It’s been a long time since a ghost story has caught my attention but Susan Hill’s novel did. It is a tragic and genuinely scary ghost story which has just recently been made into a film.

The central character is a young London solicitor who has been sent to a small village to settle the affairs of a recently deceased client Alice Drablow. The client’s house just happens to be an eerie, dilapidated and isolated mansion set in the marshes aptly called Eel Marsh House - great names. He is unaware of the house’s tragic secrets, in spite of the locals’ reluctance to approach it but the house quickly reveals its frightening secrets with the spooky appearance of a woman in black.

It is so well told that you actually do feel as if you are inside the house with him ... in the dark, by candlelight jumping at every creak and shadow.  There are haunting descriptions of the oppressively eerie house and it’s setting in the marshland but it still manages to deliver powerful, heart stopping and genuinely chilling moments.

This is a compulsive read, if you don’t mind being frightened but do read it before you see the film even though the film brilliantly captures it’s menacing, gothic atmosphere too ... be warned.