Nightmare House by Douglas Clegg

Do you remember an old Gothic TV soap opera called Dark Shadows? I loved the show and am still a fan, even after all these years. One of the main settings of the series was the very haunted Collinwood.

Harrow House of Nightmare House by Douglas Clegg makes me think of Collinwood. It's haunted and can be evil, has very interesting and "different" characters inhabiting it, and has rooms within rooms, secret passageways and rooms and everything you'd want to have in a terrifying old house. Yet, Harrow House is not centuries old. It was built by Justin Gravesend and added on with parts of buildings he'd admired. The additions prompted the villagers to nickname it "The Mad House".

If the house doesn't have the age factor, of having had many people die there and so on, why is it haunted by evil spirits? There's a reason and it's revealed more than half way through the book. By then, of course, I was completely hooked.

I wasn't so sure at first. The story is told, in one form or another, by Justin Gravesend's grandson, Ethan. Ethan is 29 when he inherits Harrow House from his grandfather and moves there in 1926. Almost immediately, "strange things are happening"! Ethan encounters some eccentric persons, living and ... not? He uncovers that evil secret that's been kept for years.

The house --or is it someone or something else? -- moves to control Ethan.

There's definitely a gothic feel to all of it. As I said, I was very hooked after a tentative start. The book switches from first-person diary form to third person and I wasn't sure how I felt about that shift. It doesn't matter. It's a fine ghost story.

The book falls into these book challeges: