I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks

At one point in Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds a character says that the best ghost stories are incomplete and leave you guessing. I agree. When I think of the scariest movie scenes, they leave you guessing. What was the thing banging on the tent in Blair Witch? Who was that person in the dog suit in the Shining (OK, if you read the book you know, but that's not the point!)? While I give Lovecraft crap for his "It was so horrible I can't describe it to you" escapism, on another level it creates creepy mystery with which your imagination might wrestle. Ambiguity, while hard to write, makes for a much better tale.

While Priest does throw in a lot of the unexplained, her story is eventually resolved. It involves an orphaned mixed race girl in Chattanooga who learns her convoluted family tree may have some witch doctors in it. And there are some ghosts that haunt her. Her background and the eventual conflict with the main baddie are entertaining and she has a knack for writing a creepy scene, particulalry the one in an abandoned hospital. Still I think I would have preferred a more ambiguous ending. You could say the same thing about most of Stephen King's books too, so it's not that big a negative.