Chapel Street by Sean Paul Murphy

 

Rick Bakos never had a chance at happiness. After enduring the tragic death of his father in a car accident, Rick grew up to helplessly watch both his older brother Lenny and his mother Agnes succumb to madness and suicide. Nor were they the first members of his family to kill themselves. Suicide has steadily stalked the Bakos family since they first arrived in Baltimore from Bohemia at the turn of the 20th Century.
Turning to genealogy to better understand his self-destructive family, Rick works as a volunteer for the website RestingPlace. After photographing the grave of Betty Kostek for the webpage, Rick finds himself drawn into a maelstrom of horror. Each night he finds himself inexorably drawn closer to self-destruction.
Rick’s only ally is a fellow volunteer named Teri Poskocil. She, too, has fallen under the suicidal spell of the late Betty Kostek. The couple soon discovers their pairing wasn’t a coincidence. Their great-grandparents were next door neighbors on Chapel Street nearly a century earlier. So were Betty’s grandparents. Together Rick and Teri must solve the mystery of Chapel Street before they find death at their own hands.

Chapel Street is a harrowing tale of good against evil as a demon stalks a family through several generations. Rick has struggled after the loss of multiple family members, but it may have been the guilt at not having been home when his mother killed herself that made Rick vulnerable to this supernatural attack. He is first visited by what seems to be the spirit of his dead brother after taking a photograph at the cemetery where one woman's final resting place is overloaded with fresh flowers while so many others are bare and forgotten. When he looks into the reasoning behind such an ongoing tribute he uncovers a creepy link between this deceased woman and his family, including her horrifying prediction about his own life. When Rick meets Teri, who has also been photographing graves for the RestingPlace website he learns that he is not alone in these strange happenings and ghostly visitations. As time goes on these occurrences become more frequent and more dangerous.  

This is one of my favorite types of horror. It's straight up scary and full of family secrets and the consequences and cost of inviting evil into your life whether unknowingly, or for personal gain. 

If you enjoy books like The Exorcist or you watch tv shows like A Haunting or Paranormal Survivor this book is meant for you. 

5 out of 5 stars

This story was inspired by an actual haunting, the details of which can be found on the Author's Blog

I received a complimentary copy for review.

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