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. The sale of customised goods or perishable goods, sealed audio or video recordings, or software, which has been opened. On the flip side, it was fun revisiting this novel even if I no longer think it's the greatest haunted house story ever told. This is difficult to describe well without too many spoilers, but it can really catch you by surprise! The real magic of this novel is that the mystery slowly reveals itself piece by piece, each clue gradually forming a terrifying picture.

David tells them that he doesn’t want to hear anything about the ghost until he has had a chance to investigate for himself and rule out the more mundane things that are often the cause of “ghost sightings”. She gives him a lift to Edbrook, where he meets her two brothers – Robert and Simon – and their aunt Tess.

At first I thought the main character a little silly, since he did not believe in the supernatural, but did believe in the paranormal and telepathy. However, older brother Robert is against their friendship, and the two have a suspiciously close relationship. In 1928 England, English professor David Ash has spent most of his life working in the field of parapsychology to disprove the existence of ghosts. There are few things I would like to do less than lie under a cloudy night sky while someone read aloud the more vivid passages of Moon.

So one will understand why I am saying that the story was confusing at times, which detracted from my enjoyment of it. Whether it is the richly-crafted and deeply ominous gothic atmosphere of Edbrook itself, many of the characters, a few disturbing plot twists ( and lots of clever foreshadowing), various psychological elements or even some of the novel’s themes, this is the type of novel that becomes more and more scary the more closely you look at it. Before going any further, I must mention that I was interrupted several times during the course of my reading of this story.I read The Secret of Crickley Hall this year and I really enjoyed it, so I began this series and I wasn’t disappointed. Unfortunately for David,he finds out the hard way that there are things in this world,better left unexplored,things that are tangible and can not only hurt the mind but the body. While I found it to be not quite as good as his book The Rats, Haunted is, in my opinion, definitely better than Ash. Ash is certainly not a polished, goodie-two-shoes type of character, and this in itself gives the novel a harder and more true to life feel to it. Our complacency is shaken; we thought the universe was a tidy, locked room, but there seems to be a scratching outside the door.