Title: Ghosts of the Silent Hills
Author: Anita Krishan
Publisher: FingerPrint Publishing
Genre: Horror, Short Stories
First Publication: 2019
Language: English
Book Summary: Ghosts of the Silent Hills
The dead do not rest till they get what they want. You have arrived in the hills. In here, you are surrounded by dense, menacing forests, enveloped in a deadly silence…
You never know what lurks here in the Cold, dark night. Do not walk alone after sunset in the hills. A beautiful woman in white haunts the Lonely pathways, looking to enchant and ensnare men…
All the people who died in accidents here…
They say you hear their screams at night. And the deserted lodges sitting amidst lush greenery and calm streams…
Spirits lie in wait here, ready to prey on the living. There are sceptics who did not heed these warnings. They tried to rationalize what they saw, what they felt. But when they came face to face with the beings that they believed didn’t exist, they couldn’t run away anymore…
Ghosts of the silent hills is a collection that will make your nights a little scarier, encompassing the very best spine-chilling stories based on true hauntings.
Book Review: Ghosts of the Silent Hills
If you want to read about ghosts in order to be filled with dread, then Anita Krishan may not be your favorite supernatural author. On the other hand, if you are a fan of elegant realistic fiction but like a few chills from time to time, Anita Krishan’s ghost tales may belong at the top of your list.
Each of stories in ‘Ghosts of the Silent Hills’ is a subtle exercise rooted in everyday reality, and the ghostly presences–such as they are–emerge from the nourishing soil that constitutes author’s finely crafted realism. Many of her stories touch on the cruelty of domestic power relations, not only between husbands and wives, but also between their servants. Specters haunt those who once had the power to change things for the better but did not do so, and visit the living not only as a reproach for past sins, but also as a silent exhortation for redress.
All the stories here are worth reading, but when Anita Krishan’s seriousness of purpose and subtlety of style combine with genuine ghostly thrills, the result is a handful of first-rate ghost stories (“An Uncanny Attachment”, “The Hospital Room”, “Lonely in Death”, “A Girl’s Mission “, “The Lodge”) that should be on everybody’s reading list.
Anita Krishan may be an unlikely ghost story writer, but she does it rather well. As you would expect they are well written and have subtlety and nuance and don’t have the gore and bludgeoning of some modern horror. There is a sprinkling of the gothic, a few rambling and creepy houses and a variety of settings: Shimla, Delhi, Assam, Chamba, and Australia. Several of the stories do explore the relationship between servants and their employers and the tensions between the two. Locks and keys play a significant role.
The sense of helplessness, collapsing competence and fear of the unknown are very telling.
Anita Krishan herself said that she believes in ghosts despite she doesn’t want to, but she is doubtful to accept their presence indisputably; and what is needed here is imagination rather than belief. What makes Ghost of the Silent Hills by Anita Krishan interesting is the usual supernatural dread filtered through scepticism. These ghost stories often follow a familiar format but Author Anita Krishan does manage to subvert the genre in unusual ways.
