Printer’s Devil Court, Susan Hill, read the review and feel inspired to enter the competition

Susan Hill proves that the ghost story still possesses an almost atavistic power to chill the blood of even the most sophisticated of modern readers

Hill’s particular skill here is to synthesise elements from existing stories of the supernatural (Rex)

For aficionados of the English supernatural story, these are good times. Instead of having to pull our dusty copies of the collected ghost stories of MR James from the shelves (brilliant though they are), we can turn to modern writers such as Kim Newman who are finding new wrinkles in the form.

But of modern practitioners, few would deny that one of the most accomplished is Susan Hill, and her achievement is particularly piquant, given that she doesn’t try to find new wrinkles, but stays well within the parameters established by earlier masters of the form – and proves that the ghost story still possesses an almost atavistic power to chill the blood of even the most sophisticated of modern readers.

Her most celebrated book, The Woman in Black, proved that the best supernatural tales work insidiously on the subconscious of the reader, and if her new book, Printer’s Devil Court, merely glances at this strategy, it is still delivered with her customary panache.

A small hand-sewn volume is sent to the stepson of the late Dr Hugh Meredith. On the first page are inscribed the words “The Wrong Life”, and by the end of the slim 100 pages of Hill’s narrative, we are to learn what that cryptic sentence means.

Meredith’s account shows the young doctor moving from the coolly rational to the haunted and psychologically blighted after a bizarre experiment conducted on the borderlines of life and death. Two fellow students are looking for an associate to witness their most audacious operation – but they stress that what Meredith is to observe may change his life forever. As, inevitably, it does: (spoiler alert) the experiment involves capturing the essence of the human spirit at the moment of death and inculcating it into another body.

Hill’s particular skill here is to synthesise (consciously or otherwise) elements from existing stories of the supernatural: the basic premise echoes Christina and Laurence Beers’ The Asphyx and the “transmigration of souls” scenario of Hammer’s Frankenstein Created Woman (which also had male voices coming from female host bodies). From Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, we have the generational twice-told tale and journal.

All of this is done with the adroit conjuring of period and atmosphere which is Hill’s métier, even though (despite two flesh-creeping encounters in graveyards), the hair-raising quotient of Printer’s Devil Court is modest. In the final analysis, this one-sitting piece is a shaving from Hill’s workbench; let’s hope her next essay in the uncanny is a novel-length one.

Profile Books, £9.99. Order for £9.49 (free p&p) from the Independent Bookshop: 08430 600 030

Competition details:

To celebrate the publication of Printer’s Devil Court, The Independent has teamed up with Ritzy Picturehouse and Profile Books to launch a nationwide search for a talented filmmaker to create a trailer for the book.

Guest judged by Susan Hill as well as our literary editor, Arifa Akbar, the competition is open to all filmmakers. The winner will receive Calumet Photographic vouchers worth £200, a one-year Picturehouse membership, a signed copy of Printer’s Devil Court and the chance to have their trailer screened before a special showing of The Woman in Black, starring Daniel Radcliffe, at Ritzy Picturehouse cinema in London. One runner-up will receive a one-year Picturehouse membership and a signed copy of Printer’s Devil Court. #susanhillcomp

To Enter: you will need to create a 2-3 minute video trailer inspired by the extract below. You then need to upload your trailer to YouTube and email the link to susanhillcomp@profilebooks.com

Extract from Susan Hill’s ‘Printer’s Devil Court'

Just before midnight I set off to walk back to the club. My route was the old one, but this corner of London had changed a good deal. Fleet Street no longer housed the hot metal presses and many of the old alleys and courts had long gone, most of them bombed to smithereens by the Blitz. Once or twice I took a wrong turn and ended up among new buildings I didn’t recognise.

At one point, I retraced my steps for a hundred yards and suddenly I was thrown back in time. I realised that the old Printers Devil’s Court, where I had lodged, had been laid waste and that the hospital club was now sited on part of the same ground. I thought little of it – Printer’s Devil Court held no special memories for me, other than those last peculiar and unpleasant ones.

I was about to turn into the club when I noticed that there was still a passageway to one side and saw the tower of St-Luke’s-at-the-Gate rising up ahead of me in the fitful moonlight. I stood stock still. London churches are always a fine sight and I was glad that this one, with a surprising number of others, had escaped destruction. The passageway ended at the back of the old graveyard, as before, and that seemed unchanged, the tombstones still leaning this way and that and even more thickly covered in moss.

And then I saw her. She was a few yards away from me, moving among the graves, pausing here and there to bend over and peer, as if trying to make out the inscriptions, before moving on again. She wore a garment of a pale silvery grey that seemed strangely gauze-like and her long hair was loose and free. She had her back to me. I was troubled to see a young woman wandering here at this time of night and started towards her, to offer to escort her away. She must have heard me because she turned and I was startled by her beauty, her pallor and even more, by the expression of distress on her face. She came towards me quickly, holding out her hand and seeming about to plead with me, but as she drew near, I noticed a curious blank and glassy look in her eyes and a coldness increased around me, more intense than that of the night alone. I waited. The nearer she came the greater the cold but I did not – why should I? – link it in any way to the young woman, but simply to the effects of standing still in this place where sunlight rarely penetrated in which had a dankness that came from the very stones and from the cold ground.

“Are you unwell?” I asked. “You should not be here alone at this time of night – let me see you safely to your home.”

She appeared puzzled by my voice and her body trembled beneath the pale clothes. “You will catch your death of cold.” She stretched out both her hands to me then but I shrank back, unaccountably loathe to take them. Her eyes had the same staring and yet vacant look now that she was close to me. But she was fully alive and breathing and I had no reason to fear.

“Please tell me what is wrong?”

There was a second only during which we both stood facing one another silently in that bleak and deserted place and something seemed to happen to the passing of time, which was now frozen still, now hurtling backwards, now propelling us into the present again, but then on, and forwards, faster and faster, so that the ground appeared to shift beneath my feet, yet nothing moved and when the church clock struck, it was only half past midnight.

The competition closes at midnight on 12 October and the winner will be announced in The Independent. Full details on how to enter can be found here: http://bit.ly/indybooks-susanhill