Haunting Tales from Deaconshire: A Chillingly Atmospheric 4.5-Star Read

N. P. Arrowsmith’s The Dream House and Other Seasonal Ghost Stories is a slender but rewarding collection that clocks in at just about 150 pages. Though brief, the book manages to carve out a vivid little corner of the supernatural—Deaconshire, a fictional region that ties all the stories together with an eerie sense of place. Within this setting, Arrowsmith explores haunted houses, eerie visions, seasonal phantoms, and the unsettling weight of history pressing down on the present. The collection includes the titular novella-length tale The Dream House, as well as two Ghost Stories for Christmas, My Corpse Candle, and A Painting of Magdalena Rose.

Through BookSirens I received an advance review copy (ARC) for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Hawketh House is stuck over a hundred years in the past, and when Alastair Richmond visits, he becomes only the second guest in nine months. Despite the house’s apparent emptiness, Alastair is shown to a cramped room in the attic, cluttered with windchimes, dreamcatchers, and odd curios.

Mrs. Baylor is a frosty host, and her husband is a giant but subservient man who only communicates by grunting. And the old house is so creaky that they can track Alastair’s every move. Strange happenings and chilling cold spots spook Alastair, and then he hears movement in supposedly empty rooms. Something stirs here, waiting.

This house wakes up when you fall asleep.

Also features additional ghost stories, where the changing seasons awaken unique and chilling haunts.

Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Opinion

The title story, The Dream House, is clearly the centerpiece. Running longer than the others, it gives Arrowsmith room to unfurl his descriptive prose and unsettling atmosphere. The premise is compelling: Alastair Richmond, a lonely traveler, finds himself drawn into Hawketh House, a residence seemingly frozen in time, where the hosts are as peculiar as the creaking house itself. Arrowsmith’s knack for description is one of the story’s great strengths. He conjures the dusty attic cluttered with dreamcatchers and curios, the shadowy corridors that seem to watch Alastair’s every step, and the oppressive silences that become characters in their own right. I was particularly impressed by the twists that appear around the last four to five chapters—unexpected turns that not only inject suspense but also deepen the story’s emotional stakes.

What sets The Dream House apart from more traditional haunted-house narratives is its sense of transformation. It isn’t just about Alastair being threatened by ghosts, but about his strange role in protecting them and, ultimately, glimpsing a possible future for himself within the house’s spectral walls. This idea—that haunting can be as much about care as about fear—felt refreshingly original. That said, while I admired the story, I must confess that my strongest reactions were reserved for the shorter works that followed.

My Corpse Candle is a standout. Rooted in old folk traditions, the story taps into the timeless fear of death’s harbingers and turns it into a vivid, spine-tingling narrative. The imagery here—glimpses of spectral light, the heavy dread that accompanies it—lingered with me long after I had closed the book. Where The Dream House was expansive and layered, this story is sharp, direct, and chilling.

Likewise, A Painting of Magdalena Rose might be the finest story in the collection. It blends the classic ghost-story motif of an uncanny portrait with a deeply unsettling psychological undertone. There is something visceral about the way Arrowsmith handles the act of looking—at art, at memory, at the past—that makes the story both frightening and strangely poignant. Of all the tales in this slim book, this is the one I am least likely to forget.

Taken together, these stories show an author who knows how to balance atmosphere with narrative drive. The fact that all of them are set in Deaconshire gives the book a subtle cohesion, making the stories feel less like a random assortment and more like glimpses into a single haunted landscape. For readers of ghost fiction, that sense of continuity is a real treat.

If I have one minor critique, it is that the book’s brevity left me wanting more. At only 150 pages, it’s easy to devour in a sitting or two, and I found myself wishing Arrowsmith had included one or two more tales to round out the experience. Still, what is here is polished, evocative, and—at its best—truly chilling.

Conclusion

In the end, The Dream House and Other Seasonal Ghost Stories earns a solid 4.5 stars from me. It is a beautifully written, atmospheric, and satisfyingly creepy little volume that deserves a spot on the shelf of anyone who loves classic-style ghost stories with a fresh twist. Arrowsmith has created not just stories, but a haunted county worth revisiting.

About N. P. Arrowsmith

N. P. Arrowsmith is an author of adult horror fiction and a Chartered Engineer with the Royal Aeronautical Society. His novels, short stories and poems will unsettle, mystify and immerse the reader in many rich and diverse settings.

He lives in Lancashire, England and can be frequently found hiking in The Lake District, the inspiration behind his fictional county of Deaconshire. His other passion is to explore weird and wonderful places all around the world.

Website | Blog | Goodreads

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