Haunted (David Ash)

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Applicability of cancellation rights: Legal rights of cancellation under the Distance Selling Regulations available for UK or EU consumers do not apply to certain products and services. His first novel, The Rats, was an instant bestseller and is now recognised as a classic of popular contemporary fiction. Haunted was published in 1988 and is the first book from the David Ash trilogy - the second being the 1994 published The Ghosts of Sleath and the 2012 published Ash.

I hadn't read a James Herbert book for over 20 years, so it was good to immerse myself once again back in his world of horror and the supernatural. Those books were best sellers because many readers (including me) were too horrified to put them down. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. So one will understand why I am saying that the story was confusing at times, which detracted from my enjoyment of it. Haunted” is also a novel that builds upon the type of psychological horror that allowed Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel “The Haunting Of Hill House” to set the template for the modern ghost story.David Ash, a psychic investigator, is invited to Edbrook, a remote country house, where an alleged 'haunting' is taking place. The above quote could well serve as an epigraph for this novel; for the author has very clearly set up a conflict here between two opposite views of the world. Christina, who had originally told David both her parents died in India, admits that in fact her mother drowned herself in the lake and Nanny Tess was the one who discovered the body. Registered address: Unit 31, Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, LE5 3EF, United kingdom. However, older brother Robert is against their friendship, and the two have a suspiciously close relationship.

This is the kind of novel that – if it wasn’t published as “horror” in the 1980s – would probably have won several literary awards for the writing alone. Even without the ghostly elements, this would still be a very chilling and well-crafted tale about the more horrifying parts of the human psyche. Plus, not only does the lack of modern communications technology add to the feeling of suspense ( eg: the nearest phone box is a mile or two away from Edbrook) but the focus on characterisation and psychology means that this story can often feel timelessly frightening too. But after reading this page-turner, I'd surmise that Herbert earned his status a different way: by providing serious readers with well-crafted, good-quality, extremely effective fiction, which is exactly what this is.Widely imitated and hugely influential, he wrote 23 novels which have collectively sold over 54 million copies worldwide and been translated into 34 languages.

I wasn't aware of his David Ash series of books either (of which this is the first one), and would be interested now in working my way through these. At its heart, it is a novel about people who are haunted by traumatic memories and feelings of guilt. From the very beginning the reader soon becomes accustomed to Ash's bad habits, cynical view on life and overall downbeat traits, of which followers of Herbert's work will recognise as a somewhat recurring theme within his novels. What I did notice most prominently about it this time around, and what I really enjoy about it in the long run is that it's really quite twisted in a hugely-ironic way, and what the author's done here turns his story into something wholly unexpected. However, this plot element is rendered even more horrifying than the one in “The Shining” because some elements of it are left to the imagination in a way that you probably won’t fully notice until several minutes after you finish the novel and think about it.

Our complacency is shaken; we thought the universe was a tidy, locked room, but there seems to be a scratching outside the door.