“I know wind when I see it.”

49. Witch House – Evangeline Walton

This book originally came out in 1945 from Arkham House, the Wisconsin publisher of weird and otherworldly stuff and things…like What Made Stevie Crye? and perhaps other books that make sense? I’m not entirely sure yet. In Witch House, there’s a ghost escaping a painting ala Vigo in Ghostbusters II (too scary), poltergeist-style activity (Betty-Ann to Carol Anne), and connections to Rasputin (there was a cat that really was gone), and yet there was also the endless overuse of one adjective…in its old context, and I got distracted from the plot because characters of several ages sounded too similar. We’re essentially trapped with a family who must’ve all been homeschooled by the same person with no access to synonyms. The young Betty-Ann did not have “shooketh” to describe her feelings of being haunted, but she certainly had “strange,” and if all else fails, “indescribable.” The old editing trick of underlining all the repetitive words or phrases in red would have been very illuminating, but perhaps that was done and it didn’t take. Many adjectives for the otherworldly or unusual existed in the 1940s. You have a Tibetan knife? How unexpected. There’s a warlock in your family tree? Uncanny. You want to run away from your ancestral island so you don’t have to marry your cousin – what a peculiar thing to do (not really). There’s a giant black hare chasing you? That is very bizarre. And also awesome, my copy is the 1991 edition with said hare on the cover. Clearly, there was a lot going on to be distracted from, including the plight of poor Betty-Ann and the lack of ethics in the psychiatrist (and studier of the arcane, this book had potential to get real netherworldly), who is apparently falling for his patient’s mother, the same mother who had a crush on said psychiatrist without ever meeting him because she heard about him as a child. Isn’t that…a little…weird?

Merricat herself, was strange and unusual. And if she wants to hop out of one of the paintings I did of her, I’m all for it.