Tomato Nation

Ask The Readers moves to Wednesday this week; I've bought a house (yay), but have to move again on Friday (boo), so TN will likely go dark for a few days.

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Hi Sars,

So, I have a question for you and your readers. I have been trying to figure out this movie for ages and I can't seem to find it anywhere on the net. In the 1980s, a movie was shown on St. Patrick's Day on a local Seattle channel after the St. Patrick's Day Parade. It was a part of "Movie Matinee" sort of programming. It was only shown that one day every year.

Here is what I know:

• The entire cast had Irish accents.
• The main character is a little girl (somewhere between the ages of 8 and 13) who lives at a big white house where there is a major party at some point.
• There is a super creepy porcelain doll that is haunted by the ghost of the girl's dead mother.
• The doll floats up out of the well out back where it has been sitting on a ledge but not getting dirty for who knows how long during the aforementioned party.
• The doll wears a white dress, has black hair, and can talk to the girl in one of those skin-crawling sort of voices that dead women have in movies where they possess dolls.
• The doll belonged to the girl's mother when the mother was a little girl.
• The little girl keeps the doll in a trunk.
• At some point in the movie there is a Banshee, A Ghost Coach, and the old man and the doll end up on this carriage.
• There is nothing fairy or fey in the movie except for the traditional Irish death stuff and the haunted doll.

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Sars,

I have just discovered your site and am nearly jumping up and down that there is a place for me to ask about books I read as a child that I can't remember the &(&@^# name of.

Here's the big one: There was a brother and sister who find a black cat on a Friday the 13th, and every 13th of the month afterwards, something magical happens. One 13th, the brother is turned into a centaur, one 13th they are taken to the "13th floor" of their apartment building (which is one of those buildings that doesn't have a 13th floor), etc.

Any ideas?

*****

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