The Woman in Black
The story centres on a young solicitor, Arthur Kipps, who is summoned to Crythin Gifford, a small market town on the east coast of theUnited Kingdom to attend to the funeral of Mrs. Alice Drablow, an elderly and reclusive widow who lived alone in the desolate and secluded Eel Marsh House.
The house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway, and, at high tide, it is completely cut off from the mainland with only the surroundingmarshes and sea frets for company. Kipps soon realises there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally thought. At the funeral, he sees a woman dressed in black and with a pale wasted face with dark eyes, who is watched in silence by a group of children. Over the course of several days, while sorting through Mrs. Drablow's papers at Eel Marsh House, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and hauntings by the Woman in Black. The hauntings included the sound of a pony and trap in difficulty, which were closely followed by the screams of a young child and his maid.
Most of the people in Crythin Gifford are extremely reluctant to reveal information about Mrs. Drablow and the mysterious Woman in Black, and most attempts to find out the truth cause pained and fearful reactions. From various sources, Kipps learns that Mrs. Drablow's sister, Jennet Humfrye, gave birth to a child, but, because she was not married when she became pregnant, she was forced to give the child to her sister. Mrs. Drablow and her husband adopted the boy, called Nathaniel, insisting that he should never know that Jennet was his mother. The child's screams heard by Kipps were those of Nathaniel.
Jennet went away for a year; however, after realising she could not be parted for long from her son, she made an agreement to stay at Eel Marsh House with him. There is an agreement that she never reveals her true identity to him. One day, a pony and trap carrying the boy across the causeway became lost and sank into the marshes, killing all
The house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway, and, at high tide, it is completely cut off from the mainland with only the surroundingmarshes and sea frets for company. Kipps soon realises there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally thought. At the funeral, he sees a woman dressed in black and with a pale wasted face with dark eyes, who is watched in silence by a group of children. Over the course of several days, while sorting through Mrs. Drablow's papers at Eel Marsh House, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and hauntings by the Woman in Black. The hauntings included the sound of a pony and trap in difficulty, which were closely followed by the screams of a young child and his maid.
Most of the people in Crythin Gifford are extremely reluctant to reveal information about Mrs. Drablow and the mysterious Woman in Black, and most attempts to find out the truth cause pained and fearful reactions. From various sources, Kipps learns that Mrs. Drablow's sister, Jennet Humfrye, gave birth to a child, but, because she was not married when she became pregnant, she was forced to give the child to her sister. Mrs. Drablow and her husband adopted the boy, called Nathaniel, insisting that he should never know that Jennet was his mother. The child's screams heard by Kipps were those of Nathaniel.
Jennet went away for a year; however, after realising she could not be parted for long from her son, she made an agreement to stay at Eel Marsh House with him. There is an agreement that she never reveals her true identity to him. One day, a pony and trap carrying the boy across the causeway became lost and sank into the marshes, killing all