Insanity by Susan Vaught (review)

Located near the Devil’s Backbone, the Lincoln Psychiatric Hospital has its share of secrets and ghosts, and no one knows that better than the folks who work there. One of them, Forest, is working double shifts to save up enough money for college, and she begins to share visions with one of the patients. College student Darius is starting as a security guard when he realizes that the ghost of his serial murderer grandfather is likely not resting in peace. Trina, Darius’ girlfriend, is no stranger to the supernatural, having been raised by witches, but even she is shocked by the depraved spirits haunting Lincoln. And Levi—well, Levi has worked at Lincoln the longest, as the tattooed and ghostly guardian who shepherds souls into the next life, and he’s beginning to realize that the power behind Lincoln’s hauntings may be more than he can handle alone. The overarching story of the group’s efforts to control Lincoln is broken up into four stories, each from the perspective of the individual teen (or in Levi’s case, spirit); the structure works to maximize the thrills, with each vignette having a different monster/ghost to combat while offering a more fully realized portrayal of the characters and their relationships to each other. Vaught mines a wealth of local history and urban legends to achieve her scares, from the common but still frightening child-killing ice cream vendor to the real-life figures of the Harpe brothers, arguably the U.S.’s first serial killers, and six-year-old Carl Newton Mahan, the youngest person to be tried for murder in the States. Some of the metaphysical elements, especially the moments of time travel and crossing over, are a bit muddy on the details, but this is still a cinematic ghost story that requires only a dark and stormy night to complete the mood.