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Dead Medium: Not Your Average Ghost Story Kindle Edition
Dead Medium: A humorous, character driven story and a unique vision of life after death.
Not your average ghost story.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJanuary 10, 2013
- File size5355 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Peter John is such a wonderful author with a brilliant writing skill, which makes the narration of the book somewhat nostalgic and beautiful. The story itself is marvelous as well as humorous and gives remarkable insight into how the dead deals with the living world and it discusses the mystery of the other side. The ending takes a surprising turn but it ties up everything together nicely in the end. An enjoyable read and I can't wait for the author's next brilliant work." - Reviewed by Lit Amri for Readers' Favorite.
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B00B000O8C
- Publication date : January 10, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 5355 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 381 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,354,179 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #539 in Humorous Dark Comedy
- #6,177 in Ghost Fiction
- #7,897 in General Humorous Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Peter John was born in Bromley Kent, England in 1973. He gained an interest in creative writing at the age of 14 and was published during the 1990's in several poetry anthologies. Happily Married to Jo since 1996 and currently living in Rochester.
About Me.
I was born in Bromley, Kent back in the early seventies. I spent most of my childhood riding bikes, playing tag and kicking tin cans around the street, unless there was an actual football to hand. At the age of fourteen I had a milestone experience. Prior to that I had never shown the slightest interest in writing, if I remember rightly I wanted to be an astronaut, but then I got put into detention one afternoon. I had failed to bring in my homework assignment and the teacher had punished me by forcing me to write a short story during the lunch time break. While all the other boys kicked tin cans around the playground, I was sat in a room on my own with a sandwich, a carton of Kia-Ora and an exercise book. I picked at the sandwich while staring at the blank pages in front of me and then it happened. All of a sudden a story formed in my head and I almost instinctively threw in down on the paper. 45 minutes passed in what felt like seconds and the short story which I had called ’Thinking Crash’ was spread throughout the exercise book in my scruffy, barely coherent handwriting. I had never fallen into a story like that before, where my hand was struggling to keep up with my brain and I didn’t look up once from the pages until I heard the lunch bell ring. Ever since that day I have been hooked. I could have been circling the earth in a tin can and eating my dinner out of a tube if it wasn’t for that one stint in detention; I still like to consider it as a lucky escape.
OPINIONS OF GHOSTS
You would expect me, being the author of a paranormal comedy, to be a great believer in ghosts but you would be wrong in that assumption. You would then presume that I have never seen a ghost and again you would be mistaken, confused yet? I consider myself to be a hopeful sceptic; hopeful because I would really like to be able to break free of my own Cynicism and a sceptic because no matter how hard I try, I can’t. Even after seeing things that I can’t explain myself, I fail to convert myself into a believer on the basis that just because I can’t prove it false doesn’t mean it’s true. I regret this standpoint entirely, I see all the benefits in believing in something as strongly as some people believe in the existence of ghosts and other forms of supernatural beings but I don’t seem capable of stepping over that final hurdle of doubt, and I blame psychics for this entirely. Years of hearing how people have been fleeced for more money than they can comfortably afford by Clairvoyants and Mediums has left me armoured against certain aspects of the supernatural. Con artists and schemers who have promised them answers to the soul burning questions that we all ask of ourselves during times of grief. Is there more? Are they truly gone or are they just behind the curtain of death, waiting for me to join them? Are they watching over me, right here, as we speak My mother is a great believer in the spiritual powers of others and has often remarked on her own psychic ability. I have to agree that on occasion she has made remarkable predictions that have turned out to be true, though sometimes it has been in a ‘ball park’ kind of way. Through out my childhood I have listened to her stories about what this medium said and what that psychic told her but I have also listened to the recording of such spiritual meetings. “I have a name coming through. It’s faint but I think it begins with an A, it might be an O or an E. It’s definitely starts with a vowel or there’s a vowel in there somewhere at least”. My mother never failed to fall hook line and sinker but, even at a young age, I could see the vague and fishing manner in which they all spoke. It made me cynical and suspicious when it came down to beings from another plain of existence and I have yet failed to shrug this guarded approach. Maybe one day I will find the proof I need, or experience something that will turn my head a full 360 until I’m sceptical about whether living people actually exist, but until that day I will remain full of questions, doubts and hopes.
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Mr John does quite a bit more with the short story than can be summarized above. To begin, he brings to life a very diverse set of characters with a tremendous amount of personality. The bickering and banter between them all is quite funny, but frighteningly close to what one would expect to hear between geriatricians at a Bingo hall or the regulars at an old diner. Most of the characters described are of retirement age, and likewise have outgrown the need for approval of their younger counterparts. Therefore, they do not attempt to hide their real opinions or nuances. This alone helps his story flow very naturally and provides most of the entertainment.
