title: The Whispering Room: Haunted Poems
author: Gillian Clarke
description: Grade 3-6-A collection of more than 50 poems about ghosts, phantoms, and other supernatural creatures, including traditional verses; classics by poets such as William Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg; and new selections by contemporary poets. Readers looking for spine-tingling, blood-chilling verses may be disappointed in the selections, but will be intrigued by the nightmarish images in Todd's paintings. The illustrations do dominate the pages, so much so that the haunting nature of the poems themselves is best appreciated when they are read aloud.<br /><i>Carolyn Angus, The Claremont Graduate School, CA</i><br />Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: The Chosen Soul, Book One by Heather Killough-Walden
  
    
  
    
  
  **The Chosen Soul**
  
    
  
    
  
  **Book One**
  
    
  
    
  
  **By Heather Killough-Walden**
  
   **The Chosen Soul – Chapter One**
  
    
  
  The woman’s screams were coming from inside of the small cottage. He paused
  before the wooden door and listened. Despite the raging storm around him, he
  could make out every whimper, every word whispered in agonized panic. Her
  voice had been worn ragged; she had been crying out in painful desperation for
  several hours.
  
  He listened for a moment more and then knocked on the door.
  
  Tortured wails continued from the other side, but within a few seconds, the
  door creaked open and a haggard looking man of indeterminate age peered back
  at him from the cottage’s candlelit interior.
  
  The screams were much louder with the door open, and they poured out into the
  rain-soaked night like curses, mingling with the rising fog over the muddy
  streets.
  
  “Yes?” the man asked, his brow furrowed. Dark circles beneath his eye