EXCERPT: I looked about me at our attic - the library, the horrible bits of Victorian taxidermy we'd picked up from junk shops, the dust-furred oil paintings of bleak landscapes, the interesting and peculiar objects that inevitably gathered on any horizontal surface in the vicinity of either of us. The only significant thing we hadn't added to the place was a large home-made dolls house, which we had discovered in the attic the first time we ever went up there, and had deemed both creepy enough to keep, and too heavy to move.

'We'll have to tidy up a bit.'

'Yes. Get some extra lights, hide the books, that sort of thing. Make it look respectable.'

Abigail must have read some element of doubt in my face. She leaned forward in her armchair and fixed me with her dark eyes.

'All we have to do is make out that it's all fine. We take her up here, she sees how absolutely unhaunted our attic and indeed our entire house is, and that's that.' Abi touched her fingertips to her lips. 'All we have to do is be normal for a while.'

And so it was agreed between us that Janice Tupp would come over to our house after school next Thursday, in order not to see a ghost.

ABOUT 'THE APPARITION PHASE': Tim and Abi have always been different from their peers. Precociously bright, they spend their evenings in their parents’ attic discussing the macabre and unexplained, zealously rereading books on folklore, hauntings and the supernatural. In particular, they are obsessed with photographs of ghostly apparitions and the mix of terror and delight they provoke in their otherwise boring and safe childhoods.

But when Tim and Abi decide to fake a photo of a ghost to frighten an unpopular school friend, they set in motion a deadly and terrifying chain of events that neither of them could have predicted, and are forced to confront the possibility that what began as a callous prank might well have taken on a malevolent life of its own.

MY THOUGHTS: 'My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose' - Haldane

I couldn't help but thinking of the Adams family children when I read the physical descriptions of Abi and Tim, intelligent twins with enquiring minds and a passion for the macabre.

Maclean has written an atmospheric and intriguing gothic thriller with all the required elements: a missing person, a select group of people confined together in a creepy old house, and unexplained phenomena. Mass hysteria? Cleverly orchestrated fraud? Or something darker and more sinister? This is what Maclean will have you wondering. His skilful machinations will have you changing your mind with every twist and turn.

Yarlings has a gruesome history and yet has never made it into the books of haunted houses, making it perfect for a scientific experiment to once and for all prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. 'It seemed that, no matter how bright the day outside, the interior of Yarlings was always dark, always gloomy, always permeated with a troubled air, as if overthinking its presence.' Ancient timbers crack like knuckles, the rooms are filled with an oppressing and brooding silence, almost an air of expectation, like it is waiting to be brought back to life, a place of 'weird emotional textures.' The ideal place in which to conduct a seance, or several.

The people who have been carefully selected for the experiment by Graham and Sally, are college students, all known to one another, and who seem to be a fairly ordinary lot. Tim enters the mix quite by accident, the seventh person, and catalyst for all that follows.

The Apparition Phase is unsettling rather than terrifying; unsettling, unnerving and deliciously creepy.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.4

#TheApparitionPhase #NetGalley

THE AUTHOR: Originally from the Wirral, Will Maclean has been fascinated by ghost stories since he was a child, and has been writing them almost as long as he can remember.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House UK, Cornerstone via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of The Apparition Phase by Will Maclean for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

When there’s a new literary ghost story coming out from a respected publisher, especially if it’s by a debut author, I usually add it to my wishlist. It doesn’t have to sound like it’s going to break new ground: I like ghost stories in general so much that I’m more forgiving of their flaws, more willing to accept cliches. Which is to say that I went into The Apparition Phase with totally average expectations, thinking I’d enjoy it, but not anticipating anything spectacular. And I was blown away.

Part I of the novel introduces twins Tim and Abigail Smith. We first encounter them attempting to fake a ghost photograph with which to frighten their friends, and we learn that they are fascinated by all things supernatural. Their plan works rather too well: their classmate Janice is so terrified of the picture that she faints. The ramifications of this incident take over Tim and Abi’s lives; eventually they’re separated and sent to different schools. But their ghost fixation persists. In the early 1970s, it seems the world shares not only their obsession, but also their conviction that ‘an answer was just around the corner’.

'Our thinking on the subject of ghosts [was] that science might, one day very soon, explain them, understand them, and in doing so open up a whole new way of thinking about the world. This was a perfectly reasonable expectation, back then. We were not alone in believing it.'

