhere and in the panic of fleeing, her brother “fell” through the floorboards into the basement. Stacey was terrified and by the time she got out of the house she couldn’t find her brother. So, she went back in to find him and the house began to crumble around her. She barely escaped again, but by the time she got to police her brother was already gone. He fell into rusted nails that punctured his heart and lungs and was dead long before anyone got to him.
So, Stacey began her lifelong search for ghosts and was searching for them in the graveyard when she “happened” upon it by accident.
It really goes to prove how real of a person she is. Of course, her career choice isn’t supported by her mother and family, so they don’t know the whole truth about what she does. A sad thing for her to have to go through every time she talks to her family.
Anyways, Stacey and Ellie leave the Wilson house and set up for observation in Alicia’s apartment. Because it’s a single house split up, they want to check with the other tenants to see if they have had hauntings themselves. One family seems very standoff ish, one gentleman doesn’t appear to be home, but the brother and sister living in the apartment above them are willing to talk about it.
Michael and Melissa
Michael is a firefighter, an EMT and a very good cook. The perfect potential boyfriend for Ellie! He has only seen the ghost once, writing it off as a nightmare, even though it freaked him out. Melissa is about seventeen (don’t take my word for that!) and she saw it very often up until about a year ago.
Melissa and her friends played the Bloody Mary game and so naturally, the ghost became Melissa’s vision of Bloody Mary. She saw it reflected in her dresser mirror too many nights to count until the family next door moved in. Due to them both experiencing the ghost (even though it had been over a year since) Ellie set up cameras in each room, pointed at the closets, just in case.
Michael and Melissa’s relationship provided some comic relief as well, going through the hoops and loops of being a sibling. It was nice to break up the seriousness. I think it gave The Crawling Darkness an opportunity to break the mold of the first two books, which probably helped tamper down any repetitiveness that would have surfaced otherwise. I loved it! Not to mention when Stacey commented that they could “Scooby-Doo up a fake haunting” in order for Michael to have a reason to call Ellie right then and there instead of waiting for a no-show ghost! I just loved it!
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The Family Next Door
The basement seemed to be a hub of activity for the ghosts, even though none of them left the laundry room (located in the basement) when they had a whole, huge house to haunt. Other than one ghost who appeared to be a man.
The next day Ellie met the neighboring family and soon realized why no one really liked them. Honestly, they reminded me of someone I knew long ago, so that was an instant dislike in my book, even though near the end the mother came and told them about her own single experience with the ghost. Her poor son was being haunted almost every night by a massive dinosaur that the ghost took shape of. Instead of helping the son they simply yelled at him and told him to grow up. So annoying and angering…
Jacob came in around that time to explore and discover if he could figure out who and what was haunting the families. He was able to give them enough information to relay to Grant (the historical archival guy they go to for information) that they were able to make a clear picture of what happened and who the ghost was.
I honestly didn’t think it was Edgar who was haunting them all, like Stacey and Ellie and Jacob thought. I honestly figured it was Joseph, the twin brother, through some macabre and twisted shift of personality. Hah! I was wrong too!
Jacob was immediately drawn to the well in the basement, which was full of ominous and very, very, very bad things.
Ellie had a discussion in her head that gave us some insight as to why she was more closed off in relationships. I mean, I get it…your family is murdered by a pyromaniac ghost who is still out there haunting the old house site…I’d probably be a bit closed off too. But she seemed a bit more reluctant to even give a relationship a try and the insight into her fears made a bit more sense after The Crawling Darkness.
More Crawling
During the next night of observation, Mia is targeted by her Fleshface fear. Ellie is able to get into the room and fight the monster for Mia. Poor Mia was so terrified and frozen in bed, hiding under the covers. It was lucky that Stacey was there to help with the plot of the Fleshface series and help Ellie take him down. Of course, they didn’t kill him, as he was just a personal manifestation the ghost took on in the form of Mia’s deepest fear, but it was still a pretty badass scene!
The next morning, they visit Grant (who is quickly becoming my favorite supporting role) and he leads them in the direction they need to take the ghost down. The come to the conclusion that it is Edgar Barrington who is haunting the families in the apartments.
