I’ve read academic treatises and cheesy guidebooks, compared the legends to the historical record, trying to unearth the genealogy of these specific ghosts, and how we came to love telling these specific stories. Even before her death, she haunted this house—an emotionally stunted recluse, unable to let go of her attachment to her father.

Sebald’s books, especially “ The Rings of Saturn” and “ Austerlitz,” are similar genre-slippery explorations of spiritual desolation. Parnell markedly focuses on James’ “Lost Hearts” (1904) with almost as many references to "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" (1904) and "Casting the Runes" (1911) among others. The house remained vacant until the philosopher Athenodorus rented it; his first night he waited up for the ghost, writing in his study, until the apparition appeared. A haunted house is a memory palace made real: a physical space that retains memories that might otherwise be forgotten, , or which might remain only in fragments. Now, years later, we carefully follow the food-stained, handwritten recipes for the family’s special turkey stuffing or for Mom’s apple pie, and it all still tastes wonderful, yet never half as wonderful as it did once upon a time.Just as Gertrude Tredwell’s life has informed the ghost stories that now circulate around her, so too does the legend of her ghost make meaning out of her life. All around it are gleaming glass and steel towers of the modern age, bustling with life still living. It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature. It truly is a book that lives up to the promise of the front cover (a visual feast of folk horror references! If you haven't heard of or read some of the authors or seen some of the films/TV you will be seeking them out after reading this.

You won’t need an electronic device to capture the voices of the dead; a patient ear and an open mind will do. I love nothing more than a book that defies genre and this is one to make booksellers and librarians scratch their heads. The most fascinating moments in Ghostland are Dickey's etymological musings and his many turns down unusual paths of American history .The Merchant’s House Museum in lower Manhattan has stood by itself against the din and rush of the city; it has stood for one hundred and eighty years and might stand for that many more. It asks more questions than it answers, particularly about why people want or need to believe in something beyond the veil, and it isn't about the truth or untruth of hauntings. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and many others, the TV and film that so many of us in our 40s remember with a great fondness whether The Wicker Man, Ghost Stories for Christmas, The Spirit of Dark Water information film shown to many of us in school.