DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?

REAL GHOST STORIES FROM THE HOST AND CREATOR OF BBC'S UNCANNY

- AUTHOR DANNY ROBINS ILLUSTRATOR ELLEN WALKER PUBLISHER PUFFIN PRICE £7.99 (APPROX. $10.80) RELEASE OUT NOW

You may have watched the Uncanny series on BBC Two or listened to the Uncanny podcast on BBC Sounds, but not to worry if you haven't - it's a series hosted by its creator Danny Robins that investigates real ghost stories sent in by listeners and challenges both its resident sceptic and believer experts to explain the phenomena in each story. It's excellent, but we don't recommend listening to it in the evening if you need to get a good night's sleep. Some of the testimonies will send serious chills down your spine.

This is Danny Robins' first ghost book for kids, and it follows a similar structure to his Uncanny podcast and TV show. Robins and Do You Believe in Ghosts? illustrator Ellen Walker take the reader on a journey through a number of spooky hauntings, some of them famous, like the Battersea Poltergeist, and some of them not-so-famous, like the Haunted Toilet. And rather than simply tell you all these ghost stories, which are spooky enough in their own right, Danny sometimes has you shadow the person as they experienced a haunting, or sit in the same room as a spook makes its presence felt.

One of the most terrifying cases he investigates in Uncanny is Luibeilt, the haunted Scottish mountain shelter. He tells this story in Do You Believe in Ghosts? too, unvarnished and undiluted, but without setting out to frighten anyone - and in such a way that a younger reader could enjoy this spine-tingling tale safely in the comfort of their home. With each gripping tale, Robins invites the reader to examine the facts to decide whether they're on 'team sceptic' or 'team believer'. He also explains some of the theories behind ghostly phenomena, including the more pseudoscience stuff... we're looking at you, Stone Tape theory.

All in all, Do You Believe in Ghosts? is an incredibly effective way of engaging a younger audience and telling them the spooky tales their parents won't tell them - without scaring the pants off them.