Scritch Scratch is a 2020 middle-grade horror novel by American author Lindsay Currie. It follows Claire Koster, a 12-year-old scientifically minded girl who becomes embroiled in a ghostly mystery. To date, Currie has published seven books, all for young readers. Almost all of her works feature supernatural or frightening elements and belong to the horror genre. Scritch Scratch and Currie’s other books tend to focus on the history of Chicago, her longtime home, making real-life landmark references that encourage readers who live in or visit the city to find the places described. Scritch Scratch won the 2024 Connecticut Nutmeg Intermediate Book Award and the 2022/2023 William Allen White Book Award.

This guide is based on the 2020 Sourcebooks Young Readers e-book edition.

Plot Summary

Claire is a 12-year-old girl who loves science. She waits in a bookstore on a Saturday with her ghost-obsessed father while he buys books on the paranormal. Casley, Claire’s best friend, is also there, but Claire avoids her because Casley is with her new friend, Emily, who just moved to town. Emily loves makeup, which Casley never used to be interested in; Claire feels like she is losing her best friend. At home, Claire’s mother gives her some bad news: Her father’s employee is sick, so Claire will have to help out on his ghost tour of Chicago that evening. Claire is embarrassed by her father’s job running ghost tours and hates anything related to the supernatural.

Claire reluctantly helps her father set up his tour bus, hoping nobody she knows will see her. She is responsible for giving guests instructions and making sure nobody is on the bus unsupervised. The guests arrive and board the bus. The tour progresses through its first few stops, each of which is the site of a real-life tragedy. At one of the stops, Claire hears someone in the bus bathroom and then finds it is actually empty. Toward the end of the tour, Claire sees a little boy in wet, old-fashioned clothes sitting at the back of the bus. She does not recognize him, and nobody else appears to notice him. When the tour ends, he disappears. Near his seat, Claire finds a damp piece of paper with the number 396 written on it.

That night, as she tries to sleep, Claire hears something scratching at the wall above her head. Something rattles her doorknob, terrifying her. She decides to sleep in her closet. The next day, she thinks she hears something in the alley outside her house. On Monday, as she tries to get dressed for school, Claire finds her dresser flooded with water. She worries that if she tells her dad that she is being haunted, he will make her the unwilling subject of the new paranormal history book he is writing, so she tells nobody. 

At school, Claire and Casley have a strained conversation. They meet again at lunch, where Casley is wearing makeup and Emily’s clothes. Claire reluctantly sits at a table with Casley and Emily, and Emily immediately takes out makeup and insists that Claire put some on. Claire snaps, yelling at Casley and Emily in front of everyone in the cafeteria. She storms off, particularly embarrassed because the boy she has a crush on, Warner Jameson, saw everything. Casley texts and calls Claire to try and resolve the fight, but Claire ignores her. Her house is empty when she gets home, and the haunting starts again: The air gets cold, there is a scratching sound in the wall, and objects get flung around the room. In the bathroom, Claire finds the number 396 written in Sharpie on the wall. 

Claire’s older brother Sam, who heard about the argument in the cafeteria, asks his sister if everything is okay. She tells him about Casley and Emily, and he encourages her to talk to her best friend. She also tells him about the haunting, and he agrees to help her resolve the situation in exchange for her help with pre-algebra. The two of them try to use the scientific method to figure out which ghost is haunting Claire and why. Based on his clothes, they assume he died in the early 1900s. Claire again sleeps in her closet, and the ghost boy haunts her again that night. He bangs on the closet door and leaves wet footprints on her floor. Casley confronts Claire at school the next day and asks her to give Emily a chance. When Claire goes to the bathroom later that day, the ghost returns, turning on all the faucets and whispering, “Where are they?” (119). Casley comes in and experiences the haunting for herself. She agrees to help Claire solve the mystery.

After school, Emily meets Casley and Claire to help them with the haunting. She tells Claire that her parents just got divorced and her mom lost her job: She wears makeup to make herself feel better. Claire feels bad for misjudging Emily. The three of them go to Claire’s house where they meet Sam and do some ghost research. After a while, they hear a strange sound and realize that the bathroom is flooding. There is water everywhere. A piece of paper floating in the bathtub says “Eastland,” which they recognize as the name of a local shipwreck. Sam and Claire decide that tomorrow they will go to the site where the SS Eastland sank. When their parents get home, Sam and Claire tell them about the flooded bathroom but not the haunting. Their parents are confused because, when they go upstairs, they find nothing flooded at all. 

At school the next day, Claire has been assigned a new locker because there is a cockroach infestation in her old one. Her new locker, number 396, is next to Warner’s. He is Emily’s cousin and he also has a crush on Claire. They agree to work together on a research project about Dexter Graves, an early settler in Chicago. After school, Claire, Sam, Casley, and Emily go to the place where the Eastland sank. Claire looks at the water and has a ghostly vision: She sees the boat sink and hundreds of people in the water. She faints. When she wakes up, she looks up boy 396 on the internet and finds his identity. He is Willie Novotny, a seven-year-old boy who was the last victim of the disaster to be identified. He was labeled with the number 396.

Sam and Claire go to the Chicago History Museum to learn more about the SS Eastland. They find a small exhibit that makes no mention of Willie Novotny. A museum guide gives them more information about the tragedy. The siblings return home, now certain of how to help Willie’s spirit move on. Claire asks her father to talk about the SS Eastland in detail in his next book, and he agrees. One week after the story started, Sam and Claire visit the Novotny family grave in the Bohemian National Cemetery. Claire feels Willie’s presence. He seems at peace now that people will know his story. In an epilogue, Claire, Casley, Emily, Sam, and Warner visit Dexter Graves’s unusual memorial in the Graceland Cemetery. Claire feels optimistic about the future.