For the Hours After Midnight

Sarah Waters, whose own ghost/haunted house story I reviewed here, wrote about her favourite ghost stories on her website. I found the list and insight into the writer's own literary loves fascinating. Of the top ten I had read half when I first read the list but have now read eight of the ten; the short stories I found online (I would provide links but I downloaded them in pdf format and no longer have them) and have still to read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (as previously mentioned) and Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills (I have never read any Ishiguro).

Of the ten my favourites are photgraphed above.

Beloved was my first Toni Morrison novel almost a decade ago and the one she is most known for, seeing as it won the Pulitzer Prize and was likely the contributing factor to the author winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, the first time a black woman had ever won it. I loved that Sarah Waters included it on a list of ghost stories; it is intensely haunting and does include a haunted house, 124 Bluestone, and its own "little stranger", the ghost of murdered infant, Beloved (so named for the inscription on her headstone). It is also haunted by the sins of the past and I love Waters' eloquent description, " [o]ne of the great fictional studies of slavery and its scars, Beloved is also a sublime literary ghost story: a meditation on the ways in which individuals and communities – ultimately, an entire nation – can be haunted by the violence and injustice of the past. A breathtaking book." It is indeed breathtaking -you gasp in shock often- and somebody or something's breath is perhaps the sensation you feel on the back of your neck.
Beloved is the type of terrifying story that the short story "The Lottery" is, more disturbing and sickeningly shocking than sensational terror.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is also a haunting novella of another kind, a psychological and claustophobic study of mental illness. A spare and essential feminist text, I have read and reread "The Yellow Wallpaper" often. I have the beautiful slim volume (Virago Modern Classic) above as well as a couple of anthologised copies but you are able to read this on Project Gutenberg. Follow it up with Persephone's The Victorian Chaise-longue, which is similarly themed with a trapped and stifled woman.

My impressions of The Woman in Black have recently -and enthusiastically- been given. The building of palpable tension in this short novel still resonates with me.

Coincidentally I paired "Carmilla" by Sheridan Le Fanu and "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James (both novellas) in a Victorian Literature essay many years ago. The latter lauded the former with the praise that he was "the ideal reading ... for the hours after midnight" and indeed Le Fanu's Vampiric tale, which predates Bram Stoker's Dracula, is deliciously atmospheric. As a prototype for lesbian vampires, as well as female, it is also probably of historical as well as literary interest to Sarah Waters. "The Turn of the Screw" is the original rational v. supernatural tale and at the forefront of the genre.

Of the short stories, "The Monkey's Paw" was the most sensational and one I had never come across mention of before (nor the others). Its "be careful what you wish for" motif is blended into a theme reminiscent of The Arabian Nights, a monkey's paw talisman that will grant you three wishes - no matter the cost. Its climax is chilling and emphasises that what is unseen and left to the reader's imagination is frequently effective.

Elizabeth Bowen is a favourite writer of Sarah Waters and one of the few female writers of War-time fiction. "The Demon Lover" is subtly creepy.

Kelly Link's "The Specialist's Hat" bears re-reading as I haven't fully formed an opinion. It is quite poignant but I didn't find it particularly scary.

As I seem to be on a mission to scare the bejesus out of myself, do you have personal favourites in the genre of ghost stories and the general disturbing that you would like to recommend?

The Woman in Black

I was incorrectly under the impression that The Woman in Black by Susan Hill was a re-telling/re-interpretation/reincarnation of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins but it's not; the title is merely misleading. I read the former last October and it's a classic crime story with supernatural elements, albeit not as compelling as Collins's The Moonstone, which is a personal favourite of mine. As for being influenced by The Woman in White, nobody could possibly do it better than Sarah Waters did in Fingersmith; she took the basic premise of the great Victorian novel by one of the masters and amazingly improved upon it (if you haven't read Fingersmith then please do; it is exceptional).

As for the confusingly entitled The Woman in Black it is an atmospheric ghost story that is spine-tingling. I can say in all honesty that I am relieved that I read this during the onset of summer because it is scary enough without reading it in the thick of a dark Winter, complete with elements that lend themselves to dark imaginings. Suspenseful and chilling the events of The Woman in Black surround junior lawyer, Arthur Kipps, who is young and carefree and sent to Eel Marsh House, which sits beyond the causeway and alone upon treacherous sea marshes and whose mistress, Alice Drablow, a client of the law firm for whom Kipps works, has recently died. The malevolence surrounding Eel Marsh House is something Kipps disregards as superstitious gossip on the behalf of the town occupants, even when he catches sight of the emaciated and anomalous woman all dressed in black, but gradually a creeping sense of unease takes hold. Kipps begins to witness, hear, and experience strange occurrences at Eel Marsh House and the tale becomes a meditation upon the effect of fear upon the body and mind. Kipps uncovers the tragic secret of the house from sixty years before and its consequent haunting but not without personal cost.

The unsettling nature of the plot is effectively realised; I found my heart palpitating and the hairs on the back of my neck raised as Kipps and his companion Spider the dog faced off the ghostly occurrences. There is one event in particular, where their lives are at risk, which had my heart thudding in my ears. This is a very well told ghost story, which is extremely discomfiting; I still feel a little shaken, which is a sign of a great read.

The repetition of the rocking chair in the nursery, normally a comforting motion, is as frightening as the tap tap tap of a tree branch against the window on an eerie, dark night when you are home alone.

The story is framed by a much older Arthur Kipps who has tried to forget the terrifying experience from his past but on Christmas Eve when his family are trying to outdo one another with ghoulish stories by the fire, events come back to the forefront of his mind and he resigns himself to documenting it all. I am a huge fan of this structure and it works seamlessly well; unlike The Turn of the Screw by Henry James though, which uses the same form, The Woman in White does not oppose supernatural and rational but emphasises throughout that this is a ghost story intended to scare the wits out of you. It succeeded with me.