Phantom Academy

by Christine Virnig

Overview

Lindsay Currie’s Scritch Scratch meets The School for Invisible Boys in this fun romp of a middle grade novel about a newly dead boy who faces a spooky new school hiding an unearthly mystery.

After an unlucky collision between a coconut and the top of his head, twelve-year-old Finn not only joins the ranks of the recently deceased, but also becomes the newest student at Phantom Academy, a boarding school for ghosts.

Once Finn gets over the unfairness of still having homework (you’d think being dead would give you a pass, right?), he discovers that life—er, death?—as a ghost isn’t that bad. He’d probably even enjoy it, if not for one thing: students cannot leave Phantom Academy until they graduate. He can’t check on his family. He can’t see his cat. In fact, he can’t leave the Spirit Realm at all.

As his homesickness builds, Finn convinces his new friends they should escape. But finding the way out is harder than he anticipated, especially when their biggest clue mysteriously goes missing. Finn’s not giving up, though, not with his human memories growing fuzzier and fuzzier with time. They just need to find a way through the veil…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665980357
Publisher:	Aladdin
Publication date:	08/26/2025
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Christine Virnig is a fan of books, candy, spooky stories, poop jokes, and coffee…in no particular order. A former physician, Christine now spends her days writing books, reading books, and working at a library where she is surrounded by books. Christine lives in southern Wisconsin with her husband, two daughters, a ridiculous number of dust bunnies, and one incredibly lazy cat. You can visit her on the web at ChristineVirnig.com.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Becoming a Ghost 1 Becoming a Ghost
One second, Mom is shouting, “Watch out for the coconut, Finn!”

Next second, I’m dead.

I know I’m dead because the world around me goes poof—and disappears. My mom is gone. My little sister, Madison, is gone. Even the evil, coconut-dropping palm tree is gone.

An eerie stillness replaces the cool ocean breeze, and then everything goes black.

Black.

Black.

I can’t see a thing!

My ears strain to pick up a sound—any sound—but all I hear is the frantic thumping of my heart.

Five seconds pass, then ten, maybe twenty, before the lights flip back on. I blink against the brightness as I take it all in. There is no more white sand. No more ocean. No more mewing seagulls, squealing kids, or sunburnt sunbathers.

In their place two paths now stretch in front of me. Sure as sure, I’m supposed to pick one of them.

Path number one is as wide as a T. rex and is paved with polished teal stones. It heads straight through a field of purple and yellow flowers. Puffy white clouds float in a baby blue sky above it while bright orange butterflies and fuzzy-butted bumblebees dance between the blooms. A huge sign points down this path. It reads: COME THIS WAY! YOU WILL BE REUNITED WITH YOUR GREAT-AUNT EDNA!

The second path, dirt covered and narrow, angles off into a dark forest. A dark forest full of prickly vines and gnarled trees with branches that look like grasping fingers. There are no butterflies or bumblebees this way. Just a murder of crows, caw, cawing away.

I spin around, desperately hoping for a third path. A path leading back home.

Back to my mom, who’s undoubtedly dissolved into a whimpering puddle of tears by now.

Back to my sister, who’s probably wondering why I decided to lie down and take a nap, right in the middle of the beach.

Back to our cramped little house that always smells like Dad’s amazing cooking.

Back to my cat and my friends and the neighborhood soccer field and my secondhand PlayStation and my school, Savannah Oaks.

Actually, scratch that last part. Death must be making me nostalgic, because school is one thing I can definitely do without. But I want to go back to the rest of it for sure.

Only there’s nothing behind me but a swirling inky blackness. There is no going back.

I stomp down my fear, wipe the tears from my cheeks, and face forward again. I need to make a choice.

Of my two options, I know I’m supposed to take the first path—the bright, cheery, flowery one that literally says, “Come this way!” But I remember my Great-Aunt Edna; my parents made us visit her every year on her birthday.

The old lady’s breath smelled worse than Madison’s diapers, and all she ever wanted to talk about was her cats, each of whom was apparently far smarter and far handsomer than my own cat, Scout.

My dislike for the woman runs deeper than the Dead Sea.

I start down the dirt-covered path, away from Great-Aunt Edna and her vomit-inducing breath.

Away from the too-perfect field with its too-perfect flowers and its too-perfect butterflies.

Toward the terrifying woods that inexplicably feel more welcoming than the alternative.

The moment I step beneath the trees, the temperature drops. Goose bumps erupt all over my arms. My teeth begin to chatter. The trail grows tighter and tighter the farther I walk. Thorny plants reach out and scratch the bare legs sticking out from the bottom of my shorts, leaving deep red gouges.

I know the path is telling me to turn around. To go the other way.

And for a moment, I consider it. Do I have it in me to spend day after day listening to Great-Aunt Edna blab on and on about Snowball? And Mittens? And Mr. Flufferkins?

No. I do not.

I keep walking.

Just when the path gets so narrow I think I’ll have to turn around, it opens into a huge clearing covered in grass and thistles and boulders the size of small cars. I take one more step and zwiiing! If I didn’t know better, I’d think I’d accidentally stuck a fork in an electric outlet. When the shockiness finally wears off, my whole body feels different.

Lighter, maybe?

Flatter?

I’m trying to work out the right word when a ghost appears in front of me! I know she’s a ghost because not only do the black shoes peeking out from beneath her flared skirt hover an inch above the ground, but her whole body is kinda, sorta, not really see-through.

A high-pitched scream fills the air.

My scream.

Now, normally I’d be embarrassed to shriek a shriek like this, but if ever there was a moment for it, this was it. Because even though everybody knows there is “no such thing as ghosts”—that they’re made-up nonsense, same as Bigfoot and Nessie and “exciting” school projects—here I am. Standing in front of one.

Ghost Lady shakes her head. “Just once I’d like to skip the screaming,” she murmurs to herself. “Is that too much to ask?”

“But you’re a—a ghost!” What did she expect? A fist bump? A thumbs-up? A How do you do?

“Look down, Finn.”

I’m not sure I should be heeding orders from a ghost, especially a ghost who somehow knows my name, but my eyes dart down anyway.

And another high-pitched screech fills the air. Because my sneakers now hover an inch above the ground. And my body is now kinda, sorta, not really see-through.

I AM A GHOST!

“Welcome to your afterlife, Finn,” Ghost Lady says once my newest round of screams fizzles out. Her voice is stern but not unkind. “I’m Madam Booth. Let’s get you settled.”

Madam Booth takes off across the clearing while I stand there—or rather, I float there—filled with indecision. In their lectures on stranger danger, my parents told me what to do if an unknown adult tried to give me candy. Or if someone in a windowless white van offered to give me a lift home from school. But never, in all their ramblings, did they tell me what to do if I died and a ghost lady wearing a wide-brim hat covered in black feathers asked me to follow her. Talk about a major educational oversight.

In the end, my curiosity (or my impulsiveness, as Mom would call it) wins out, and I run to catch up. I reach Madam Booth’s side just as she crests a small hill. Lying in the valley below is a grand manor with three round, moss-covered towers; a handful of arched windows; and five tall, crooked chimneys that belch out blackish-green smoke. Ivy clings to the mansion like cling wrap.

Madam Booth doesn’t pause to admire the view. She heads straight toward the majestic iron gate serving as the only way through the stone wall that encircles the complex like the Great Wall of China.

“What is this place?” I ask as we get closer.

“Your new home.”

Madam Booth sticks a tarnished metal key into a rusty lock while I read the words curved across the top of the gate:

PHANTOM ACADEMY

School for Underage Ghosts