Dial-A-Ghost is a 1996 children's novel by Eva Ibbotson. In a world filled with ghosts both peaceful and mean, the Dial-a-Ghost agency works to find homes for various ghosts. They receive a request for vicious and angry ghosts from Fulton Snodde-Brittle, who secretly plans on frightening his third cousin Oliver Smith to death for the family estate. However, a mix-up of envelopes causes the Wilkinsons, a family of friendly ghosts, to be sent to Oliver instead, and they don't like what Fulton is up to when they find out.
Tropes:
- Aerith and Bob: The eldest known Snodde-Brittles are five siblings named Archie, Mungo, Frederica, James, and Rollo.
- An Arm and a Leg: One of Oliver's orphanage friends, Trevor, lost a hand in the accident that killed his parents.
- Color Blind Confusion: The wrong ghosts are sent to the wrong house (saving Oliver from being scared to death by the shriekers) due to a color blind office boy mixing up two envelopes.
- Cute Ghost Girl:
- Adopta is a cute little Victorian girl who becomes a playmate and protector to Oliver.
- Although a bit older, Eric could count as a Cute Ghost Guy — he's a dorky, good-hearted teenager who likes hanging out with Oliver and his friends and teaches them Boy Scout skills.
- Egomaniac Hunter: Oliver's great-great-uncle Archie Snodde-Brittle hunted as a hobby until a rhino impaled him. Aside from his hunting, Archie also had a violent reaction to a commoner showing an interest in his sister and is implied to have been the one who disowned Oliver's great-grandfather.
- Embarrassing Damp Sheets: Nonnie, one of the other orphans at Oliver's home, had a bed-wetting problem.
- Empty Swimming Pool Dive: Basil Snodde-Brittle (who is described as not very bright) died from diving into a swimming pool without making sure it was full of water.
- Every Scar Has a Story: Fulton is told that one of the con men has a scar because of a ghost encounter. Actually he got it from crashing into a truck on his skateboard.
- Evil Makes You Monstrous: The Shriekers have definitely decayed over the course of their undeath to look skeletal and bloodstained (Lady Sabrina has no nose and is losing her toes) while the Wilkinsons look mostly like they did when they were alive. At the end of the book, Fulton's ghost is also described as being much uglier dead than alive.
- Friend to All Living Things: Adopta, who ruined her parents' party as a human due to anger over the animals they killed and adopts ghost animals of all kinds.
- Happily Adopted:
- The agency run by Ms. Pringle and Mrs. Mannering is an adoption agency for ghosts. They try to find people who are willing to "adopt" and take in homeless ghosts:For after all if people can adopt whales and trees in rain forests — if schoolchildren can adopt London buses and crocodiles in the zoo — why not ghosts? Only they would have to be proper adoptions, not just sending money. Ghosts after all are not whales or crocodiles; they can fit perfectly well into the right sort of house.
- In a more traditional sense, the main characters, the ghostly Wilkinson family, has a Happily Adopted daughter named Adopta... so-called because she's amnesiac and can't remember her real name. When the Wilkinsons found her, she had been asleep for a long time and was very drowsy and confused when they managed to wake her up. When the Wilkinsons said they would "adopt her", she decided that her name was "Adopta". Later in the book, it's revealed that her real name is Honoria and she's of noble birth, and her real parents are also ghosts, who went mad and evil with grief after she died young. Adopta isn't at all impressed with her birth parents, and though she reconciles with them at the end she insists she's still a Wilkinson.
- The agency run by Ms. Pringle and Mrs. Mannering is an adoption agency for ghosts. They try to find people who are willing to "adopt" and take in homeless ghosts:
- Heel–Faith Turn: Freida becomes a nun devoting her life to penitent things like mucking the stables after a harrowing run-in with the ghosts.
- High Turnover Rate: Oliver is the ninth Snodde-Brittle to become lord of Helton Hall in just four generations. The eight before him all died undignified deaths, most of them at young ages.
- Horrible Judge of Character: The narration mocks how idiotic it is of the Snodde-Brittle family's lawyer and bank manager to assume that Fulton is offering to look after Oliver out of kindness when if not for Oliver's existence, Fulton would be the lord of Helton Hall.
