The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Who doesn't love a good ghost story? They bring us back to our childhood days of sleepovers and fireside tales. They unite us with the shivers and goosebumps that race down our skin, leaving us wondering and weary of those bumps in the night.

If you're looking to resurrect that feeling again, check out Susan Hill's The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story. The book first came out in 1983 and has since lived a healthy life, spawning a play and, most recently, a movie starring Daniel Radcliff of Harry Potter fame. It was the trailer to the movie that hooked my interest.

We've got it in both book form (FIC HILL) and audiobook (AD FIC HILL). With the book, you benefit from John Lawrence's stark, somber illustrations. With the audiobook, Ralph Cosham's narration lends a wonderfully moody atmosphere to the tale.

As someone who enjoys a good scare but doesn't want to be scared witless, The Woman in Black struck a good balance. It has the feel of a story from another time, not just because it's set in early 20th century Edwardian England, but because of the language Hill uses, which harkens back to the gothic novels of Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker.

Arthur Kipps narrates the tragic story:

I was then thirty-five and I had been a widower for the past twelve years. I had no taste at all for social life and, although in good general health, was prone to occasional nervous illnesses and conditions, as a result of the experiences I will come to relate. Truth to tell, I was growing old well before my time, a sombre, pale-complexioned man with a strained expression — a dull dog.

In the ensuing pages, we learn what, exactly, led to Kipps' premature aging: As a newly minted 23-year-old solicitor (that's what the British call their lawyers), Kipps is sent to the remote village of Crythin Gifford to attend to the legal affairs of one Mrs. Alice Drablow, recently deceased, of Eel Marsh House.

The unsuspecting Kipps likes the idea of an expedition and a rambling estate to explore. Well, the joke's on him. He soon finds himself growing increasingly uneasy and fearful as he sees and hears things that cannot be explained, beginning with the titular woman in black, whom he first spots at Mrs. Drablow's funeral. Eel Marsh House itself, cut off regularly from the roads by the tide, lends little sense of safety. In fact, when Kipps decides to stay at the house out of convenience, this just makes matters for him worse.

I'll leave you to uncover Mrs. Drablow's secrets but needless to say, Kipps' recounting has everything we've come to expect of ghost stories: creepy noises, moving objects, haunted houses and angry apparitions. In that sense, The Woman in Black covers little new ground. But if it's a traditional spooky story you're after, Hill's story should fit the bill quite nicely.

What's your favorite ghost story? Share your suggestions in the comments.

Haunted Houses

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life At Rose Red / Joyce Reardon, ed.
In the early part of the twentieth century, an oil baron John Rimbauer and his wife Ellen build an enormous mansion in Seattle against the wishes of the locals who say that building a home on an Indian burial ground is bad luck. Tragedy and haunts follow the lives of those who live inside the house through the decades, particularly that of Ellen Rimbauer, whose diary is rehashed years later by a parapsychologist. (FIC DIARY)

The Good House: A Novel / by Tananarive Due

In a small town in Washington state, the Toussaint home still feels the haunting effects from over a century ago when a powerful voodoo priestess from New Orleans unleashed a horrible spirit over it. Now, years later the woman’s descendants have returned to the town to help rid the house and the town of its deadly curse. (FIC DUE)

The Woman in Black / by Susan Hill

Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor, is summoned to the small English village of Crythin Gifford to organize the estate of the now deceased Alice Drablow only to be received by the townspeople with suspicion and coldness. At the former home of the old woman, Arthur is recurrently confronted by the ghastly apparition of a veiled woman dressed in black amid other terrors. (FIC HILL)

The Cellar / by Richard Laymon
In the town of Malcasa Point, CA is a house known as the Beast House which is said to be haunted. Though off limits at night, daytime tours are conducted which take visitors through every room but the cellar of which no one, not even the tour guides, dare venture. This is Laymon’s first installment of the Beast House chronicles which include The Beast House, The Midnight Tour & Friday Night in the Beast House. (FIC LAYMON)













Gad’s Hall / by Norah Lofts
Gad's Hall, an English country home on the market for the first time in over a century, is purchased by a couple and their three children who are desperate for home with enough space to suit their needs. But when their daughter Jill finds herself experiencing strange feelings about parts of her new property, particularly the empty locked room upstairs, the dream becomes a nightmare. The sequel to this book (actually a prequel) is The Haunting of Gad’s Hall. (FIC LOFTS)

