The Bleeding Room [Kindle Edition]

Barry Napier (Author)

Book Description

Some houses appear to be haunted: their ruined facades and fabled pasts lead to stories of haunts and spirits.

Some houses are legitimately haunted: ghosts that refuse to leave this world behind roam their rooms and hallways trying to recapture the life that has been taken from them.

But there are some houses that go beyond these simple haunts. There are some houses that hide secrets so dark and grisly that the very essence of evil seeps from their walls. One of these houses sits tucked away in the quiet woods of southern Virginia in the sleepy little town of Ponderbrook.

Terrence Bennet, an esteemed author, is taking his small crew to Ponderbrook to investigate the house for his next book. A skeptic at heart, he approaches the house and its history as nothing more than another spooky tale.

But he will soon learn that there is a very real evil that separates normal haunts from those that twist the mind and damn the soul. And when this evil is stirred awake, it is rarely content to stay confined to the four walls of the house in which it has grown.

"Napier paints a chilling picture of ancient, bloodthirsty evil - then brings it to life."
- David Dunwoody, author of EMPIRE'S END and UNBOUND & OTHER TALES

“Novelist. Poet. Comic book writer. This guy is a legit talent who is always thinking outside the box. It’s no surprise Barry Napier is building a following faster than a Mayan handing out 2012 prophecies.” - - Gregory Hall, host of the Funky Werepig and author of At the End of Church Street

Product Details

• File Size: 454 KB
• Print Length: 318 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Graveside Tales (October 25, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0064XISL0
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #291,718 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Slow Reading March 23, 2013

By Y. Harmon

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This isn't a badly written book, just very slow moving. The author could have left out many chapters. It is very choppy at times. I almost quit reading on several occasions, but if I pay for a book I am determined to finish it. Don't spend more than $1.99, for this one.

4.0 out of 5 stars Let the bleeding begin.... March 2, 2013

By S.Blundell

Format:Paperback

I can't think of the last time I read a ghost house story, and in fact I've generally tried with a passion to avoid reading novels about ghost or haunted houses due to the repeative nature of story telling for this type of horror. There seems to be a formular how to write a ghost story, characters act a certain way and nothing else strays from that approach of writing.

Enter "The Bleeding Room" by Barry Nappier ... at first it starts of like a typical haunted house story with the exception that its not, and I was startled by how "seeming" quickly the three main characters involvement with the "house" is. And I'll be honest I was thinking WTF? How do you tell a ghost story or haunted house when the characters aren't in it? Shortly after things begin to change for the characters, its this part that makes Barry's novel refreshingly different from the "ghost/haunted house" masses, which drives the characters back to confront the house or more importantly "The Bleeding Room".

I like the blood soaked history and how its explained, it makes me want to know more! Perhaps I am too eager to hope that a novel might venture into the past families and of the blood battered halls of Hammer House?!

4.0 out of 5 stars If it bleeds, it leads. February 7, 2012

By Wag The Fox

Format:Kindle Edition

I am almost always in the mood for a haunted house tale. I don't believe in ghosts or the supernatural, so you might think that's weird, but I just really enjoy a good ghost story. And after reading a glut of urban fantasy, I was especially ready to sit back with a good ol' fashioned horror novel like this one from Barry.

Terrence Bennett is an author and paranormal investigator--a skeptical one at that. He and Jack and Hank, his two-man crew, head into the woods of southern Virginia to spend the weekend inside the subject of his latest book: Hammer House. While Jack and Hank are believers in the supernatural after a particularly eventful experience in a purportedly haunted site, Terrence holds a more skeptical and disdainful attitude towards ghosts and the like. Hammer House will take care of that, though.

Have you ever been out in the woods and found an old, abandoned house? Just the sight of it is unsettling. It's a bit like seeing an old shipwreck on dry land. Well, Hammer House has that going for it and a whole lot more. The place is notorious among the residents of Ponderbrook for its multiple incidents of murder and death. Cozy.

Terrence, Jack, and Hank set up shop inside the house and try to see if they can capture any evidence of the paranormal. The place instantly gives off a bad vibe, even with Terrence, but aside from weird experiences while there, their time there is relatively uneventful. Oh, some crazy stuff goes on, but their after evidence, not anecdotes. Terrence becomes obsessed with his book once he is back home with his wife and young son, and as days pass a subliminal grip seems to take him, with violent images overtaking him and a compulsive urge to both finish the book and act out some really grotesque fantasies intruding on his imagination. Meanwhile, Jack and Hank are unable to shake the eery things they felt while in Hammer House too, but it's when they scrutinize the film footage they recorded that they realize something really did happen out there in the woods, and they need to warn Terrence.

When I first started reading this book and realized the main characters were ghost hunters, I became a bit skeptical about how much I would enjoy this book. That's because I am almost no interest in those ghost hunting shows that pollute cable TV. Have you seen them? You must have seen at least one. They're ridiculous, especially one I saw recently involving three guys who lock themselves in haunted houses, called Ghost Adventures. Fortunately, Barry's three guys are infinitely more likable, and the story is infinitely more engaging than anything I've seen from those real ghost hunters.

It is damned difficult to approach the haunted house story with something fresh. Like vampires, it's a well-worn genre, but one that I love. And Barry took really good care of it by creating a house that harkens to some of those classic ones like the Overlook from The Shining and that house in Amityville, yet still creates its own identity, especially when the fifth window appears. I won't go into any more detail than that, just trust me that the house is like a sleeping dragon and that window is like the beast opening one eye. That's the impression I got, anyway.

The book has its slow points, and there were a few times where the exposition got long-winded. And while I didn't have any trouble with the viewpoint changes among the main characters, there were points where the viewpoint switched to the spirit in the house, and that's something I've never been keen on. One of my peeves with ghost stories. Aside from some fat that could have been trimmed from the book, I really enjoyed it. If you have an affinity for haunted houses, or at least stories about them, you ought to consider this one.

More About the Author

Barry has had more than 40 short stories and poems featured in print and online publications. He is the author of Everything Theory: Cold Compass, The Masks of Our Fathers, 13 Broken Nightlights, and The Bleeding Room.

A collection of his short fiction, Debris, was published by Library of Horror Press in 2009 but is currently out of print (many of the stories featured in Debris can be found in his newer collection, 13 Broken Nightlights). In 2010, his debut poetry collection, A Mouth for Picket Fences, was published by Needfire Poetry.

Barry is also the author of the horror/sci-fi chapbook The Final Study of Cooper M. Reid which is currently only available in limited quantities through Strange Publications.

A humble servant to ambient music and coffee, Barry continues to work towards further self publishing projects as well as pursuing traditional markets. He is currently at work on a series of novels and a comic book series.

He keeps his online home at http://barrynapierwriting.wordpress.com/