Alison Rumfitt is one of my favourite writers. She’s written two intense and problematic horror novels, Tell Me I’m Worthless and Brainwyrms. Her writing is precise, with flashes of experimentation. I want to re-read Brainwyrms for the sections about the internet as cosmic horror as much as I don’t want to re-read the scenes of degradation.
Tell Me I’m Worthless describes the encounter of two young women with Albion, a haunted house that stands as an explicit metaphor for modern England. This paragraph in particular stood out to me:
There’s a difference between a ghost story and a haunted house story. This feels so basic, but also so hard to articulate. A ghost story is about the thing that it tells you it is about: a ghost, an ephemeral thing from beyond the grave, trying to contact the living. A haunted house story is about more than that. It is about structure, architecture, and history, Like Jamaica Inn, a haunted house that isn’t haunted at all, but people said it was to cover up the truth of the matter. There aren’t any ghosts in the House. And yet it continues to be haunted despite this fact.