- I Never Got Any Letters: Fulton destroys several letters from Oliver's orphanage to increase his sense of isolation.
- Inheritance Murder: Fulton and Frieda Snodde-Brittle attempt to frighten their distant cousin Oliver to death by hiring ghosts to scare him.
- Innocent Means Naïve: Oliver has trouble believing his cousins intend him any harm, even as evidence mounts that they are plotting an Inheritance Murder. The narration tells us that he even feels bad imagining that his cousin Fulton didn't look hard enough for his mail at the post office, because he is a child who had been brought up to trust people?
- Long-Lost Relative:
- Oliver is the orphaned great-grandson of the estranged third son of a Snodde-Brittle ancestor who suddenly inherits the family fortune when the last descendant of the second son died off. No one even remembered Oliver's great-grandfather existed until someone checked an old family tree. Oliver's existence comes as a shock to Fulton, a descendant of the fourth son who would have inherited if not for Oliver's existence.
- Adopta turns out to be the daughter of the Shriekers, who haven't seen her since her original death.
- Noose Necktie: One of the past Snodde-Brittles was choked by his tie when he caught it in a washer while sexually harassing a maid.
- Old, Dark House: Helton Hall is a very creepy old manor full of old weapons, gruesome and violent art, and taxidermied animals. It's even spookier for a ten-year-old boy completely on his own. While Freida claims "Of course a house as old as this has ghosts", it's actually not a Haunted House until the Snodde-Brittles try to find ghosts to haunt it (although there's a lake on the property that is haunted).
- Old Flame Fizzle: The Wilkinsons son has as a long-term crush on his schoolmate Cynthia Harbottle even decades after dying. When she turns up as a ghost in the final chapter, she is old, plump, and selfish. Her casual littering is portrayed as the deal-breaker for young Eric.
- Orphanage of Fear: The orphanage in Dial-a-Ghost averts the trope completely; while it's shabby and struggling financially, the children who live there love it so much they dread the thought of being adopted and having to leave.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Some people can see them and some people can't, they are accepted as real to the extent that a ghost adoption agency can operate as a business, and there is no way of knowing if someone will become a ghost when they die or not. They are most comfortable traveling and being active at night and seem to sleep during the day.
- Parents as People: The Shriekers cared about their daughter, but were upset by her interfering with their social climbing and even after making peace with her as ghosts still have some trouble accepting her new carefree manner.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: On top of everything else nasty about him, Fulton sneers at hearing Oliver's mother was French and thinks "Hmmmph, foreign blood!"
- Snake Oil Salesman: Fulton and Frieda fall victim to a trio of shysters who pretend to be scientists who survived of attacks by dangerous ghosts. They sell Fulton what is supposed to be a ghost-destroying device but is really junk. Fulton is furious to find out he was tricked.
- Tangled Family Tree: It is unclear how Colonel Mersham is related to Oliver, Frieda and Fulton aside from a comment that the Snodde-Brittles were "cousins of his mother". He doesn't make it clear which generation and which branch of Snodde-Brittles' he means, and Mersham isn't shown on the family tree at the beginning. The family tree seems to be showing only male lines of descent, with few wives included. The wife of one of the ill-fated heirs could have been a sister of Mersham's grandparents, making Fulton, Freida, and Oliver's father his cousins once or twice removed, and Oliver a generation farther removed. Mersham's ancestor could also be Oliver's great-great-aunt Frederica, a cousin of Frederica and her brothers, or a stepchild or illegitimate child of a Snodde-Brittle from the main branch of the family.
- Turn Undead: The nuns are able to keep the Shriekers in check with prayers and wands of rowan wood.
- White Sheep:
- Oliver's great-grandfather cut ties with the snooty and generally unpleasant Snodde-Brittle's over a feud when he decided to Marry for Love.
- Oliver's third cousin Bertie Snodde-Brittle was a balloonist with no mentioned flaws.
- Colonel Mersham dislikes his Snodde-Brittle cousins and is a kindly naturalist trying to save endangered animals.
- Elmer, one of the most recently deceased Snodde-Brittles, also merely died in a simple car accident while his two brothers died stealing eggs from an endangered eagle nest and while trying to evict an old woman, respectively.
