Ghost Girl: The True Story of a Child in Desperate Peril-and a Teacher Who Saved Her

As a long time fan of Torey Hayden and her work, I am drawn again and again to re-read her books, including Ghost Girl. I've taught school, worked with special needs kids in a couple group homes, and have mothered seven myself. Torey's ability to find joy and humor in the often nearly hopeless lives of her students really helped me to find perspective as an educator and a parent. Her insistence that the loud, obnoxious, and (seemingly) unloveable are often an inspiration (because there's a little person fighting to be seen behind the attitude) really helped me to view my challenges as a teacher and mother differently. Quiet, compliant children are sometimes just already convinced they don't matter much, and being reminded of that helped me too.There is not necessarily a nice, story book ending to the story of Jadie, a severely traumatized child who was either psychotic or was being ritually abused by members of an occult group. Life is like that; messy, chaotic, dynamic, unpredictable. Also, Torey Hayden was a youngish professional at the time, who was often made to feel inadequate or off base by 'seasoned' professionals who knew better, and who were not open to new ideas about special education. Again, like the rest of real life, hindsight is 20/20, and we all can look back later in life and wish we'd seen more clearly, acted more decisively, or swam more forcefully upstream. Torey's honesty in writing about her own second thoughts made the story more compelling, in my opinion. The lack of a nice tidy ending is frustrating in exactly the way real life is frustrating. So often, we don't get the happy ending payoff we all wish for.However, for those stating that Torey's other books had better endings, I bet to differ. Sheila, the abused and neglected little six year old in "One Child" did great in third grade, then was thrown back into foster care, abused, neglected, and worst of all, was never even told she was gifted, and was never tracked for academics. The system forgot her. Torey found her and reconnected, in "The Tiger's Child", but by then Sheila, a hostile teen in a juvenile detention facility, thought Torey, not her mother, had dumped her on a freeway. Torey's story of reconnecting with her, her horror at discovering that no one in social services had tracked Sheila or advocated for her, and her efforts to put some of the pieces back together for this 'one child' are marinated in the sad twists of real life.In another of Torey's books, "Just Another Kid", Geraldine, a little girl from Belfast, Ireland, is so severely damaged by the violence in the community and in her family that she pretty much ends up institutionalized for life. No happy ending there either.Frustrating when there's not a perfect ending? Yes. But the resilience of every teacher and social worker who slogs away, trying to make a difference one child at a time, in spite of messy lives, disappointing odds, and unpredictable results, is to be celebrated all the more for the guts it takes to stick it out rather than finding a happier fiction book to escape into. Real life is hard work! Torey Hayden and the stories of "her" kids challenge me over and over again to find joy in the journey, and to remember that living with heart is, in the end, better than living perfectly.

This is an amazing teacher! One who doesn’t give up on the troubled student, who makes herself available when that student needs her and was paying attention when that student started giving signals that she needed help. Don’t get me wrong we have amazing teachers out there who are willing to walk on hot coals for their students to get the help they need. Then there are teachers out there who take advantage of their students innocence and cause harm for the rest of their lives. I would definitely recommend this book especially to all new teachers. 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼🤓❤️📚❣️❣️

I find this true Torey Hayden book to be darker than all the rest. It has an air of mystery. We never find out what exactly is going on, all we do know is that there is a very hurt girl, Jadie who is in desperate need of help. The book takes us through events while presenting different possibilities to what could be behind them. Even though the ending isn't settled like a story book, I don't think it should have been. Real life rarely ties up all neatly like a story, but I think Torey Hayden did a wonderful job of explaining each of her theories.This book may be unsettling and hard to read at times, but I did develop care for the main characters, and had no trouble seeing it through.The other students portrayed in the book are interesting and at times funny, you will enjoy most of the classroom scenes!Give it a chance! This story is what hooked me into all of the others. Its the one that has stayed with me the most.

I am a Torey Hayden fan, I have read all her books and love all of them. This book however, is different from the rest. The writing in particular is so very well polished, that i think that in that sense it stands out from the rest as a better read. However, i DO NOT recommend this book to anyone. I consider myself to have a strong stomach, but this book has scarred me for life. There are some parts of the book, that when i was finished reading, i felt physically ill and regretted exposing myself to such horror. Don't get me wrong, i LOVE Torey Hayden, and it is not her fault that this story has happened, but what this little girl describes makes David Pelzer's "A Child Called "It" seem like a walk in the park. I'm hoping i will forget the things i have read in this book, and in result regret reading it completely. It might have been worth it if there at least was some sort of concrete, solid resolution at the end, but there was not. Hoping this -was the only reason why i continued to read. The lack of explanation at the end made this horrific read not worth the exposure.

I am addicted to her books and stories.

I first stumbled upon this book when I was 10 years old in the school library. Thinking it was a ghost story I read it front to end. Thoroughly disturbed 10 year old me put the book down and repressed the memory. Reading this book almost 15 years later as an adult had a profound impact on me. Some of the content is very disturbing and will be for adults too. Overwall you will leave this book thinking about it for some time.

Miss Hayden has FAR more courage, compassion and patience than any educator I’ve ever known. Many educators give up too easily, or give in..Miss Hayden gives the struggling children her all.

added to prison hospital library

This is the first Torey Hayden book I have read. The cover says "The true story of a child in desperate peril - and a teacher who saved her", the problem is we are never sure whether that is really the case. Jadie, the child in question, is undoubtedly disturbed. She refuses to speak and is hunched almost double despite having no obvious physical handicap. Torey Hayden managed to get Jadie to speak almost as soon as she meets her, other teachers have spent years trying. She then tries to make sense of Jadie's wild stories and sexually inappropriate actions. The problem with this book is that all feels a little voyeuristic and the reader never gets to the bottom of what is happening. Hayden's intervention definitely helped Jadie but I am not sure about the conclusions reached. There seemed to me no evidence at all that her parents were abusing her. Hayden felt it odd that Jadie and her siblings had never been left in the care of anyone outside the family but they went to school every day, they weren't recluses. Of course children need to know that they will be belived when they speak out about abuse and Jadie was lucky to have such a supportive teacher, nevertheless I finished this book feeling frustrated at the inconclusive outcome. I also felt that I had violated Jadie's privacy by reading about her case. I have no doubt that Hayden changed many details but it still felt like an infringement of privacy to me.

So many book readers say "i couldn't put this book down" well now i'm one of them, this book really gripped me from the first page, and i will now be reading more from this Author, wonder how little Jadie is now!

I love all of Torey Hayden's books about her students. I am just collecting them again as I lost the full set of books that I bought one at a time much earlier when the first editions came out.

Unusual analysis of a child.

Great book!