Another one from the Christmas pile! I wasn't familiar with Chapman or his writing prior to receiving this, but boy—what an introduction! This was a truly haunting tale of addiction, the ghosts of our pasts, and the horrors of what happens when those two things are combined.
"We've gotten haunted houses all wrong. It's people who are really haunted."
Erin is done with Silas. For real this time.
They've had an on-and-off relationship ever since college, and it's been a consistent give and take: Erin gives, Silas takes... and takes, and takes, and... you get it.
Silas has struggled with addiction for years, and after breaking out of rehab and demanding that Erin come "save" him for the millionth time, she decides to draw the line. Erin, along with their friends Amara and Tobias, stage an intervention for Silas, but it doesn't go the way they had hoped. Silas insists that he isn't high, he's haunted, and that Erin may not see it—or them, yet, but she will. He also makes it clear that he has no intention of stopping. Erin makes the difficult decision to cut Silas out of her life.
The next day, Silas is found dead from an overdose.
“The dead are always inside us. Think of your mind as a doorway to the other side, but it's locked and our ghosts can't get through. We need a key.”
Everyone took Silas's death hard, but especially Erin. She can't bring herself to attend his funeral or even leave her apartment—until Tobias shows up, insisting that there's something he needs to show her.
Before Silas died, he and Tobias discovered a rare type of mushroom called hebeloma sarcophyllum, or as they quickly deemed it, Ghost. Ghost allows its user to see, well, ghosts, obviously, by opening a portal in their minds to let the spirits pass through.
Tobias insists that Silas was able to make contact with his deceased mother shortly before his own death, and that Erin can now use it to make contact with Silas.
As crazy as all of this sounded, Erin would do just about anything to see Silas again, to tell him how much she loves him and to apologize for letting him down when he needed her most. So, she agrees to give it a try.
Thus begins a dangerous descent into her own addiction, and the opening of a portal that she may not ever be able to close. She'll soon discover that spirits don't just haunt houses, they haunt minds— and Ghost is the key that lets them in.
“I am the house. Every room is a chamber of my heart, every hallway an artery, every beam a bone.”
Erin's hometown of Richmond, Virginia is known for its history, but now Erin is seeing the city's past in a horrific new light.
Inside the headquarters of her new marketing job, she sees the charred remains of men that died there in a factory fire during the Civil War.
At Church Hill, where Patrick Henry gave his legendary speech in 1775, she sees bodies hanging from the trees.
Where a Confederate hospital used to stand, she trips over the amputated limbs that once cluttered the streets.
Everywhere she goes, Erin sees the ghosts of the city's dark past—and they see her, too.
Worst of all, she can't find Silas anymore, but she's become addicted to trying. Afraid she's built up a tolerance, she begins taking higher and higher doses of Ghost, getting lost in her own mind looking for Silas—and she's not the only one.
Thanks to Tobias, word about Ghost is spreading. He's set up a home base for distributing the drug, and every day, more people are turning up, wanting to get haunted by someone in their life that they lost.
Erin knows that this needs to end, but can she let go of her own addiction—of Silas—in order to save Richmond from becoming a whole new kind of Ghost town?
"We've been taught to avoid death at all costs. To look the other way. But Ghost erases that barrier, doesn't it? We're ready to rip that veil away once and for all."
Buckle up, because I have a lot to say about this one!
First of all, I'm not even gonna sugar coat it: I hated Silas. While I understand that addiction is a disease and I do sympathize with that aspect of his character, he was genuinely not a good person. The family member that gifted me this book described him as "a vampire in the truest sense of the word. He sucks the life out of those around him," and I couldn't have said it better myself.
I wanted to love Erin. I really, really tried to, but she just kept making awful decisions. Obviously, those choices are the whole reason we have a plot, but her character was frustrating to read. Unfortunately, though, that's the reality of addiction and Chapman did a great job delineating it.
The historically accurate ghosts were an incredible touch, and as someone who has actually visited Richmond and is familiar with the history and geographical locations, that made the story so much more immersive for me—and all the more terrifying.
As much as I loved it, I want to be clear that if you're struggling with your own addiction, or have suffered from the recent loss of a loved one, this may not be the book for you.
However, if you're a history buff, a horror lover, or looking for a story that will haunt you long after you've closed the book, I can't recommend Ghost Eaters enough.
If you've read Ghost Eaters or any of Chapman's other work, I want to hear from you! Head over to my Discord so we can chat about it, because I have a lot of thoughts to unpack. While you're there, be sure to give me your book recommendations, share your goals for the year, and get to know me and my small community of fellow book lovers. We'd love to have you!
As always, thank you so much for reading, and if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to my mailing list to be notified when I post.
Catch you next time!
'•.¸♡ Now, let's get living! ♡¸.•'