Susan Hill (Profile Books) 2015, 410pp, $29.99
Although Hill has written crime novels, short stories and non-fiction, it’s her work as a creator of ghost stories that has guaranteed her fame, and while this collects her five main supernatural novellas, it’s the first one that remains her most celebrated: The Woman In Black (1983), a simple, beautifully chilling tale that formed the basis of a long-running-and-much-revived play, a creepy BBC TV movie in 1989, a Hammer remake starring Daniel Radcliffe in 2012 and an unsatisfactory sequel to that one (The Woman In Black 2: Angel Of Death – yawn…) in 2014.
This is followed by Dolly (2012), the tale of an orphaned boy and his cousin haunted throughout their lives by mysterious events experienced one English summer; The Man In The Picture (2007), a tense and unsettling possessed-painting story; Printer’s Devil Court (2014), another short saga about dark secrets and hauntings-for-a-lifetime against a backdrop of secret tunnels and hospital morgues; and The Small Hand (2010), which might be a diminutive yarn and only involve a spectral hand but still provides big scares.
And did you hear that? Was it the wind or… something more sinister? Better keep the lights on…
I Wake Up Screening 