And then an earth-shattering event changes everything: Abi disappears.

This first section of the book is spellbinding. In parts, it reminded me of Nina Allan’s The Rift, my personal ne plus ultra of ‘missing person’ novels. (There is also one scene – in which Janice lashes out at the twins with what seems to be a prophecy or possession – which is truly chilling, almost cinematic in its intensity, and sure to remain lodged in the reader’s mind.) The blurb gives the impression that Part I is the backbone of the entire story. So it was a bit disorientating to be yanked from all that sublime scene-setting into Part II, which, it turns out, sets the tone for everything else. Set a few years later, it involves Tim joining a group of ghost hunters at a country house called Yarlings.

A number of new characters are introduced, one of whom is intolerable, and there’s – horror of horrors – a romantic subplot. I floundered for a while, wondering if the first hundred pages had been as good as it would get. But The Apparition Phase finds its groove again, and when it does, it’s thrilling and intriguing in an entirely different way. Tim’s world opens up, but we never lose sight of his grief, and alongside him we are caught up in the romance, hope and terror of the ghost hunt, the ever-shifting dynamics of the quickly intimate group, and the question of what might really be going on behind the scenes. It all culminates in an indelible sequence with Tim traversing the Suffolk countryside by night, a journey as metaphorical and (yes) haunted as it is physical.

There are traces here of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger; the way in which Tim falls in love with Yarlings, and everything it represents for him, is very reminiscent of Waters’ Faraday. It also reminded me a lot of Gary Gibson’s novella Ghost Frequencies, itself inspired by The Stone Tape, which is mentioned here as a favourite of Tim and Abi. As for that hallucinatory trip through the darkness, the triumphant final sequence of Catriona Ward’s Rawblood comes to mind.

I loved both the broad details and the specifics of The Apparition Phase: its scope and themes in general, but also the level of detail we’re given about settings, characters and relationships. A great ghost story can’t always also be a satisfying novel, but this is definitely both. A brilliant surprise.

This book was in-between the genre. A part mystery, good part drama and some sort of horror element as well. I love when authors do that, go beyond, not limit themselves or felt restricted by classification. This was a very interesting book that I would recommend for those who want something different!

The premise of this story was great and it started out really well. I liked that it mentioned lots of texts and hauntings that do exist in reality outside of the novel. 

However, I found the novel to be a bit of a drag after the first quarter. The precise voice that captured the young twins so well became a bit stuffy and overly verbose and to be honest it wasn't really creepy at all for the rest of the story. I kept waiting to be scared and things happened to scare the characters but they didn't jump off the page at all. 

I think I just thought it was, and wanted it to be a different book. 

My thanks to the publisher and netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a clever ghost story which will give any reader the willies.  Apart from the fundamental ghost story, the characters were also very interesting.  The ominous declaration of having awoken “something” by the carefully drawn “outsider” and the impact of her words on the twins was chilling.  Great settings, great characters.

"And so the first thing my twin sister and I did, when we finally got access to a camera of our own, was fake a ghost photograph."

That sentence alone is the reason I wanted to read this book. Unfortunately, it was not what the book was about. The beginning was great, opening with thirteen year old twins Tim and Abi concocting a photo of a ghost in their attic. The picture triggers a series of unfortunate events for about a quarter of the book in which I was hooked. However, the story took a detour early on onto a completely unrelated path. What followed was basically a coming of age story, with a hint of the supernatural, told by a now adult Tim. I felt completely misled by the blurb, which is only a very small part of the story. If your a fan of The Secret History you might like this, as it follows a similar vein of adolescent camaraderie with seances instead of murder. There was also a romantic element with the naive Tim. 
This was most definitely a young adult novel, despite the narrators adult prose. Tim sounded like an adult but repeatedly acted like a child throughout his life. I don't even know what to say about the ending. It barely made sense and felt unrelated to the rest of the story, which was, at times, a mess. A coming of age story with a (dim) supernatural twist.

**Thanks to Random House UK, Cornerstone and Netgalley for my early review copy.

A wonderfully creepy tale full of interesting characters. At times I wasn’t sure if this was more of a horror novel or a story about loss and grief. In fact, both here go hand in hand as Tim, who is fond of ghostly tales to begin with, tries to make sense of a family tragedy and thereby gets drawn into a paranormal experiment. 
There was one passage in the book where the story dragged a little (hence only four stars) but all in all this was a wonderful book full of a delicious eeriness. Perfect for a cold autumn night.

