This House is Haunted, by John Boyne

We all love a good ghost story, even if the plot is wellworn, says Philip Womack.

John Boyne, author of 'This House is Haunted' Photo: Clara Molden

Why do we enjoy scary stories? It’s a question that has often troubled the critic, as well as the novelist: the excellent Mrs Radcliffe, whose novels put in place many of the nuts and bolts that make up ghost stories today, wondered about “the strange delights of artificial grief”. We love to be chilled – often, it seems, by the same thing, again and again.

If there exists somewhere a checklist of elements that ought to appear in a ghost story, then John Boyne has certainly gone through it very carefully. He is writing in the same vein as John Harwood’s Victorian-era chillers; not to mention Sarah Waters’s latest, The Little Stranger, which had a similar no-nonsense, middle-class narrator entering into the strange world of a country house. There are certain recognisable elements that will alert the reader to the spectral qualities of any piece of fiction: an isolated mansion; children (always in their nightwear) standing alone on stone steps and talking to things that may or may not be actually there; damaged people hidden in attics; mist; horses’ hoofs; surly servants; and, above all, no unanswered questions.

Boyne’s new novel, This House is Haunted, contains all of these things and more. There’s even a servant who vanishes around corners. An evil-looking man playing the hurdy gurdy is all that’s wanting, really. Set in the late-Victorian world that is all but compulsory for such things, it couldn’t be more aware of its status as a phantasmal fiction. Its own heroine, a strong-willed, compassionate governess, often wonders if she is in one herself.

That’s not to say the book isn’t entertaining: on the contrary, it is sleekly done and classily controlled. Revelations come aplenty (even if they are guessable, they still seem to have power), and one doesn’t mind the unusual reticence of the country folk. They go pale on cue when the new governess mentions she’s working at Gaudlin Hall; none of them will explain exactly what’s been going on up at the big house. Instead they drop cups and pretend to have appointments elsewhere.

Unlike in most horror fictions, the heroine – who, fleeing her own distressed circumstances, comes to the house because of an oddly worded advert – is more than capable of rolling up her sleeves to get to the bottom of the weirdnesses – sudden gusts of wind, phantom hands – which leave her in real, mortal danger. All but one of the previous governesses has been killed in the last year alone; the white-faced, troubled children she’s in charge of refer constantly to their dead mother in the present tense (“BECAUSE SHE’S THE GHOST!” you can’t help but shout out).

So what is it, despite all the familiar parts, that makes us want to read on? Boyne succeeds in creating a tense atmosphere not because of the easily identifiable elements, but because of his narrator: a good woman in a claustrophobic world, whose resilience and strength are immensely attractive.

This House is Haunted isn’t as unsettling as the writing of Harwood or Waters; but it remains effective. It’s the equivalent of a story told by the campfire with only a torch lighting up the speaker’s face. We like to hear these stories, because they make us feel safe: and that’s why Boyne’s novel works. The framework is a comfort: after dark and dreams, in the morning, all will be well. Some might bemoan the lack of innovation; but a ghost in the right place will always make us jump.