Edgar is the twin brother to Joseph Barrington who married a Rebecca when she was very young. They had two children who Edgar killed, which is what drove him to insanity. He was placed into a mental facility until he died, at which point he began to haunt the location of his old house.
Mr. Gray was the tenant who lived in apartment D, but it was discovered and revealed rather suddenly that there was no tenant in apartment D and that everyone had been seeing a ghost. Ellie thinks it’s the ghost of Edgar, the man who is turning into their worst fears. I honestly thought that Edgar was probably innocent and that his twin brother Joseph was the one who was trapped there because he was killed by Edgar. I didn’t fully understand how they thought Edgar was the nice, but quiet man in apartment D when he was supposed to be the terrifying entity haunting everyone. Of course, neither were right…
Building More to The Crawling Darkness’s Finish
Calvin comes in to help observe in the van because he doesn’t think it’s safe for Ellie to be alone in the house. I can’t say I would disagree with him, honestly. The ghost is absolutely terrifying and we all know who and what Ellie’s worst fear is… Anton Clay…
Unsurprisingly, the ghost baited Stacey and Ellie to go after Calvin in the van because he was being attacked again. However, it was a ploy to separate Stacey and Ellie and of course, we all called it, the ghost took on the form of Anton Clay.
It had a mini showdown with Ellie before it was taken on by everyone else who was there, including Alicia and her two kids who were warned by Alicia’s deceased husband (who had been there since they moved, doing his best to watch over them). They saved Ellie and came up with a new game plan to trap and get rid of the entity forever.
The next night they have the epic showdown. Secret fears are revealed and the true identity of the ghost is discovered! It was Rebecca Barrington! I truly didn’t see that one coming. I don’t know if I was too pulled into the Anton Clay story or the background information revealed about all the other characters or what, but I was blindsided by the true identity!
Rebecca apparently killed Joseph, her husband and knowing that his brother Edgar wasn’t fully stable of the mind, she convinced him that if he would kill her children, she would marry him. Of course, killing his niece and nephew drove him madder than a hatter and she had him committed. She was a twisted and evil woman who manipulated until the day she died.
An Awesome Concept in The Crawling Darkness
Everyone involved in The Crawling Darkness helped take her on and drove her down into the trap.
Stacey and Ellie hiked to the secret graveyard they bury the big, nasty, evil ghosts in. There was a man who ran a “church” where he killed a handful of his parishioners if they didn’t follow the rules. He ended up committing suicide and trapped himself on his land. Eckhart Investigations essentially use his land as a private jail where he acts as warden, keeping the ghosts that might escape trapped in the earth.
Really awesome concept, actually.
It closes with an ex-Jesuit named Lochlann performing a full rite over the well which acts as a gateway for evil ghosts. Michael drills a steel plate lined with lead over the top of the well to seal it for good. Or they hope it’s for good. Ellie has her doubts, though I don’t think she voices them. It makes me wonder if there will be a future book centered around the well again.
Final Thoughts on The Crawling Darkness
We end with an important and harrowing question. What will happen to Ellie and Eckhart Investigations if Calvin retires?
And that’s the final thought on J.L. Bryan’s Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series. The Crawling Darkness truly shocked me with the plot line and extensive character development. Maybe I will continue the series at a future date, but I think I need a break from the paranormal for now! I don’t want to get bored and struggle with a discussion. I enjoy being able to freely write my thoughts on the adventures within the pages of these books and I never want it to seem like a chore. I know I already gave you Bryan’s website, but here it is again, just in case you missed it!
He also has a newsletter! Maybe there will be more Ghost Trapper trappings in the future!
With sincerity, Curious One, I hope you smile at least once today and wish on your favorite star in the sky. Keep the hope alive and even in the darkest of days, you will remember something beautiful that is worth holding onto.
As for me…
…it’s time for another book…
Check out J.L. Bryan at the following links:
Website: http://jlbryanbooks.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/J-L-Bryans-Books-123417766958
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