Hell House / by Richard Matheson
Parapsychologist Lionel Barrett, a physicist with an interest in parapsychology and four others including his Barrett's wife Edith are hired by dying millionaire William Reinhardt Deutsch to investigate the possibility of life after death. To do so, they must enter the infamous Belasco House in Maine, regarded as the most haunted house in the world. (FIC MATHESO)

So Cold The River / by Michael Koryta

"He wasn't crazy. There was something about that picture." (p. 8)

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Downtrodden filmmaker Eric Shaw is barely making ends meet when a wealthy client hires him to do a video documentary of her father-in-law, a reclusive 95-year-old billionaire named Campbell Bradford. Needing the money, Eric takes the job and travels to the rural town West Baden, Indiana to meet the mysterious nanogenarian soon discovering that there's something very strange about both Bradford and the isolated town itself. Once a resort hotspot, West Baden possesses a natural hot springs reputed to miraculously cure all types of ailments with its special mineral water and, in the spirit of revival, the town has made efforts to revisit its glory years. The resort's once-fabulous hotel, where the wealthy elite congregated decades ago, has even been refurbished to resemble its former grandeur. It's here where Eric has been put up for his stay.

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Though he's in OK health, Eric festively takes a swig of the spring's famed natural elixir and immediately begins having visions of an an extraordinarily horrific nature. At the same time, he starts to learn more about Campbell Bradford, both the elderly alive man he interacts with and another Campbell Bradford, one supposedly long dead. In the following days, Eric's dreams and hallucinations become increasingly more coherent, showing him the West Baden that once was and a resurgent evil back from the past. As his surroundings become more distorted and his convictions less certain, Eric does all he can to confront the horror unfolding before him. Koryta's list of mystery-thrillers have impressed in the short span he's been on the radar (he's only 28) and this well-crafted horror tale attests to his skill at storytelling. The hotel in West Baden draws more than a few comparisons to Stephen King's Overlook Hotel in The Shining (FIC KING), but the author fashions his content with his own stylized attributes, evolving the story through the origins of the supernatural evil haunting the characters right up until the inevitable showdown. (FIC KORYTA)

Ghost Monster / by Simon Clark

In the isolated English coastal village of Crowdale is a very old and decrepit cemetery, obsolete except for one very unusual feature. Situated at the graveyard's center is an oddly well-kept mausoleum interring the remains of the notorious Murrain clan, a once very powerful and feared family. Most notably the structure houses the gravesite ofJustice Murrain, the ancient family patriarch over whose tomb is embedded a most foreboding mosaic image of a demon. Long dead for centuries, the gravisite's contents nevertheless remain under constant, solemn vigil, monitored over the years by subsequent Murrains who try to keep in what everyone fears (and the Murrains know) could get out. For legendary are the stories from long ago which tell of the deranged (some say otherworldly) Justice Murrain and his demoniacal brood who once ran the town of Crowdale with a bloodthirsty iron fist, their exploits culminating in the torturous deaths of over a thousand villagers in the span of only a few decades.

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Following the overthrow and particularly violent execution of Justice Murrain, the mausoleum was constructed to help ensure that that his unearthly spirit could never enter back into the land of the living. Since then, the Murrains have lived as outcasts. Doomed by the sins of their forebears to an oath of renunciation and the lonely task of securing their ancestor's imprisonment, their lineage is seen as cursed, their blood tainted with each succeeding generation the object of perpetual scorn and derision from the local populous. Now though, as soil erosion and an ambitious archaeological dig break down the earth beneath the mausoleum, Jacob Murrain (the eldest living Murrain descendant) fights against time and nature to preserve the unconsecrated ground under which his ancestor's dormant soul resides. Secretly though, Jacob cannot keep back the thoughts permeating his subconscious, voices which hint at defying his sworn duty as a guardian sentinel and avenging the Murrain name by granting release to his ancestor, effectively setting Justice Murrain free to terrorize mankind once again. 
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Ghost Monster is a mass market novel but it's not a bad book, packing some punch as a worthwhile scare fest. The storyline in which an ancient evil revisits the present from beyond the grave is in itself nothing new. Graves and cemeteries, the dead rising, ages-old vendettas and demonic possession are a staple of classic horror stories, so much so that original ideas outside these parameters are somewhat suspect. But Clark cleverly devises modifications to this tried-and-true mold which give a nuanced spin to the plot providing the story a solid level of freshness and originality. Clark writes well, too, with an appeal which gets the reader interested quickly and manages to sustain the intrigue through the middle and later sections. Well-articulated characters, ominous overtones, eerie unnatural occurrences as well as a good amount of grisly gore and romantic suspense tinged with eroticism all combine to elevate the story to a solid horror experience just in time for Halloween. (FIC CLARK)