Since Halloween is just days away I thought it would be fun to share a little teaser from one of my favorite ghost stories, Susan Hill's The Woman in Black. I read it several years ago at Christmastime (because you have to have a good ghost story during the holidays), and as it was chosen as the next Slaves of Golconda read I was able to pull out my copy for a reread. I won't say much about it as I hope to post on it later in the week, but I chose a nice, atmospheric passage to set the tone in the run up to this weekend's festivities (my festivities will include watching the 1963 film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting!).
Just as a little background to the passage I've chosen--a young attorney has been called to Crythin Gifford after the death of a client. He's to journey to Eel Marsh House and go through papers and bring anything of importance back to London as there is no other family left to settle the estate. After a particularly unsettling night in the house the man contemplates dropping everything and simply returning to London with the business left unfinished.
"I had been as badly frightened as a man could be. I did not think that I would be the first to reason to suppose myself markedly braver than the next person. But these other matters were altogether more terrifying, because they were intangible and inexplicable, incapable of proof and yet so deeply affecting. I began to realize what frightened me most--and, as I investigated my thoughts and feelings that morning, what continued to frighten me--was not what I had seen--there had been nothing intrinsically repellent or horrifying about the woman with the wasted face. It was true that the ghastly sounds I had heard through the fog had greatly upset me but far worse was what emanated from and surrounded these things and arose to unsteady me, an atmosphere, a force--I do not exactly know what to call it--of evil and uncleanness, of terror and suffering, or malevolence and bitter anger, I felt quite at a loss to cope with any of these things."
I think the most successful ghost stories are the most plausible. To me what might happen in ordinary life is always more scary than those stories where reality is stretched. I've heard good things about the stage production, and if I ever do get back to London it's already on my list of places to go and things to see.
Do you have a favorite ghost story?