THE WOMAN IN BLACK VIDEO/Dvd

Please do note.. if you are trying to track down Video or DVD copies of the old (1988) Television adaptation of The Woman in Black. The film and TV rights are now wholly owned by someone else and this TV version will not be shown again or re-issued. Meanwhile, pirate copies are sometimes for sale on ebay and amazon. THESE ARE ILLEGAL and should not be purchased.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK on CD set

Susan's ghost novel THE WOMAN IN BLACK has been released in a boxed set of 2 CDs. The story, complete and unabridged, is read by PAUL ANSDELL and comes out from the LONG BARN LISTENING audio books imprint.

Visit The Woman In Black site

I have always enjoyed the admired the classic English ghost story. Many people will immediately think of one they know about even if they have never read it ‘ Dickens`s A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I played a part in a dramatisation of this when I was at school and I think this began my love of the genre.
I discovered, though, that apart from some very famous ones, like the Dickens, like Henry James`s THE TURN OF THE SCREW, there are very few full length true ghost stories. Even short ghost stories are not written so much now.

The last of the best were written in the 1920s to 1940s, by Edith Wharton in America and Elizabeth Bowen in England. One or two have appeared since – many a writer has written just one short ghost story ( try A.S. Byatt`s THE JULY GHOST ) but it still seemed a dying form. There were plenty of horror stories, and tales of terror and people sometimes referred to these as ghost stories.. but they are not. The Horror story is not the same thing at all.

In 1982, I decided I wanted to try and write a full length ghost story in the traditional English style. I made a list of ‘ingredients’ – I don`t often write in this very conscious way but it was necessary here.

Ingredients included
1. A ghost… not a monster or a thing from outer space but the ghost of a human who was once alive and is known to have died but whose recognisable form re-appears – or occasionally is not seen but heard, or possibly even smelled.
2. The haunted house… usually isolated.
3. Weather… atmospheric weather conditions – fog, mist, snow, and of course moonlit darkness on clear nights.
4. A sceptic. A narrator or central character who begins as a sceptic or plain disbeliever and scoffer but who is gradually converted by what he or she sees and experiences of ghostly presences.

But all this, fun though it might be, was not quite enough for me as I like to have a moral point or purpose in a story.

The point about The Woman In Black is that revenge can never be good, can never succeed ultimately, will never pay. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay.’ Justice is one thing, revenge is very different.

I also believe that after experiencing great distress or grief, a terrible life-experience, a person must eventually – though it may take a long time – leave it to rest and move on. The ghost in THE WOMAN IN BLACK goes on and on wreaking revenge on the innocent for what has happened to her, even after death. She has never let go, can never move on. As she could not in life, so she cannot after life.

The book was quite well received, and had a slow but steady growth in sales once it went into paperback but it was not until Stephen Mallatratt adapted it for the stage, and then BBC Television produced a version one Christmas Eve, that both book and play took off. The play has been running in London and around the world ( see www.thewomaninblack.com) and the book has become a set text and is loved by many who appreciate this very traditional but satisfying literary genre.

The chapters on THE WOMAN IN BLACK in the VINTAGE LIVING TEXTS book SUSAN HILL-THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE are well worth reading and some of the interview the authors of that guide made with me is given over to a discussion of this book.