William Leith10 April 2012
The Woman in Black
by Susan Hill
(Vintage, £6.99)
It's Christmas Eve, and Arthur Kipps, sitting at his fireside, is asked by his stepchildren if he knows any ghost stories. He does. But he doesn't want to talk about it.
Instead, he decides to write the story that he experienced as a young man. He was a solicitor's clerk. He went to the funeral of an old lady who had lived in a creepy old house. The house, called Eel Marsh House, was joined to the mainland by a causeway.
At the funeral he saw something terrifying - a spectral woman wearing a black robe. A ghost. Bad things had happened at Eel Marsh house; bad things were about to happen again. Reliably creepy - reissued as a film tie-in.
