Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror
by Talbot, Michael
From the Back Cover
From a history book
about the stately isolated summer mansions of upstate New York:
Built between
the years 1884 and 1890 by Sarah Balfram, the daughter of an industrialist and
railroad tycoon, LakeHouse is believed to be the largest of the great
camps in the Adirondacks. It is thought to
contain at least 160 rooms. One of the more intriguing features of the house
is the peculiarity of its wildly Victorian design, abounding with staircases
that lead nowhere, rooms with skewed proportions, and miles of meandering
hallways…
But the
strangest thing about LakeHouse is the
extraordinary amount of bloodshed that has taken place within its walls. Only
months after the house’s completion, Sarah Balfram’s fiance, Viktor Oelrich,
was shot to death there. In 1923, Hollywood
director Desmond Hunt was stabbed to death during a party given at the house by
silent-film star Mae Norman. Since then a remarkable number of other murders
have occurred at the house: the Krafft family massacre in 1929, the Ponzi
murders in 1937, the shooting of Ann and Marie Rouchard by an unknown assailant
in 1952, the bludgeoning death': of Wall Street commodities broker Sol Morgenthau
and family in 1964…
This summer Lake House
has new tenants: pretty Lauren Ransom, who has just married the man of her
dreams; Stephen Ransom, her famous and wealthy new husband; and Lauren’s
eleven-year-old son by a first marriage, Garrett, a science buff who knows such
alarming facts as “Only animals that hunt at night have eyes that glow in the
dark when a beam of light hits them.”
The Ransoms are
hoping to enjoy a summer they will never forget, and LakeHouse
does not plan on disappointing them. For concealed within its walls are many,
many surprises, and most of them come out only at night…
From a history book
about the stately isolated summer mansions of upstate New York:
Built between
the years 1884 and 1890 by Sarah Balfram, the daughter of an industrialist and
railroad tycoon, LakeHouse is believed to be the largest of the great
camps in the Adirondacks. It is thought to
contain at least 160 rooms. One of the more intriguing features of the house
is the peculiarity of its wildly Victorian design, abounding with staircases
that lead nowhere, rooms with skewed proportions, and miles of meandering
hallways…
But the
strangest thing about LakeHouse is the
extraordinary amount of bloodshed that has taken place within its walls. Only
months after the house’s completion, Sarah Balfram’s fiance, Viktor Oelrich,
was shot to death there. In 1923, Hollywood
director Desmond Hunt was stabbed to death during a party given at the house by
silent-film star Mae Norman. Since then a remarkable number of other murders
have occurred at the house: the Krafft family massacre in 1929, the Ponzi
murders in 1937, the shooting of Ann and Marie Rouchard by an unknown assailant
in 1952, the bludgeoning death': of Wall Street commodities broker Sol Morgenthau
and family in 1964…
This summer Lake House
has new tenants: pretty Lauren Ransom, who has just married the man of her
dreams; Stephen Ransom, her famous and wealthy new husband; and Lauren’s
eleven-year-old son by a first marriage, Garrett, a science buff who knows such
alarming facts as “Only animals that hunt at night have eyes that glow in the
dark when a beam of light hits them.”
The Ransoms are
hoping to enjoy a summer they will never forget, and LakeHouse
does not plan on disappointing them. For concealed within its walls are many,
many surprises, and most of them come out only at night…