Like frost on winter glass
The past returns, demanding truth—
Some doors won’t stay closed
The knock from the attic echoes through empty rooms. The message is clear, impossible, and undeniable: Come home. Twenty years after six-year-old Ben vanished during an innocent game of hide-and-seek, his three adult siblings receive reports of a child’s ghost haunting their abandoned family house in Fell, New York. A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James pulls readers into a masterfully woven tale of family trauma, supernatural terror, and the devastating weight of unanswered questions that refuse to fade with time.
This atmospheric horror novel showcases St. James’s signature ability to blend psychological depth with genuine supernatural dread, creating a story that lingers long after the final page. The narrative unfolds through the alternating perspectives of Violet, Vail, and Dodie Esmie—three damaged adults who fled their childhood home and never looked back, until the impossible happened. Their little brother, who disappeared without a trace in 1971, is calling them home from beyond the grave.
Unraveling Threads of Memory and Madness
Violet arrives first, the eldest sibling who inherited an unwanted gift: she sees the dead. Throughout her childhood, a malevolent presence she calls “Sister” terrorized her nights, standing at the foot of her bed with ominous silence. Now divorced and barely maintaining visitation rights with her teenage daughter Lisette, Violet has spent two decades working as an estate clearer—emptying the homes of the deceased, cataloging their final possessions, and frequently encountering the ghosts who linger. When she steps back into the house in Fell, she knows immediately that something has changed. Ben’s toys, stored carefully in the attic for eighteen years, have been moved and played with. The crayons are scattered. The Snakes and Ladders board is set up. And most disturbing of all—Ben is here, but he won’t show himself to her.
Vail, the middle child, lives in self-imposed isolation in a Montana cabin, investigating UFO sightings and alien abductions. As a teenager, he witnessed inexplicable lights and figures standing over his bed at night. For years, he believed aliens had visited him in that house. Now, reluctantly calling upon Charlotte Ryder, a parapsychologist he knows from his investigations, Vail returns to confront what he’s spent two decades trying to understand. His particular brand of detachment—forged through years of dealing with the inexplicable—serves the siblings well as they piece together fragments of an eighty-year-old tragedy.
Dodie, the youngest, escaped to New York City where she built a life as a model, carefully constructing a facade of normalcy. But beneath her polished exterior lies crushing guilt: she took Ben’s favorite hiding spot during that final game, thinking it was a harmless prank. She heard his footsteps go upstairs, and then—nothing. Twenty years of wondering, of replaying those last moments, of asking herself the question that has no answer: Where did you go, little brother?
A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James excels in its portrayal of sibling dynamics forged in shared trauma. The bickering between Vail and Dodie, the protective fury Violet feels toward both of them, the unspoken communication that passes between three people who survived a childhood defined by neglectful parents and an inexplicable loss—these relationships feel achingly real. Their parents are gone now, their mother having drunk herself into an early grave, their father having disappeared years before. The siblings are all that remain, and the house in Fell holds secrets that predate them all.
Layers of Gothic Atmosphere and 1980s Americana
Set in 1989, the novel captures a specific moment when the world existed without cell phones or internet, when calling home meant finding a landline, when investigating the past required dusty archives and actual legwork. The town of Fell itself becomes a character—a place where strange things have always happened. The motel night clerk who vanished. The young girl found dead by the railroad tracks. The college student who disappeared mid-study, leaving behind a full cup of tea. Detective Gus Pine, who worked Ben’s case twenty years ago, reveals that Fell has always been a town where the inexplicable occurs with disturbing regularity.
St. James constructs the horror with remarkable patience, building dread through accumulated details rather than cheap jump scares. The house breathes and waits. Water seeps where it shouldn’t. Toys rearrange themselves overnight. And gradually, the siblings begin to understand that the child haunting their home isn’t exactly who they thought he was.
The revelation at the heart of A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James transforms the narrative from a straightforward ghost story into something more complex and heartbreaking. Through research at the local college library and cemetery, the siblings discover that their childhood home was built on land once owned by the Whitten family—wealthy landowners whose tragic history infected the very ground. In 1906, a six-year-old boy named Edward Whitten drowned in a cellar hole that kept filling with water, unable to be properly drained. His older sister Anne, who was actually his teenage mother (pregnancy at fourteen concealed through Victorian-era shame), lured him from his bed one night with promises of seeing baby ducks. She drowned him in that water-filled hole, and a year later, she hanged herself.
The implications ripple outward with devastating force. Ben wasn’t their biological brother at all—he was Edward, reincarnated, drawn back to the same cursed ground. The malevolent “Sister” who terrorized Violet all those years was Anne, still trapped in her cycle of rage and despair. The water that haunted Dodie’s childhood nightmares, the lights that Vail saw standing over his bed—all of it traces back to that original tragedy, playing out again and again across generations.
