Bob @ Beauty in Ruins

The gloomy, sorrowful Stillwell (A Haunting on Long Island) is a ghost story of layers. It's a story of memories and monsters, and of history and haunting. Michael Phillip Cash leads us into things with the story of a heartbroken man, mourning the loss of his wife, who can't help seeing, smelling, and hearing her throughout the house. His youngest daughter sees her too but, fortunately, she's oblivious to the hairy beast that Paul cannot separate from his wife.

Cash then leads us into the story of a Gothic old mansion, haunted by the recent murder-suicide of the couple who owned it. The couple's children are long-time friends of Paul, and selling their family home is his ticket out of mourning, and back into the career that nearly slipped away from him during his wife's illness. Not only does the house seem to be haunted by their deaths, but by the death of the first young woman to live there long ago.

While this is, in every respect, a ghost story, it does not rely exclusively upon the supernatural to deliver its chills. In fact, how one reads it is entirely up to the reader - either as a story of mental anguish and shared memories, or one of curses and hauntings. If that sounds like a cheat or an ambiguous way to tell a tale, rest assured that it works so well, so naturally, you're not even aware of the potential for a different reading until all is said and done.

This is largely a quietly personal story, but there is a nice framework built around the house, the family, and the town. It's Paul who centers the tale and brings it all together, with his wife's death serving as a catalyst for events, but there's almost a sense of inevitability to the tale (assuming you go with the supernatural reading) that adds a final layer to things. Atmospheric, with some genuine scares, Stillwell draws you by making you sympathize with Paul's loss, but then gets under your skin, trapping you in his nightmare.