Spoiler Alert:

The fourth installment of the Lewis Barnavelt series: John Bellairs’ Rose Rita stars like she did in “The Letter the Witch and the Ring” in this excellent novel set in the midst of the Pennsylvania Dutch, in 1828.

The Ghost In The Mirror, written by John Bellairs and completed by Brad Strickland, takes the characters Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann back in time. In the beginning, an old friend of Mrs. Zimmermann by the name of Granny Wetherbee’s spirit talks to her through a magical mirror. Granny Wetherbee isn’t actually Mrs. Zimmermann’s granny – she was just very old when Mrs. Zimmermann met her as a child. This magical mirror is called an erdspiegel, or “earth mirror.” Rose Rita finds her packing a suitcase. When she asks Mrs. Zimmermann where she is going, and she says that she has to take care of some “business” in Pennsylvania, Rose Rita asks if she can come with her, and Mrs. Zimmermann says yes. Then, they get to Pennsylvania amid the Pennsylvania Dutch, and then they drive through a tunnel. This tunnel travels them back in time, and then they accidentally find Granny Wetherbee’s family who speak mostly German. So now, in 1828, Granny Wetherbee is a child, known as Hilda. After that, Mrs. Zimmermann eventually gets her magical powers restored, and they defeat Adolphus Stoltzfuss, who made Grampa Drexel (Hilda’s grandfather) sick and was trying to drive out Hilda’s family. The interesting thing about this is that they actually do change history. Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann find out about this when they find the gravestone of Grampa Drexel. Before, Grampa Drexel would have died in 1828 due to the sickness that Stoltzfuss cast onto him, using a wax doll. But when they looked at the gravestone, it said that he lived all the way to 1844. I think that one of the most interesting things to find out after finishing the book is to find that this wasn’t some type of alternate reality, where Granny Wetherbee was trying to see what would have happened if Grampa Drexel hadn’t died and if Stoltzfuss was defeated. The results are real – an old evil is thwarted, changing the present dramatically. The most satisfying of all though is this: Mrs. Zimmermann gets her magic back, because Rose Rita plants a crystal in a hiding place when they are there in 1828, and this is made all the more significant in that it has been sitting there for over a hundred years! Normally, one waits for this particular crystal to develop its power for 7 years. Think of how powerful it has become for Mrs. Zimmermann – and this is only because of our hero, Rose Rita.