Always good to find a supernatural tale about Stoke-on-Trent. New to me is The Haunting of Stoke-on-Trent (2017) by Julian Middleton. 58 pages in paper (says eBay), 89 pages in paper (says Amazon UK) or 33 pages (says the Kindle ebook store). The back cover of the paperback on Amazon suggests the reason for the expanded page count… an added “special bonus story”. So my guess is it’s perhaps 15,000 words for the main tale.
The blurb suggests a children’s book…
When an earth tremor creates a gaping fissure in the middle of his street, Tom Hughes is horrified to witness a group of ghostly miners emerge from it. As a terrifying apparition looms over the distant hill of Mow Cop, and the miners create a path of destruction on their way to join it, it’s up to Tom and his sister Jen to save Stoke-On-Trent from certain doom…
And an Amazon reviews confirms. It’s a short children’s book, and is apparently written for easy comprehension by those in early middle childhood (Amazon suggests ages 7-9) who may not be regular book readers yet.
The Spyders of Burslem 