It’s a special week for hoots and haunts, so we’re delving into the blog archive to deliver our most ghostly posties for your Halloween celebrations!
We’ll begin with the haunting of this prime piece of story time real estate. After reading I’m Not Afraid of this Haunted House (Carolrhoda Books, 2005), kids built a “Haunted House Kit” then headed into House 13 to bust some ghosts:
Moving on to a different house, different haunting, we read Ghosts in the House (Square Fish reprint edition, 2010). After crafting a classic ghost chest, kids had to locate multiple phantoms spirited away in our elaborate four floor dollhouse!
If you’re looking for a delightful book to share this Halloween season, we highly recommend Gustavo the Shy Ghost (Candlewick, 2020). We paired our reading with a glow lanterns and gallery ghosts. And if you’d like to visit the studio of the book’s author and illustrator, Flavia Z. Drago, you’ll find that here!
Want to get a little more sophisticated? Try building our tabletop Pepper’s Ghost illusion. We also tried a more basic variation of the illusion using a phone and a plastic drink lid!
For simpler – but no less spooky – apparitions try this oatmeal container projector that produces a ghostly figure on your wall or door.
And speaking of optical illusions, we dug through Cotsen’s special collections and discovered a really cool book from 1864. Spectropia allows the reader to experience the scientific concept of afterimages. The post contains multiple spooks for you to try!
We’ll conclude our Halloween post with a ghostly guppy. We read Goldfish Ghost (Roaring Brook Press, 2017) and crafted this simple paper plate goldfish marionette that of course hangs upside down. It was quite a hit at story time!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Starting the post off with the master of suspense himself, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. This was a simple 
2023 summer intern Daniel Dias not only got to test a 
On the topic of being cajoled into costumes, we present Ian Dooley, Cotsen’s former Curatorial Assistant, who climbed into a robot costume to make a 
While these costumes might not seem terribly exciting, Katie and I both wanted to include them on the list. Our pit crew coveralls served as well at a Cars and Trucks and Things that Go creative 
Switching over to the forces of good, we have Princeton University student Sylvia Jacobson, who gamely stepped up to be a Literal Fairy Godmother for our children’s literary society. Here we see her sporting an old wedding dress I spruced up with some rainbow fabric. Sylvia the Sparkly granted wishes very specifically. Definitely 
One of my favorite programs was a historic Victorian tea, complete with costumes, games, and a glorious tea time (blog readers might recognize our beloved 
Here we have three Victorian spelunkers at a massive Journey to the Centre of the Earth event we hosted in 2013. On the right is Princeton University student Kim Freid. As you can see, we were ready to tackle anything the day threw at us, thanks to all the ancient camping equipment I scored on ebay!
We started this post with Poe, and we’ll finish with the equally gothic 
The book concludes with a grand finale image that is not a ghost, but a rainbow! Definitely try this one, because it is so cool to see the colors flip in the afterimage!