The Haunting of Room 904, Erika T. Wurth’s second novel, has made several “must read” lists. Her first, White Horse, was a New York Times editors’ pick and a Good Morning America Buzz Pick among other honorifics. Crime Reads and Paste magazine both put Haunting on their list of top horror novels coming out in 2025, while Nerd Daily and Lit Hub put it on their list of top 25 books, regardless of genre. Lots of people have been waiting to get their hands on this book, and now the wait is nearly over (it releases on March 18).

Erika T. Wurth

The book opens with a Dybbuk Box (from Jewish folklore; a wooden box or wine cabinet said to contain a malicious disembodied spirit wanting to possess a living person). We learn about the box alongside the main character, Olivia Becente, and are plunged immediately into a dark, frightening paranormal investigation that leads to unexpected connections from Olivia’s own life.

While the ability to communicate with the spirits of the dead runs in Olivia’s family, it didn’t manifest in her until she “inherited” it after the death of her sister, Naiche. Since then, she’s honed her new abilities and become the most sought-after paranormal investigator in Denver. The business itself could be its own story, with the agony and ecstasy of social media reviews, online purchases of ghost-hunting equipment and an angry journalist with a poison pen.

Olivia soon gets a call from the Brown Palace Hotel. Years ago, a long-term resident died of a broken heart in room 904 and now, every few years, a young woman mysteriously turns up dead in that room, even when it hasn’t been rented out. Fun fact: the real Brown Palace did have a 15-year resident named Louise Hill who died in room 904, perhaps of a broken heart. For the sake of the story, Wurth has changed the name and the circumstances of the woman’s death, spinning a backstory that connects Olivia’s sister’s death, the Dybbuk Box, the woman in room 904 and the infamous and terrible Sand Creek Massacre.

In lesser hands, the strands of a story like this could fray apart or get lost in the tangle of details. For the reader, the story comes together as Olivia is figuring it out, which means a lovely verisimilitude of having to actually work the problem. As with any real-world situation, there are false starts, blind alleys, misleading or incomplete information, as well as characters who are working in their own best interest, no matter what they claim. The reader is drawn deeper and deeper into the heart of this disturbing mystery, rooting for Olivia to figure out what’s going on so they can sleep with the light off at night. There’s also a driving need for Olivia to untangle the past and come up with a solution before she or her mother meet the same horrible end forced on her sister.

A part of the story that really struck me was Olivia’s approach to solving paranormal problems. There is no objective right or wrong, no one path that is superior to the others. She works within her own strengths, never pretending to be something she isn’t. As she tells one client,

“I am not a traditional medicine person, and I’m definitely not a priest,” [she] said, chuckling darkly. “But this is how I know how to respectfully communicate with the dead. My family was tradish, then Catholic, then Native American Church. This is what I know, who I am.”

This is not to say that Olivia doesn’t learn from other cultures, because she definitely does. But she credits her teachers with giving her an expanded arsenal of metaphysical tools, rather than blindly plundering the beliefs of other people for bits and bobs that are flashy and, at best, don’t work, and at worst, magnify the problem in horrific ways.

I also appreciate that we get to see Olivia as a whole and believable person. I love a main character that is neither paralyzed and quivering in fright, nor racing into danger with no thought. I like a practical, realistic main character to root for. Olivia has messy relationships with her family, and she has friends who are real and true enough to give her their truth and their perspective, whether she wants to hear it or not. She has a lovely ex and an abusive ex, and she doesn’t always know how to deal with either one of them.

Set in Denver, The Haunting of Room 904 will give everyone unfamiliar with the Mile High City a taste of its urban/mountain flavor. For those of us who live in Colorado, it’s a comfortable sense of familiarity as the author hits the right notes without banging on any of them too long or too hard. For Denverites, it’s worth noting that Wurth is a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Convergence Station art gallery.