The Haunted House (story)

In Dickens's opening story, The Mortals in the House, the narrator's ("John") health "required a temporary residence in the country."

It was a large mid-eighteenth-century manor house on two square acres with a "sadly neglected garden," recently cheaply repaired, and "much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees."

The house itself is "stiff ... cold ... [and] formal" and "in as bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole quartet of [King] Georges."

Therefore, by mid-November, Patty suggests that she and John "take the house wholly and solely into our own hands" and live without servants, with the exception of Bottles the stable-man who is deaf and therefore not bothered by the haunted noises.

The friends agree to keep silent about any ghostly experiences until they gather on Twelfth Night unless "on some remarkable provocation" they have to break their silence on the subject of any haunted goings-on.

Wilkie Collins tells a seafaring story of Spanish pirates and the torment of a candle that, as it burns, takes the narrator ever closer to explosion and death.