The Haunted House

The Haunted House is a story series published in 1859 for the weekly periodical All the Year Round. It was Conducted by Charles Dickens with Charles Dickens writing the opening and closing stories framing stories by Dickens himself and five other authors.The story appeared in the Extra Christmas Number on 13 December 1859. Dickens began a tradition of Christmas publications with A Christmas Carol in 1843 and his Christmas stories soon became a national institution. The Haunted House was his 1859 offering.In Dickens's opening story The Mortals in the House the narrator's (John) health required a temporary residence in the country. Knowing this a friend of the narrator had chanced to drive by the house-situated close to a railroad stop mid-way between Northern England and London-and had written to the narrator suggesting he travel down from the North and look the place over. 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. It was ill-placed ill-built ill-planned and ill-fitted. It was damp ... not free from dry rot and redolent with the flavour of rats.