“To be haunted is to glimpse a truth that might best be hidden.”

13. Haunted – James Herbert

A stubborn skeptic investigates a haunting in out of the way Erdbrook House, one of those English country houses that’s gone derelict in places and weirdly spotless in others, as they do. This is the first novel of Herbert’s David Ash character and the first I’ve read of Herbert. It was way shorter than I expected it to be, and reminded me of what Anne Rice’s vampire and witch books would be like if New Orleans was damp instead of lush and there was a grumpy Englishman to follow around, i.e. there was a level of the weirdly ridiculous version of the supernatural (yikes to the “romantic” elements), plants and houses were vastly described, and many thoughts of the past, um, haunted the characters. I could see myself as a younger person reading every single thing of Herbert’s, except probably The Rats because that’s too scary to touch for me (they’re too smart, too able to chew through things, and their hairless tails scare me), and spending hours immersed in late 1980s damp lush atmosphere and not noticing if the ending was kind of annoying or not.

 

No, Pickles, you will not need to hide in the sheets from ghosts after reading Haunted.