The Haunting Of Lamb House: Joan Aiken

A disturbed presence may be sometimes sensed in the gracious Georgian Lamb House or its grounds. Author and diarist E.F. Benson actually saw the ghost. Henry James, novelist, felt it - not long after he moved in, he wrote The Turn Of The Screw. This is a story of what may have happened to cause the haunting; the first part being the imagined life of Toby Lamb, whose father built the house that stands at the top of Mermaid Street, Rye - an 18th century tragedy whose griefs and frustrations will reach far into the future. This is followed by what may have easily occurred during the occupancies of two famous literary tenants; Henry James, all hints and shades - and E.F. Benson, visited by a more robust and swinging spectre. The restless ghost pleads for a service to be performed - but what? Who was the dark stranger that E.F. Benson encountered in the gardens? And what agency set the fire that nearly destroyed Henry James' study?