THE GHOST IN THE CORNER
BY LUCRETIA VOIGT
As a child growing up in Nantucket, Warren Hussey Bouton would frequently spend the night with his grandparents in their Main Street house. According

to Bouton, "It was kind of a creepy old place. I

would always stay in the back bedroom, and in the corner of the room there was a windowed door that went into the attic. When I would sleep up there as a kid, I was fixated on that door in the corner with the window into the attic. I was terrified of it. It was dark in there and who knows what would be watching from that window. And why was there a window in a door to the attic anyway? I was definitely scared. But would I tell anybody? No way."

Bouton grew up on Vestal Street, a backyard away from his grandparent's house on Main Street. "My grandfather was a carpenter with a shop in between our two houses," he recently reminisced. "We were always running back and forth between the two houses. If you needed a cookie - my mother was great for chocolate chip cookies, but you'd go up to Grandma's if you wanted a molasses cookie."

Bouton attended Academy Hill School for grades one through eight, advancing on to Nantucket High School. He knows how hard it can be to leave Nantucket, so when he had to go away to college he chose one that was small and close to home. When he went to graduate school, however, he ended up on a larger campus. "When I started graduate school, at first I really felt like I'd been sheltered. Nantucket was a safe place to grow up. Yes, it was deadly in the winter," he laughed, knowing winter was just around the corner. "Nantucket was so safe you could go anywhere and your parents didn't have to worry. It was a good place to be. I felt comfortable there, and back then you knew everybody or at least had a sense for everybody."

Bouton now calls Laconia, New Hampshire home and is known as Reverend Bouton at the Congregational Church. His two children, Sarah and Ben, summered on Nantucket with their parents, staying in the Madaket Cottage built by Bouton's grandfather in 1917. While he physically may no longer live on Nantucket, his thoughts are never far away. So when he decidathrets ed to write a series of children's books, Nantucket was the obvious setting.

So how did a preacher become a writer? "You know, it started almost 10 years ago," he explained. "I looked at what my son was reading, which at that point was a lot of R. L. Stine. I was reading to him at one point and I said, 'For heaven's sake I can do this.'You write about what you know. I knew Nantucket and what is Nantucket but the ghost capital of the world. I remembered that image in the corner of the bedroom in my grandparents' house, and said 'That's an idea,'and developed it. It was more of an exercise at first. I kept feeding the chapters to my kids, and they kept wanting to know what was going to happen next. I wrote one book and thought 'Can you do it again?' So I wrote a second one to see if I could."

Bouton just thought he was making Nantucket a part of his children's lives during the off-season by writing his books. The characters closely resemble his own family. The siblings in the book are named Sarah and Ben, their grandparents live on Main Street, and they summer on Nantucket in the Madaket cottage built by their great-grandfather.

Bouton never intended to do anything professionally with the books. He did share them with his mother, however, and like any proud mom, she shared them with the one person on island who she knew was a true book expert - Mimi Beman. "My mother gave [the books] to Mimi Beman, and Mimi called me up and said 'You have to do something with these.'" Beman gave him the names of Mary Miles for editing and Barbara Kauffman Locke for illustrating. She gave him ideas about small press and self publishing. "Mimi was such a big help. She so selflessly shares her wealth of knowledge. The books benefited from so many people's help."

Bouton's series of "Spooky Tales from Nantucket" now consists of five books, each taking place in the haunts of his youth and featuring his children as the quintessential siblings. His stories are targeted to the upper elementary school age children, and each story introduces a piece of Nantucket history together with a spooky encounter. "When you're on Nantucket, you're walking amongst these museums, these magnificent mansions that are all about whaling. The Hussey side of my family was about whaling, so it's just a natural as far as I was concerned, especially when you're dealing with ghosts. I try to develop a story that is interesting in the context of where the story is set."

In one book, Sarah and Ben encounter the whaling captain Ichabod Paddock and in another they live through the Great Fire. The spooky stories keep the interest of the young readers and the history gives them a depth that even parents can appreciate.

Bouton has been astonished by the success and popularity of the series. "I basically only marketed them on Nantucket," he said. "We've sold about 20,000 copies all together. One of the original intentions was to help insure some added income so my kids could go to college, and it has turned out just fine. That's part of the reason why I didn't do anymore for a few years. They're through college now."

Just like the island gets in your blood, always leading you back no matter how far you roam, the spooky tales series will not let Bouton rest on his success. He is working on the sixth book and expects it to be done soon. He knows that the Nantucket of his youth is changing, and realizes that life has a way of moving along. "In the upcoming book, Sara wakes up in the morning to the sounds of hammering and sawing, and sees that the houses on both sides are in the process of being renovated. She says 'Why can't they just leave things alone?'" By melding the history of Nantucket with the modern island, and throwing a few ghosts in the mix, Bouton has found a way to connect the past with the future. The fact that it is

entertaining is a true bonus. I