Thursday, November 11, 2021

A Haunted House

A Haunted House is a short story by Virginia Woolf. You can read it online at this link or here. You can listen to it read to you at the bottom of this post. It begins,
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure–a ghostly couple.

"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."

But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it, " one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps it's upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.

But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them.

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22 comments:

  1. I was not aware that V.W. had written a ghost story ... I know she had lots in her life that haunted her. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. This isn't really a ghost story, though I understand how it would be grouped in this collection.

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  2. Good ghosts for a change

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  3. ...but isn't Halloween over?

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  4. I love being read to so I will listen to this later today.

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    1. I hope you like it. It's so short it was hard to resist.

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  5. This is a short story, thanks for sharing.

    All the best Jan

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  6. Sounds interesting. It's on my to-do list for later today!

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  7. This sounds goOd, Thanks for the link! Valerie

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  8. I think the Covid booster I got on Wednesday contained a sleeping pill instead. I can't seem to stay awake, no matter what I try. Seems I missed this completely. I had NO idea Virginia Woolf wrote ghost stories.

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    1. I wouldn't really call this a ghost story...

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  9. That's a great lead-in. And I like short!

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    1. Yes, sometimes short is just what I need :)

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  10. Kinda rather sweet story.

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