The Unhaunting

By Micaiah Johnson

Award-winning author Micaiah Johnson invites you to Abernathy House.

"You've never seen a haunted house like this one before." --Kylie Lee Baker, USA Today bestselling author of Japanese Gothic

"The Unhaunting is one of my favorite books this year." --Reactor

A house, itself, is nothing. It's not a shelter until it is sheltering someone. A house is a housefire, waiting for its match. A house is a ghost story, waiting for its death.

At the end of the Civil War, a daughter of the Confederacy made what she thought was an innocent wish: to build a house where nothing bad could happen. But peace came at a price, and one hundred and seventy years later Shantell and her friends are about to discover where all that darkness ended up.

When Shantell's best friend, Avery, tells her he has inherited a house big enough to make their dreams of a sanctuary come true, she's too cautious to be optimistic. A lifetime of loss -- her father to the Iraq war, her brother to police violence, and her mother to suicide -- has taught her cynicism, and even though Avery swears the house has never experienced a tragedy, she goes along expecting everything from black mold to evil spirits.

But not only is the house in better shape than they'd expected, it makes them better too: Shantell's anxiety stops flaring up; terminally shallow Avery is suddenly capable of deeper emotions; and Tobias, Avery's older brother and the contractor for the job, even quits chain smoking.

There's an eeriness to the calm, and it's almost a relief when they realize they do not walk alone in Abernathy House. If nothing bad has ever happened here, where are all these ghosts coming from? As they dig into the house's history, Shantell, Avery, and Tobias discover that there's only one thing worse than a house that's haunted: a house that desperately wants to be.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G4SVF6HJ
• ISBN13: 9798217181131
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Can a house be haunted if nothing bad ever happened there?

Disclosure: I received an uncorrected proof from the publisher. The Unhaunting is unlike any ghost story you've ever read. Can a house be haunted if nothing bad ever happened there? Not innately, but ghosts can be brought in by those who have all through the doors. Or enter the property. And if nothing bad can happen there, then where does all of that negative energy go? The Abernathy house is so hungry to feel that it revels in the destruction that follows in the wake of its "miracles", attempting to swallow the ghosts of tragedies but always finding itself left feeling empty. The Unhaunting is actually rather quite haunting in the way it makes you look long and hard at your own privilege & at the history that came before. You might not be guilty of the crimes committed in the past but ignoring the blood in the foundation of your life might just make you complicit. Or you can just view it as a ghost story, which is tempting when even having a trauma free life leaves you feeling uneasy. My life has been rather trauma filled but even I felt uneasy when compared to the centuries of trauma laid before us. I suggest that if you go with option B that you take a long hard look at yourself afterwards. And when you're ready give it another read.