Confronting Darkness in the Flooded Depths
The climactic confrontation takes place in the abandoned house across the street, where someone once tried to rebuild over the Whitten land but gave up when inexplicable water problems made construction impossible. Armed with makeshift weapons—a baseball bat, a garden shovel, a golf club, a hatchet—the siblings descend into a flooded basement where Anne’s fury has concentrated itself. The sequence unfolds with visceral intensity:
- The icy water rising to their waists
- Anne’s physical attacks leaving bruises and pain
- The clicking sound of her presence moving through the dark
- The desperate need to find Ben’s remains and give him peace
St. James doesn’t shy away from the uncomfortable truth that grief makes people do desperate things, that trauma compounds across lifetimes, that some wounds run deeper than any single generation can heal. The confrontation with Anne becomes not just about defeating a malevolent ghost, but about breaking a cycle—about refusing to let past tragedies define future generations.
Violet’s daughter Lisette, who ran away from home to be with her mother despite the danger, becomes part of this resolution. Her presence forces Violet to confront her failures as a parent, just as Violet’s own parents failed her. The book suggests that healing requires facing uncomfortable truths: about our families, about ourselves, about the ways we perpetuate damage even when we swear we won’t.
What Works Brilliantly
The novel’s greatest strength lies in its character work. Each sibling feels fully realized, damaged in distinct ways by their shared childhood. Violet’s fierce protectiveness masks deep insecurity about her abilities as both sister and mother. Vail’s emotional distance serves as armor against a world that constantly disappoints him. Dodie’s guilt has calcified into a brittle shell of superficiality. Their reunion feels authentic—marked by old conflicts, tender moments, and the particular shorthand that only siblings possess.
St. James also excels at weaving together multiple timelines without confusion. The 1906 tragedy, the 1971 disappearance, and the 1989 investigation all feel distinct yet interconnected. The revelation of Ben’s true nature arrives with perfect timing—neither too early to rob the story of mystery, nor too late to feel like a twist manufactured for shock value.
The horror elements work because they’re rooted in emotional truth. Yes, there are frightening supernatural encounters, but the real terror comes from loss, guilt, and the fear that we failed the people we loved most. The ghost isn’t just scary—it’s tragic, a reminder of how abuse and shame can corrupt across generations.
Where the Darkness Deepens
While A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James delivers a compelling narrative, some readers might find the pacing in the middle sections occasionally meandering. The siblings spend considerable time in research mode—visiting archives, talking to old neighbors, piecing together historical records. These sequences are necessary for the plot but can feel slow compared to the propulsive opening and climactic final act.
Additionally, certain supernatural elements remain deliberately ambiguous. How exactly does reincarnation work in this world? What are the rules governing ghosts? St. James seems more interested in emotional resonance than metaphysical mechanics, which suits the story’s themes but may frustrate readers seeking clear explanations.
The 1989 setting, while atmospheric, sometimes feels underutilized. Beyond the lack of modern technology affecting the investigation, the specific cultural moment doesn’t significantly impact the story. This could have taken place in almost any pre-digital era with minimal changes.
Echoes of Familiar Hauntings
Fans of St. James’s previous work will recognize her signature touches—the small-town setting hiding dark secrets, the strong female protagonist with supernatural abilities, the careful unraveling of historical mysteries. A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James shares DNA with Murder Road, The Broken Girls and The Sun Down Motel, though it leans more heavily into family drama than those earlier works.
Readers seeking similar atmospheric supernatural fiction might explore:
- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Another tale of family secrets and haunted houses, with similar attention to psychological horror
- The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters – For readers who appreciate slow-building dread and ambiguous supernatural elements
- The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell – Gothic horror with historical mysteries and malevolent presences
- The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling – Combines psychological thriller elements with genuine supernatural terror
- The Invited by Jennifer McMahon – Contemporary characters confronting historical hauntings with family ties
St. James has crafted novels exploring similar themes throughout her career, and longtime readers will appreciate seeing her tackle the particular horror of sibling bonds tested by shared trauma.
Final Reckoning
A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James succeeds as both supernatural thriller and family drama, never sacrificing one for the other. The horror feels earned rather than manufactured, rooted in recognizable human emotions—grief, guilt, love, rage. The resolution, while providing closure, doesn’t offer easy answers or complete healing. The siblings survive their confrontation with Anne, presumably find Ben’s remains and lay him to rest, but the scars they carry aren’t magically erased.
This isn’t a story about defeating evil and living happily ever after. It’s about learning to carry darkness, about choosing to face painful truths rather than running from them, about the ways family can damage us and save us simultaneously. The title itself—A Box Full of Darkness—comes from a Mary Oliver poem, suggesting that darkness, too, can be a gift when we learn to hold it properly.
For readers who appreciate horror that understands the greatest terrors come from within, who value character development as much as supernatural scares, and who can handle slower pacing in service of emotional depth, this novel delivers a deeply satisfying experience. St. James has written a haunting meditation on loss, family, and the ghosts we carry—both literal and metaphorical—long after we think we’ve left them behind.
The house in Fell waits still, breathing quietly in the dark, holding its secrets close. Some ghosts are meant to be confronted. Some doors, once opened, can never quite close again.
