“I’d always been a sucker for a creepy old house, with or without a creepy old housekeeper.”
~Greer Hogan, Three Can Keep a Secret
It began with Scooby Doo. Show me a decrepit old mansion with a wailing ghost that sends Shaggy and Scooby running in terror, and I was glued to the screen. By the time I was ready for chapter books, I was constantly on the hunt for any story featuring an eerie house harboring dark secrets and strange residents—living or dead. Dog-eared hand-me-down copies or crisp new pages, it didn’t matter. I was happy to unearth The Secret of Terror Castle along with The Three Investigators, or winkle out The Secret of the Mansion with Trixie Belden. If the cover featured a spectral figure playing a pipe organ, I’d even hang out with Nancy Drew while she sussed out The Ghost of Blackwood Hall. By high school, I’d graduated to gothic. In college, my course selections leaned heavily toward literature featuring madwomen in attics. And so it goes. Like my protagonist, I’ve always been a sucker for creepy old houses. Throw in a secret passage and some strange noises that remain unexplained, and I’m even happier. Luckily, I’ve still got plenty of books to choose from, ranging from cozy to horror. If you need a creepy old house fix, try any of these titles:
The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths
A stranger in your house is scary, a stranger writing in your diary is terrifying. But that’s what Clare Cassidy, gothic lit professor, finds just after one of her colleagues is murdered. Clare teaches in an old mansion left to her university by the author of a famous ghost story, and his dead wife has been seen roaming the halls. Detective Harbinder Kaur, a former student who has herself experienced a spectral presence in the building, is called in to investigate the murder. Griffiths provides a murder mystery and a ghost story within a ghost story in an eerie gothic setting.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Moreno-Garcia provides a great update on a classic plot when she sends Noemí Taboada off to the Mexican countryside to visit her newlywed and terrified cousin Noemí is more than the glamourous socialite she appears to be. She’s smart, resourceful, and far more independent than the average young woman in the 1950’s. In this gothic novel, she’s the rescuer, not the rescued. She arrives to find her cousin in a decaying mansion populated by her new husband’s malevolent family. Mold, menace, and madness—the intrepid Noemí faces them all in this atmospheric tale.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Coraline’s family moves to an old house that’s been divided up into flats. Left alone at home one day and tired of exploring the overgrown garden, Coraline unlocks a door that normally leads to a brick wall— except today, it doesn’t. It leads down a hall to her “other” family, the almost but not quite the same family. Everything is just exactly as she’s always wanted, until she tries to leave. With the help of a talking cat, Coraline manages to be brave in spite of being afraid. This one will bring back that scary, excited feeling you got as a kid when you got into something you shouldn’t have.
The Plot and the Pendulum by Jenn McKinlay
When library director Lindsey Norris learns that the library is to receive a generous bequest from a wealthy local family—their extensive book collection—she’s thrilled. When she visits the old family Victorian to take inventory and discovers a skeleton in a secret room accessed via a bookshelf, she’s both horrified and curious. Using her research skills and a volume of Poe left as a clue by the deceased, Lindsey unravels a decades-old mystery. If, like me, you’ve always yearned for your very own library with a set of set of bookshelves that slide open to reveal a secret anything, this is your book. The ghost cat is a happy bonus.
Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn
You know you’re in for a good time when you’re staying at a moldering old estate called Grimsgrave. When Lady Julia Grey follows Nicholas Brisbane deep into the Yorkshire moors, she finds him mired in family drama. Impoverished relatives lead to a poisoning, and soon Lady Julia is chasing a witch and a mysterious dark rider while uncovering long-buried family secrets in her hunt for a killer. An excellent historical mystery with shades of Wuthering Heights, but a whole lot more fun.
The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
Penniless, orphaned young woman? Check. Potential inheritance for mysterious reasons? Check. Creepy old house in Cornwall complete with hostile housekeeper? Check. Throw in our protagonist, Hal, in an unheated attic room with barred windows while the rest of her newfound family (and other potential heirs) are a floor below with all the modern conveniences, and you’ve got a contemporary twist on a classic plot. Hal is a tarot card reader with some increasingly insistent loan sharks looking to collect what she owes them, so when she gets a letter telling her she’s coming into money courtesy of a relative she’s never heard of, she skips town and heads to the countryside hoping to con her way into some cash. What she finds is that old sins cast long shadows, and she’ll need to solve a mystery to stay alive.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
It’s hard to sell a haunted house, but the heir to Hill House is determined to do so. To that end, he invites a scientist who studies psychic phenomena and two women with a history of psychic ability to spend a weekend with him in the house debunking the rumors of ghosts. The uninhabited home is avoided by the locals, and even the husband-and-wife caretakers refuse to stay after dark. Beginning with the requisite unexplained noises in the middle of the night, tension builds relentlessly. This 1959 classic is the scariest haunted house book I’ve ever read. You’ll sleep with the lights on.
***
