Published by: William Heinemann
Tim and Abi have always been different from their peers. Precociously bright, they spend their evenings in their parents’ attic discussing the macabre and unexplained, zealously re-reading books on folklore, hauntings and the supernatural. In particular, they are obsessed with photographs of ghostly apparitions and the mix of terror and delight they provoke in their otherwise safe and boring childhood.
But when Tim and Abi decide to fake a photo of a ghost to frighten an unpopular school friend, they set in motion a deadly and terrifying chain of events that neither of them could have predicted and are forced to confront the possibility that what began as a callous prank might well have taken on a malevolent life of its own.
The Apparition Phase is an unsettling literary ghost story set in the early 1970s. Tim and Abi Smith are teenage twins growing up in a lower middle-class household in the early 1970s. They are obsessed with ghosts and all things supernatural. Their knowledge of ghostly apparitions caught on camera, inspires them to create a ghostly photo of their own - a fake one of course, echoing the girls who said they’d taken photos of The Cottingley Fairies in 1917. Of course, terrible consequences ensue.
With their fake ghost photo, Tim and Abi accidentally release some kind of malevolent spirit into the world, which soon leads to Abi going missing.
This first section of the book is spellbinding. In particular, there was one scene – in which Janice lashes out at the twins with what seems to be a prophecy or possession – which is truly chilling, almost cinematic in its intensity, and sure to remain lodged in the reader’s mind.
The blurb gives the impression that Part I is the backbone of the entire story. So, I was surprised to be yanked from all that sublime scene-setting into Part II, which, it turns out, sets the tone for everything else. Set a few years later, it involves Tim joining a group of ghost hunters at a country house called Yarlings.
Tim struggles to cope with Abi’s disappearance, their parents begin to grow apart, and before long Tim is being hauled off by a bunch of hippy paranormal researchers to take part in some kind of ‘scientific research project’ at a big old haunted house in the Suffolk countryside. He finds himself gathered in the apparently haunted house with a bunch of other disturbed teenagers.
During his time there, Tim’s world opens up, but we never lose sight of his grief, and alongside him we are caught up in the romance, hope and terror of the ghost hunt, the ever-shifting dynamics of the quickly intimate group, and the question of what might really be going on behind the scenes.
It’s a stunning literary debut with excellent narrative, and a truly engrossing, unsettling storyline with lots of twists and turns along the way. It surprised me that this definitely felt like a young adult novel, despite the narrator’s adult prose. For me, I initially felt that the ending was the weakest part, but then I read the epilogue and was convinced otherwise. Do not skip the epilogue!
Like all great ghost stories, The Apparition Phase questions what is real and what is simply a trick of the mind – and whether there’s really a difference between the two. Full of gothic suspense, this was a creepy and gripping read. I was totally engrossed and absorbed the book in a couple of days.
