Free Haunted Castle on Hallows Eve by Mary Pope Osborne

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Magic Tree House ® books, too!
    Thank you for opening faraway places and times to my class through your books. They have given me the chance to bring in additional books, materials, and videos to share with the class.
—J. Cameron
    It excites me to see how involved [my fourth-grade reading class] is in your books. . . . I would do anything to get my students more involved, and this has done it.
—C. Rutz
    I discovered your books last year. . . . WOW! Our students have gone crazy over them. I can’t order enough copies! . . . Thanks for contributing so much to children’s literature!
—C. Kendziora
    I first came across your Magic Tree House series when my son brought one home. . . . I have since introduced this great series to my class. They have absolutely fallen in love with these books! . . . My students are now asking me for more independent reading time to read them. Your stories have inspired even my most struggling readers.
—M. Payne
    I love how I can go beyond the [Magic Tree House] books and use them as springboards for other learning.
—R. Gale
    We have enjoyed your books all year long. We check your Web site to find new information. We pull our map down to find the areas where the adventures take place. My class always chimes in at key parts of the story. It feels good to hear my students ask for a book and cheer when a new book comes out.
—J. Korinek
    Our students have “Magic Tree House fever.” I can’t keep your books on the library shelf.
—J. Rafferty
    Your books truly invite children into the pleasure of reading. Thanks for such terrific work.
—S. Smith
    The children in the fourth grade even hide the [Magic Tree House] books in the library so that they will be able to find them when they are ready to check them out.
—K. Mortensen
    My Magic Tree House books are never on the bookshelf because they are always being read by my students. Thank you for creating such a wonderful series.
—K. Mahoney



H aunted Castle on Hallows Eve is the second in a special group of Magic Tree House books called “The Merlin Missions.” In these books, it is Merlin the magician who sends Jack and Annie on their tree house adventures, often to mythical and legendary lands.
    In the first Merlin Mission, Christmas in Camelot , Jack and Annie journeyed into a world of magic and fantasy to find a secret cauldron that held the Water of Memory and Imagination.
    Now, nearly a year later, Jack and Annie are about to set out on a new Merlin Mission. They invite you to come with them to an outlying realm of Camelot where strange and eerie things are happening at a duke’s castle.
    Enjoy your journey! But beware—in the world of Merlin the magician, anything can happen….

Text copyright © 2003 by Mary Pope Osborne.
Illustrations copyright © 2003 by Sal Murdocca.
    www.randomhouse.com/kids
www.randomhouse.com/magictreehouse
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Osborne, Mary Pope.
Haunted Castle on Hallows Eve / by Mary Pope Osborne;
illustrated by Sal Murdocca. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Magic tree house; #30)
“A Stepping Stone book.”
eISBN: 978-0-307-53064-6
[1. Haunted Houses—Fiction. 2. Castles—Fiction. 3. Ravens—Fiction.
4. Halloween—Fiction. 5. Time travel—Fiction. 6. Magic—Fiction.
7. Tree houses—Fiction.] I. Murdocca, Sal, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.081167Hat 2003 [Fic]—dc21 2002156313
    v3.0

For Will, the real magician
in the heart of the oak

The hearth is cold in the lonely hall,
No banquet decks the board;
No page stands ready at the call,
To ’tend his wearied lord.
    From “Earl Desmond and the Banshee”
—Anonymous            

“M aybe I should be a vampire instead of a princess,” said