It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that inspired me to stay up later than intended to read just one more chapter; certainly one of my favorite reading discoveries this year.

Steff was pregnant with our daughter, but we didn't have any kids in the house. Needless to say, this freaked us both out, and we did some research on the house. The original tenant was a single mother and a kept woman of a wealthy pioneer explorer. Her daughter died in the house at 11-years-old of tuberculosis. We told our story to the lady who sold us the place, who admitted that she and her guests had also seen the little girl when living in that house, assuring us that she was sweet and harmless. They find the house of their dreams. It stood alone not far from the edge of a cliff, it was uninhabited and it appeared to have been neglected for quite some time, but they saw its potential. And they saw a “for sale” sign. That meant that a degree of suspense was lost - I knew from the start that something had happened and I knew, from the tone, that the Fitzgerald's had been able to put whatever had happened behind them. It was obvious there was going to be a ghost story. Roddy was telling the story and the substance of the book was a manuscript, introduced by a letter explaining that it was an account of what had happened in Devon.Will Pamela and Roddy be forced to flee their dream home or can they solve a mystery to put an angry presence to rest? Macardle recounted her Civil War experiences in Earthbound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924). Macardle became a playwright in the next two decades. In her dramatic writing she used the pseudonym Margaret Callan. During this time she worked as a journalist at the League of Nations. They know that something happened in that house. They suspect that it involves Stella, the granddaughter of the man who reluctantly sold them the house, because she is drawn to them and to that room. They had thought things through; they knew that their circumstances were likely to change, that they wouldn't always want to share a home, and they had made provision for that. Thirdly, this episode changed my approach to books like "The Uninvited." Yes, I still like my scary stories as much as any horror fan, and I'm not necessarily any more convinced in the reality of supernatural entities. I'd like to think I'm a rational person, and certainly I can understand how a number of explainable elements came together perfectly for us to experience our own genuine haunting. "The Uninvited" does not quite delve into those areas, preferring to embrace the idea of an afterlife as a foregone conclusion. But I've come to respect the idea of some form of our consciousness or emotion being tied to a place, reliving past traumas. So I tend to enjoy fiction that treats the theme with sensitivity. This novel certainly does that.

But once the hauntings start going into full swing, then the novel becomes hard to put down. Pamela, like Steff, is the first to experience strange phenomena, and Roddy, like me, placates her at first, until things start getting out of hand that no one can ignore. Again, this is pretty much how things go for Roddy and Pamela at first, only Dorothy Macardle sets the stage for this ghost story much less efficiently than I just did. This is where some readers might lose patience, as things do get off to a very slow start. I had an idea of how the mystery would pay out at an early stage, but that didn't spoil the story. It was an utterly believable human tragedy, and I could understood how and why it had happened. And I was caught up with Roddy and Pamela as they struggled to work out what had happened and what they could, what they should, do.Horror, sci-fi, whatever you want to call it, but the main point to know about The Uninvited is that it's all supposedly true. In the 1970s, Broadhaven in Wales became a place for several UFO sightings. In addition to schoolchildren seeing an alien dressed in a silver suit, the Coombs family encountered several unexplained phenomena (teleporting cows, constantly breaking cars and televisions, strange lights etc.). Well, unexplained until years after the publication of The Uninvited several people came forward and claimed some of it was just a hoax. You don't say?

A romance grows between Roddy and Stella and that complicates the story; because the house had been Stella's childhood home, because the haunting of the house had its roots in a tragedy that happened then, and because whenever the Fitzgerald's saw the possibility of a resolution they also saw the possibility of harm to Stella. In between the house talk and the ghost talk there were allusions to their Irish home and it was clear that their roots and their history were important to them. I was so into this book that the least little disruption gave me fits. I really enjoyed this one and can't recommend it highly enough. If like me, you're into older supernatural works (this one is from 1942), then do not miss the novel. While it may seem tame in today's world, there is a LOT going on here and quite frankly, it's downright spooky.Such a classic of the supernatural. I first read this book when it was referenced by a character in another ghost story I enjoyed. One of those winding paths that leads you unexpectedly to a new favorite on your bookshelf. There are several points to my story. First of all, it allowed me to give you a taste of what you can expect from "The Uninvited" without spoiling any plot. If you liked hearing about my own ghost, then this book is definitely for you. It is the template for grounded, slow-burn haunted house stories. A brother and sister, in an attempt to escape their pasts and the chaos of the city, buy a house in remote Devonshire. It turns out, however, that the house is already occupied by something beyond the human... I was uneasy because I was eavesdropping there. It was an intrusion; this house was old; long before we were born it had its occupants, living and dying here. We were aliens and trespassers in their hereditary home. Now I knew that they were in possession of the house once more, their timelessness closing over our intrusion as water over a stone." Macardle was a member of the Gaelic League and later joined Cumann na mBan in 1917. In 1918 (during the War of Independence), Macardle was arrested by the RIC while teaching at Alexandra; she was eventually dismissed in 1923, towards the latter end of the Irish Civil War, because of her anti-Treatyite sympathies and activities.