The Haunting of Clandestine House - Delightful and Creepy Fun
By pure luck, I happened to pick up a copy of The Haunting of Clandestine House by Celina Myers. Never let anyone tell you the dark gods of horror nerdery aren’t real and don’t bring us good things. Because that what Celina Myers’ book is - a good thing.
Celina Myers is a relatively newly published author. She was totally new to me when I picked up The Haunting of Clandestine House. (Apparently she has some notoriety for funny videos on TikTok, but I’m old, out of touch, and have little understanding of such newfangled things used by “these kids today”. Behold as I shake my fist and scowl disapprovingly!)
As you can tell from the title, it's a haunted house tale. I am a huge fan of haunted house stories. I know! I know! It’s one of the oldest, most tired, and beat-to-death subgenres in all horror fiction. And I agree: most of the stories tend to come off as old, tired, and beat-to-death. But Celina Myers’ 150 page novella is a rare treat. It was delightful, creepy fun. In spite of the genre’s limitations, Myers managed to conjure up a compelling story and genuinely freaky antagonists that kept me looking over my shoulder at home.
In the early 1900’s, the Clandestine family built a large, beautiful home away from the heart of town. While they mostly kept to themselves, they weren’t strangers to the townsfolk either. One morning, their twin daughters (Eva and Edith) showed up downtown, naked, back to back, laying on their sides, and staring out unfixedly. Remaining unresponsive, they were put into a local asylum. Their parents never visited them. Meanwhile the local priest resigned and began to mutter incomprehensibly about how the universe sometimes swallows part of itself up. Then, one year later, the girls go missing from the asylum. When the local constable goes to inform parents and see if they know anything, they have also gone missing. None of them are ever seen again.
Fast forward to today. Hannah Watts is a recently unemployed journalist, who has saved her nickels and dimes and is looking to give freelance fiction writing one last try. While searching through the classifieds, she comes across a listing for an old house that has relapsed into the ownership of the town where it is located. For only $16,000 she can buy a home, move to the country, and have more than enough to renovate and start the novel she’s been dreaming about for years. Sight unseen and without research, she puts in a bid that’s accepted. A week later, she finds herself moving into Clandestine House.
What ensues are the usual haunted house tropes you know are coming. There are weird sounds and things seen out of the corner of the eye. All the local townspeople are hesitant to speak about the history of the house. Hannah slowly uncovers the house’s long history of disappearances and other unfortunate happenings. Workmen have strange experiences.
What really makes this short novella stand out is the quality of the antagonists and the way she ends the story. Straight up, the antagonist freaked me out. I am not sure what archetypal switches they were flipping in my psyche, but they worked. Also, while Myers uses a relatively tried and true device for allowing the evil which haunts Clandestine House to “come through” to our world, it is a less frequently used one. And I think she manages to use it very effectively. I’ll put it this way, Myers managed to bug me out and made me look suspiciously around my home more than a few times. To me, that’s a sign of good writing. The ending is also on point, deeply unsettling, and works really well. That’s about all I can say about it. You’re just gonna have to read it for yourself.
Grammar fascists will occasionally have things to complain about. The book could’ve been gone over an extra time for punctuation and spelling, although I didn’t find the few errors too distracting.
The Haunting of Clandestine House gets a strong thumbs up for me, mostly on the strength of the antagonists and the ending. If Myers were to write sequels, I would read them. Lastly, if any readers have sensitivity to hurt animals, this one’s a bit borderline, but it’s probably a skip for you.