Growing up in a London suburb in the early 1970s, teenage twins Tim and Abi Smith are obsessed with the uncanny – not just ghosts but also “standing stones, witches, curses, the British countryside, the ancient Egyptians (with particular emphasis on their burial rites), the Vikings, voodoo, vampires, the mythical giant squid, real-life accounts of people being attacked (and, even better, devoured) by large wild animals, Dracula, Doctor Who, space exploration, the futuristic domed cities that people would one day live in on the ocean floor, pond life, medieval history, medieval weaponry, medieval siege warfare, eclipses, coral reefs, escapology, how to start fires, UFOs, card tricks…” They spend hours together in the attic, discussing the frightening and the macabre. Accordingly, when they decide to play a practical joke at school, their idea involves faking a ghost photograph, portraying “a creature of smoke, of cobwebs, of moonlight, made of insubstantial mist that faded as soon as it was perceived”. They show the resulting image to Janice Tupp, an unpopular student in their class and her reaction exceeds their wildest expectations. Visibly rattled, she faints. Then, on a visit to the attic where the photograph was created, not only does Janice not accept that she was taken in by a forgery, but in a frightening trance-like state, she ominously declares that the twins have “woken something up… ” And it certainly seems that the prank has triggered bad karma, because tragedy soon hits the Smith family.

Years later, still trying to come to terms with these traumatic events, Tim gets involved with a group of paranormal researchers who are investigating the purported haunting of a sprawling manor in the Suffolk countryside. You would have thought that Tim would have learnt from his earlier brush with the supernatural to give this sort of stuff a wide berth. Yet, he enthusiastically joins the experiment, partly, one suspects, because he is seduced by the glamour of the upper-class set to which his new friends belong. As séance follows séance, it soon becomes apparent that, once again, “something is woken up…”

Will Maclean is an established screenwriter and, whilst this is his debut novel, it is clearly the work of an assured and experienced author. The Apparition Phase grips you from the very first pages and never lets you go. The plot twists and turns, and the scarier passages are scary indeed. The work taps into what I feel is a current fad for 1970’s nostalgia, especially amongst the horror-loving community. (I’m thinking, for instance, of Dead Ink’s Eden Book Society project, whose books I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog). Much of the atmosphere of the novel is, in fact, provided by the historical cultural references to that decade, including the famed BBC TV productions which brought the uncanny to the mainstream.

The Apparition Phase sometimes feels like two books rolled into one. On the one hand it is a work of suburban horror, where the supernatural events almost pale in relation to the more mundane terrors of drug and alcohol addiction, derelict housing, bullying, vandalism and random violence. On the other hand, it also provides the familiar chills of traditional supernatural fiction, with more than a nod to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Tim provides the link between these two worlds, even though, admittedly, they sometimes sit uncomfortably together.

For me, The Apparition Phase is a resounding 5-star read. It might not be perfect: I feel that sometimes the plot is a tad too tidy, too revealing of its machinery. For instance, interesting and promising characters are unhesitatingly disposed of when they are no longer needed to further the story. And the ending, whilst certainly brilliantly addressing some open questions (and tantalisingly raising new ones), also comes across as rather “convenient”. Yet, despite these reservations, I found it a gut-wrenching, spinetingling roller coaster of a ghost novel. I’m no Janice Tupp and do not have any knack for prophecy. However, I will take the plunge and predict that The Apparition Phase will be nothing short of a horror sensation.

It’s the 1970’s when we meet 13 year old twins, Tim and Abigail (Abi), who from a very young age have had a fascination with the paranormal, though it could be argued that it’s become more of an unhealthy obsession. Their knowledge of ghostly apparitions caught on camera, inspires them to create a ghostly photo of their own - a fake one of course, echoing the girls who said they’d taken photos of The Cottingley Fairies in 1917. But have they unwittingly attracted a malevolent entity or is it all in their imagination?

My thoughts on reading ‘The Apparition Phase’? - well, the psychological effects alone would make me unwilling to mess with the unknown! 

There were some really strange and spooky events during the seances, (held of course in an old, dark, and creepy country house), and a heart pounding scene towards the end that left me breathless, not to mention terrified! A well written debut novel that is simply perfect for Halloween, or any other time of the year for that matter - as long you’re up for a spooky read?