I also sense some deeper themes. May Trump, who was a loner during her life, begins to understand her origins, choices, and becomes more open to companionship. Some of the living also begin to uncover things about themselves while interacting with the dead. This all happens against an imaginary tapestry of Mr John’s conception of life after death. What he suggests of the afterlife seemed to me an original idea, and a fairly optimistic one. At some points, he does paint a little of the macabre against the more lighthearted tone of his writing, which does lends some of the classic spookiness of ghost stories. Then he immediately explains how the ghosts feel in those situations, in stark contrast to the recounting of most hauntings.
I would have to agree with the front cover of his book that this is “not your average ghost story.” It is quite clever, novel, and entertaining fiction. I laughed frequently. He provides just enough suspense to keep the reader hooked to the end, and satisfactorily finishes the story with a little twist. As easy a read as Dead Medium is, it’s more than worth the time.
May meets up with Penny, who had also recently passed away, and she decides to help out Penny's daughter who is now in danger of losing her family's home. Penny's daughter, Chloe, is a young girl in college, and she may have to choose between her education and keeping the house. Then a group of old ladies known as The Thursday Night Club teams up with them so they can hold seances in order to make money for Chloe. These women were a lot of fun, almost like The Golden Girls. (If they were, then Victoria would be Blanche since she's a bit of a slut.)
We also meet other people who have passed away, and one of them warns of the Soul Stalkers... Even after death, they may not be safe. This definitely added a different, more sinister element to it that I wasn't expecting.
Even though I don't believe in anything paranormal, I do find it intriguing in fiction. To reference another show, Medium is one of my favorite shows of all time. So it was definitely interesting to read about a medium who was on the other side instead!
This book was truly entertaining to read, and at times, it was also touching. It honestly brought tears to my eyes when May was reunited with her dead cat, Mr. Kibbles. My beloved kitty passed away last December, so it made me think about how wonderful it would be to be able to see him again. And of course, it would be so nice to think that there is an afterlife, and we may be able to see deceased loved ones after we die. So many of the restless souls had reasons to stick around. They wanted to communicate with the living, and May would be able to give them that opportunity. Even though this may seem like a heavy subject, it was still a fairly light and humorous read for the most part.
I am giving this book five stars for being an enjoyable story with a great cast of characters and for having such a fantastic cover!
Top reviews from other countries




The premise is that May Trump, an ordinary, rather curmudgeonly, antisocial 75 year old discovers after her death not simply that she has survived as a ghost – way out of her comfort zone of belief – but that she has the rare gift of making herself heard to those still in this earthly realm. The story unfolds from this point – occasionally farcical, with Peter John’s dry wit poking affectionate fun at all the characters that appear. The novel is clever on so many levels. The author has done his research well, and many of the theoretical models about a possible afterlife are introduced in such a way that they seem for the most part utterly believable.
I particularly liked the fact that with the emergence of other ghosts into the story it became clear that the essence of personality that survived death hadn’t fallen far from the tree. There was nothing mawkishly holier-than-thou about these ethereal survivors of mortality – and not very much ethereal about them, either. They were refreshingly real, as were the neighbours and friends of May Trump, who took in their stride her audible manifestation. I got the impression that Peter John thoroughly enjoyed writing the book and became engaged himself all with the characters – this always conveys itself to a reader, and I soon became captivated.
I was especially interested in the early introduction of May’s cat, Mr Kibbles, and knew that he must be a plot device chosen with good reason. This was borne out by the time the end of the novel was reached, and he is indeed a key player in the drama – but you’ll have to find out for yourself just how. Suffice it to say that Mr Kibbles – a seemingly rare animal resident of the spirit world ever since his death 10 years previously – is the one creature with whom May was able to create a loving bond during her lifetime. This bond is still there now that she herself is a ghost, and yet it is no longer quite so exclusive: an interesting hero’s journey ensues throughout the novel, as May discovers a kinder side to her personality, and a form of altruism that was never present in her while she was alive. Death has changed her in more ways than she could have imagined.
I don’t want to give away any more of the plot than necessary, as the story takes the reader as much as May herself on a journey that ultimately is as touching as it is humorous. There were tears in my eyes at the end – and not from laughing. I also recommend that you read Peter John’s illuminating biography on his Amazon Author’s page, in which he describes his own spiritual beliefs, and his scepticism regarding con artist mediums. I share with him a refusal to be hoodwinked balanced against genuine personal experience which suggests there is far more to life and death than meets the eye. I love the way he has written the novel holding the circumspect perspective of ‘what if...’ which opens the door to imaginative fiction rather than getting bogged down in irrefutable fact. Given the subject matter I believe that is far the best way, and also adds to its charm. I thoroughly recommend this novel and give it 5 stars.

This is also a lovely people story, the kind I'd enjoy with or without ghosts. There isn't a character introduced that feels false or two dimensional. There were a couple of parts where the pace was too slow. Other than that, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read.