J.U. NicolsonCritiques

I really enjoyed this haunted-house/insanity-in-the-family shocker. Narrator Selden Seaverns is down on his luck in the depths of the Depression (1933) when a college acquaintance, Ormond Ormes, asks him to ghost-write a history of the Elizabethan influence on colonial American literature at Ormond's family home, Ormesby, in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, so Ormond can get a $100,000 inheritance (very roughly $2 million in 2019). Selden doesn't get very much done before he discovers that Ormesby is haunted and the Ormes family members are keeping secrets. But Selden soon finds himself so enmeshed in the family's problems that leaving will be very difficult. The writing is really over the top, of the had-I-but-known type. Recommended for those who like good old-fashioned melodrama, sensation, and horror.