“If ever a residence, ‘suitable in every respect for a family of position,’ haunted a lawyer’s offices, the ‘Uninhabited House,’ about which I have a story to tell, haunted those of Messrs. Craven and Son, No. 200, Buckingham Street, Strand.”
River Hall, the uninhabited house in question, is a place of ghosts and secrets, and it simply cannot keep a tenant. Inherited by the too-young Miss Helena Elmsdale after her father’s death, it falls to her aunt, Miss Susannah Blake, to attend to the house. In order to see that it remains rented out, Miss Blake brings the property to Messrs. Craven and Son for management. The lawyers do their best, but there is something sinister at River Hall, and the tenants cannot seem to leave fast enough, threatening to leave Miss Blake and her orphaned niece in dire financial straits. Miss Blake demands that something be done to rectify the situation, and one of the younger lawyers at the firm decides to stay in the house himself to uncover the mystery of the uninhabited house.
A forgotten classic, The Uninhabited House is an examination of the role of women in finances, class mobility, and the very Victorian anxieties over greed and stolen inheritances, all wrapped up in a chilling ghost story for the ages.
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“The Uninhabited House is one of the best ghost stories of the nineteenth century—by one of the genre’s finest writers.”
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Jarlath Killeen, Trinity College Dublin