The complicated history of the Blackridge house has been long forgotten. Felicity confronts her husband's secret double life and discovers a doppelgänger threatening her. At the same time, decades later, nursing assistant Ramona Elwood delves deep into the estate's ghostly phenomenon as she cares for the cryptic Martha Black. But she soon experiences terrifying supernatural encounters tied to the deadly secrets of the paranormal. Can they solve the mystery in time? Or will they face the same doomed fate as those who came before them?
A quest is never what you expect it to be. Elizabeth Madeline Martin spends her days in a retirement home in Cape Town, watching the pigeons and squirrels on the branch of a tree outside her window. Bedridden, her memory fading, she can recall her early childhood spent in a small wood-and-iron house in Blackridge on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg. Though she remembers the place in detail – dogs, a mango tree, a stream – she has no idea of where exactly it is. 'My memory is full of blotches,' she tells her daughter Julia, 'like ink left about and knocked over.' Julia resolves to find the Blackridge house: with her mother lonely and confused, would this, perhaps, bring some measure of closure? A journey begins that traverses family history, forgotten documents, old photographs, and the maps that stake out a country's troubled past – maps whose boundaries nature remains determined to resist. Kind strangers, willing to assist in the search, lead to unexpected discoveries of ancestors and wars and lullabies. Folded into this quest are the tender conversations between a daughter and a mother who does not have long to live. Taken as one, The Blackridge House is a meditation on belonging, of the stories we tell of home and family, of the precarious footprint of life.
A collection of eleven macabre stories including "Blow It," about a New York accountant who learns a valuable lesson when he tries to romance two women, and the title story, about a house haunted by some unusual ghosts
Sophie's world is shattered when disaster bankrupts her family. She's still reeling when she's offered an unexpected solution: Mr. Argenton, a wealthy stranger, has asked for her hand in marriage. Marrying Mr. Argenton will save her family, but it condemns Sophie to a life in Northwood, a vast and unnaturally dark mansion situated hours from civilization. Still, she has no choice but accept the offer and hope the darkness won't swallow her whole. It's a struggle to adjust to her new position as mistress over the desolate house. Mr. Argenton's relatives are cold, and Mr. Argenton himself is keeping secrets. Even worse, the house is more than it seems. Doors slam. Inhuman figures slink through the surrounding forest. A piano plays itself in the middle of the night. Blood drips a macabre warning down the walls. Day by day, Sophie is inevitably pulled towards the terrifying truth at the heart of this gothic mystery: Northwood's ancient halls are haunted, and the man she married―the man she's coming to love―is hiding an unforgiveable truth about his ancestral home...and the spirits that now haunt them both.
The day that 12-year-old Grace Evans moves into her new home, she is thrilled to discover a painting that has been hidden there since 1861. But then she begins to see the ghost of an unhappy girl - and is confronted with a world of ghostly secrets that won't leave her alone.
Strange things happen when twelve-year-old Sarah is alone in the house with Great Aunt Margaret, who appears to be the victim of a ghost seeking revenge for a death in the past.
