Book Review: "The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories" by Susan Hill

Susan Hill is one of those authors that I have to say, is one of the greats of modern horror. She doesn't go over the top with the gore, she doesn't just write a scary story, she invites us into the atmosphere of something almost classic. Something that is haunted to its very soul. The stories are filled with atmosphere and are worth revisiting when you've read them. In her book The Man in the Picture she creates a vivid sense of atmosphere through dread, the supernatural and artwork. In this book, she writes three very different short stories, but with a similar supernatural haunting in its beating heart. From the writer of The Woman in Black - this anthology proves that she can write shorter works as well as book-length ones...

Here are some more of my reviews of works by Susan Hill:

In the story The Travelling Bag a man who is committed to his research keeps getting sicker and sicker until he admits he needs to slow down and take on an assistant and student. Once he does this, he steps back a little only to return to his student having stolen his work, taken the credit and become a large and famous respected figure in his field. Now committed to revenge, there is something really horrifying about the way this man wishes to scare his former trusted mate. Framed as a storytelling session, we see an unfortunate death caused and a man haunted by what he has done. However, we do not know whether this was really not the intended outcome - or whether he is only saying that because now, he is haunted every single day. This is one of those stories that you can imagine quite vividly and though it feels like a classic ghost story, it has some more modern frightening elements. It really is one of those stories you would tell around a campfire. If you love the classic supernatural stories of the Victorian era then this one is definitely for you.

Boy 21 is another story within and is about a boarding school in which a child who claims their house is loud and horrible is raised alongside a friend called Andreas. Only, there's something worrying here involving a house fire. One day these boys grow so close that everyone seems to notice the obsessive friendship they have. But then Andreas mysteriously disappears, nobody knows where he has gone and our child protagonist is left bereft and distraught, unable to concentrate and unable to do many of the things he was capable of doing before, believing that his friend might walk through the door at any time. Then there's a school trip to an old home from the Jacobean era where our protagonist sees his friend again. But something's not quite right, there's meant to be 20 boys on this trip but the teacher counts 21 on the bus. Is there something more at play here? What are we seeing?

Now this second story I have to admit is quite predictable but the predictions aren't the point. It is meant to be creepy and atmospheric, a haunted house story that isn't really about a haunted house at all. I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed it for a story that is considerably shorter than what I would expect of a classic ghost story. I would say that this story's atmosphere lends itself to Victorian ghost story tradition in the same way that Dickens' ghost stories do. I drew some similarities between how many people can actually see the supernatural being in this story and the one from The Signal-Man yet both aren't really spoken about as supernatural beings. Are they stories about realisation? Read for yourself and find out.

There's a third story in here but I'm not going to tell you about it because of course, I have to keep some things hidden. My favourite story from this anthology though was definitely the first one which had that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde mood. I loved it. Though I definitely think Susan Hill has written better books and I probably enjoy her full-length novels more than this, that does not mean that I didn't enjoy this a lot. Susan Hill is a fantastic writer and so, whenever you get the chance do get stuck in.

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