This is a fantastically gripping page turner, I couldn’t put it down. It is so artfully written, it steers you through twisting plot turns to unthinkable conclusions, which you then have to revisit as the narrative further unfolds. Maclean pays homage to gothic tropes and unreliable narrators in the intertextual nods to Fowles’ ‘The Magus’ and Jackson’s ‘The Haunting  of Hill House’, yet strikes fresh and unexpected notes. This will be utterly irresistible to fans of the genre and any reader seeking to lose themselves in an enthralling read. I can’t wait to read more from Maclean!

Meet Abi and Tim, siblings that spend their time inside instead of out and in the attic instead of the main house. It is what they do in the attic that  causes pause. They love to read and re read ghost stories. Anything demonic and gruesome as well as pictures of ghostly apparitions. One day they decide to play a trick on someone and fake a ghost picture of their own. They are very excited when it turns out great. Except, there is something strange going on. Something is happening that is really scaring them. Could they have awoken a real spirit? This book is definitely a solid 5 +. The writer does an amazing job of holding your attention and writing at a pace that will not bore you or cause you to reread something. I was so enticed by the blurb and then enthralled in the storyline that I had a very hard time putting it down if even for a few minutes. I love this story as well as the characters that are so true and believable. I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to netgalley as well as the author/publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Apparition Phase is a wonderfully creepy 1970’s ghost story that I had to stop reading after dark.  Precocious teenage twins, Abi and Tim, are obsessed with the supernatural.  They spend most of their free time up in the attic, reading accounts of hauntings and the unexplained, and decide to create a fake ghost photograph to scare their classmates.  They succeed, but with weird and horrifying consequences.  

I was gripped by finding out what happens to Abi and Tim and why.  I especially loved the sections with ghost-hunting in a Suffolk manor house, run by some deeply unethical paranormal researchers.

A well-deserved spooky five stars from me.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

In an old house in Suffolk, Tim and Abi like to spend their evenings in the attic, talking about ghosts; the scarier the better. They love to read ghost stories and pour over photos of “ghosts”. Then they decide they will take their own photograph of a ghost, a fake of course, but their little trick backfires when it appears they may have awoken a real spirit. A spirit that means them great harm. A creepy and literate ghost story

One of the best books I have read this year. The background of a dismal 70s suburban town is finely drawn and adds to the atmosphere. 
Abi and Tim are self-sufficient, faintly superior twins who don’t need anyone else as they do their own research into spooky happenings around the country. A casual experiment on an unsuspecting classmate takes a very dark turn and then the unthinkable occurs, plunging Tim into a spiral of misery and anger.
He thinks he has found an outlet at Yarlings, an unprepossessing country house, where a team of young ghost hunters try and make contact with the unsavoury and cruel Tobias Salt. As you might expect, events very quickly become uncontrollable.
Like all the best ghost stories, everything that happens can be rationalised, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t immensely creepy at times. Perfect read as the nights draw in and we approach Halloween.

The Apparition Phase is a ghost story set in the 1970s which looks at the blurred lines between rational explanation and supernatural happenings. Tim and Abi are precocious twins obsessed with the macabre and strange, who see themselves as cleverer than everyone else at their dull suburban school. They decide to fake a ghost photo and test it on a girl from school, but what they don't realise is that doing so is setting off something larger, something that will become entangled in their lives as their teenage years go on, and which leads Tim to become mixed up with a strange haunted manor in Suffolk.

Maclean combines a depressing early 70s suburban landscape with an old, supposedly haunted house to create a ghost story that also looks at trauma and escape. Tim's narrative voice has a classic ghost story hindsight, and the narrative goes in a different direction to what I was expecting from the blurb, moving from weird adolescents to growing older amidst tragedy to ghost hunting and experiments. The characters who appear a bit later into the novel at the old house are an interesting collection, though it felt that from Tim's perspective you never really got beyond hints of their stories.

The atmosphere of this novel is effective, an example of using a kind of listless 70s landscape to explore the supernatural, growing up, and trauma (70s British gothic should be a genre by now, if it isn't already). There's a good balance between actual malevolent spirits and what is realistic troubles from non-supernatural life, making it a book less focusing on jumpy scares than a lingering sense of bleakness. This probably made it an unintentionally good read for the week before Halloween at a time when there's plenty of real life horrors going on.