Books like “The Woman in Black”

What to read after “The Woman in Black” by Susan Hill: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
An investigator of psychic phenomena invites several people to stay at Hill House, a building with a long history of death and madness. Among them is the fragile Eleanor, and as the house begins to single her out, the group's stay becomes a struggle to keep hold of sanity.
2
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James · 1898
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
A young governess takes charge of two children at a remote country house and soon notices figures watching from the grounds and the tower. She becomes convinced the children are being influenced by something from beyond the grave, though no one else confirms what she sees.
3
The Elementals
Michael McDowell · 1981
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
Two related families spend a summer at Beldame, a lonely stretch of Alabama coast where three Victorian houses face the Gulf. The third house is slowly drowning in sand, and something inside it has been waiting for the children since they were small.
4
The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters · 2009
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
In post-war England, a country doctor is drawn into the fading life of a once-grand family living in a decaying mansion. Strange events unsettle the house and its residents, and suspicion falls in every direction. An unnerving story about class, decline and things that may not be ghosts.
5
The Silent Companions
Laura Purcell · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
A young widow is sent to her late husband's crumbling estate and finds an eerie painted wooden figure that seems to move on its own. As the figures multiply, she begins to doubt her own mind. A gothic horror set in the English countryside, told through an asylum diary.
6
Hell House
Richard Matheson · 1971
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
A dying millionaire funds an expedition to the notorious Belasco House, a mansion in Maine where every previous attempt to study its hauntings ended badly. The group includes a physicist, a medium and two survivors, and the house begins to work on their most private fears.
7
Ghost Story
Peter Straub · 1979
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
Four elderly friends in a small New York town have spent a lifetime telling each other ghost stories at their club. Now something from a winter forty years earlier, a death they all helped to hide, has returned to collect the debt.
8
The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton · 1973
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
A collection of Edith Wharton's ghost stories, written across her career and gathered in one volume. Old houses, railway carriages and country estates hold grudges, apparitions return with unfinished business, and the supernatural creeps into the lives of people who insist they do not believe in it.
9
The House Next Door
Anne Rivers Siddons · 1978
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
A new house is built beside the Kennedys in their quiet Atlanta neighbourhood. Over two years the families who move in are destroyed by scandal and violence, and even visitors are touched. Colquitt begins to believe the house itself is malevolent, and decides to warn the world.
10
The Spite House
Johnny Compton · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
Eric Ross is on the run with his two daughters, taking whatever work he can find. He answers an ad offering a large sum to anyone who will stay in the Masson House, a spite house in Texas said to be the state's most haunted, and record what happens there. The house may also hold answers about his family.
11
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
M. R. James · 1904
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
Eight ghost stories in which scholars and clergymen uncover things better left alone. An old manuscript, a whistled tune and a locked country house each hold a presence that follows the people who found it back into ordinary life.
12
Slade House
David Mitchell · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
Behind a hidden door in a narrow London alley waits a house that appears only every nine years. Guests are drawn inside and never come out the same. Linked over decades, their stories reveal what feeds the house. A haunting dark-fantasy tale about appetite and illusion.