Susan's ghost novel THE WOMAN IN BLACK has been released in a boxed set of 2 CDs. The story, complete and unabridged, is read by PAUL ANSDELL and comes out from the LONG BARN LISTENING audio books imprint.
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I have always enjoyed the admired the classic English ghost story. Many people will immediately think of one they know about even if they have never read it ‘ Dickens`s A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I played a part in a dramatisation of this when I was at school and I think this began my love of the genre.
I discovered, though, that apart from some very famous ones, like the Dickens, like Henry James`s THE TURN OF THE SCREW, there are very few full length true ghost stories. Even short ghost stories are not written so much now.
The last of the best were written in the 1920s to 1940s, by Edith Wharton in America and Elizabeth Bowen in England. One or two have appeared since – many a writer has written just one short ghost story ( try A.S. Byatt`s THE JULY GHOST ) but it still seemed a dying form. There were plenty of horror stories, and tales of terror and people sometimes referred to these as ghost stories.. but they are not. The Horror story is not the same thing at all.
In 1982, I decided I wanted to try and write a full length ghost story in the traditional English style. I made a list of ‘ingredients’ – I don`t often write in this very conscious way but it was necessary here.
Ingredients included
1. A ghost… not a monster or a thing from outer space but the ghost of a human who was once alive and is known to have died but whose recognisable form re-appears – or occasionally is not seen but heard, or possibly even smelled.
2. The haunted house… usually isolated.
3. Weather… atmospheric weather conditions – fog, mist, snow, and of course moonlit darkness on clear nights.
4. A sceptic. A narrator or central character who begins as a sceptic or plain disbeliever and scoffer but who is gradually converted by what he or she sees and experiences of ghostly presences.
But all this, fun though it might be, was not quite enough for me as I like to have a moral point or purpose in a story.
The point about The Woman In Black is that revenge can never be good, can never succeed ultimately, will never pay. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay.’ Justice is one thing, revenge is very different.
I also believe that after experiencing great distress or grief, a terrible life-experience, a person must eventually – though it may take a long time – leave it to rest and move on. The ghost in THE WOMAN IN BLACK goes on and on wreaking revenge on the innocent for what has happened to her, even after death. She has never let go, can never move on. As she could not in life, so she cannot after life.
The book was quite well received, and had a slow but steady growth in sales once it went into paperback but it was not until Stephen Mallatratt adapted it for the stage, and then BBC Television produced a version one Christmas Eve, that both book and play took off. The play has been running in London and around the world ( seewww.thewomaninblack.com) and the book has become a set text and is loved by many who appreciate this very traditional but satisfying literary genre.
Plot summary
The house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway and at high tide is completely cut off from the mainland with only the surroundingmarshes and sea frets for company. Kipps soon realises there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally thought. At the funeral he spots a woman dressed in black and with a pale, wasted face, who is watched in silence by a group of children. Over the course of several days, while sorting through Mrs Drablow's papers at Eel Marsh House, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and hauntings by the Woman in Black. The hauntings included the sound of a horse and cart in difficulty which were closely followed by the screams of a young child which we later find out to be Jennet Humfrye's son, Nathaniel.
Most of the people in Crythin Gifford are extremely reluctant to reveal information about Mrs. Drablow and the mysterious Woman in Black, and most attempts to find out the truth cause pained and fearful reactions. From various sources, Kipps learns that Mrs Drablow's sister, Jennet Humfrye, gave birth to a child, but, because she was not married when she became pregnant was forced to give the child to her sister. Mrs Drablow and her husband adopted the boy, insisting he should never know that Jennet was his mother. Jennet went away for a year but after realising she could not be parted for so long from her son, made an agreement to stay at Eel Marsh House with her son, so long as she never revealed her true identity to him. One day, a pony and trap carrying the boy across the causeway became lost and sank into the marshes, killing all aboard, while Jennet looked on from the window of Eel Marsh House. This was particularly distressing for Jennet Humfrye as she had planned to run away with her son soon after the accident. Jennet died later, but returned to haunt Eel Marsh House and Crythin Gifford with a vengeful malevolence, as the Woman in Black. According to local tales, seeing the Woman in Black meant that the death of a child would follow. After the affair is settled, Arthur Kipps returns to London, marries and has a child of his own. At a fair, while his wife and child are enjoying a carriage ride, Kipps suddenly sees the Woman in Black once more. She steps out in front of the horse pulling the carriage and startles it so that it gallops away, killing the child and fatally injuring Kipps' wife. Ten months after the accident Kipps' wife dies of her injuries. The Woman in Black has had her vengeance.
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