Book Review: "The Haunting of Alma Fielding" by Kate Summerscale

Over time, there have been many books about ‘hauntings’ that have really peaked my interest. When I was 12, it was “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson mainly because the book scared me half to death. But as I read more and more about hauntings, I learned that normally they come from inside the person more than by some sort of outside force. From the books by Susan Hill such as: “The Man in the Picture” and “The Woman in Black” to the story “The Shadow in the Corner” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - I have read and re-read many ghost stories that I find to be interesting in their attempts to ‘reason’. By ‘reason’ I mean that we are presented with a character who does not fully believe in what is going on until they encounter something incredibly raw that they cannot explain by any logic whatsoever. This leads them to investigate further and drop down the metaphorical rabbit hole into the psyche of the haunting that is happening to them.

In the book “The Haunting of Alma Fielding” though, we get something a little bit different. Subtitled: “a true ghost story”, this book seeks to make us aware of the fact that this is not a story in which people do not believe what is happening. Instead, it is an investigation along the lines of what happens before the beginning of the events of “The Haunting of Hill House”.

This book investigates a haunting that happens in the 1930s in London. It makes a point of bringing Nandor Fodor into the story. If you don’t know who he was, he was a parapsychologist who studied poltergeists as a part of a person’s repressed psyche rather than a manifestation of a ghost. It is really interesting how the different reasonings come into play as the haunting escalates to something that is incredibly dark and gothic. As we learn more about Alma and the investigation, we learn more about what is haunting her, and without giving anything away it is actually very interesting to attach her character on what is going on with her.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book that I also cannot tell you about because it would spoil part of the story, is the epilogue. The feeling of the epilogue is something quite surreal and extreme. There is something about it that makes it both satisfying and puts you on the edge at the same time. It’s written brilliantly.

Another thing I enjoyed about this book was the way in which we learn about Nandor Fodor as well. We learn that he once spoke to Shirley Jackson about the TV adaptation of “The Haunting of Hill House” and in their conversation we get to know that Shirley Jackson actually read Nandor Fodor’s writings. I find that really interesting because when we read “The Haunting of Hill House” as well, it does feel like the parapsychologist who wants to investigate the house is a king of Nandor Fodor character. He is rational, he is almost obsessive, but he is also someone who does a thorough job. These are three things we would not know if it were not for “The Haunting of Alma Fielding”.

In conclusion, I feel like this book is heavily underrated as a realistic gothic masterpiece. Mixing the real world and this almost turbulent gothic fantasy into the same piece is extremely difficult to do properly and here we can see the author has put maximum effort into making this book the perfect blend between what we believe is real and what we may think could be possibly real if we believed hard enough. But it’s real. And we have to face it.