40 Years of THE WOMAN IN BLACK: Haunting the Page, Stage, and Screen

The novel The Woman in Black recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. Released in Fall (or, seeing as we’re discussing a classic British ghost story, autumn) of 1983, The Woman in Black has become a much loved and much reimagined story. During its history it has been adapted into a TV movie, Hollywood film – with sequel, radio play and theatre production – which was the 2nd longest run of any play in London’s history. The apparition of The Woman in Black has taken many impressive shapes. What’s more impressive is that: the author, Susan Hill had never had a ghost story published prior to this one; the theatre adaptation was penned by a soap opera writer; and the first performance took place in a canteen - possibly a pub - in the northern coastal town of Scarborough (which is some 20 miles away from Dracula’s Whitby). 

The story itself revolves around a young solicitor, Arthur Kipps who is sent to a very rural town in the north west of England to settle the affairs of a recently deceased client. When he arrives at the market town of Crythin Gifford he is treated somewhat cautiously when he discusses his client. During his time there, he also sees a figure - a woman who is deathly thin completely covered in black clothing. After relocating to his client’s large and empty stately home to gather her personal documents, he discovers more about the woman he saw and how she has a grip on the town, and it may well soon have a grip on him too.

SPOILERS: Arthur Kipps discovers that his deceased client, Alice Drablow, had a sister, Jennet Humfrye. Jennet had a son, Nathanial out of wedlock and she was forced to give him to her sister and brother-in-law before moving away. She later came back to the town and she was allowed to see her son on occasions. A strong bond developed between the two, but Nathaniel tragically dies near the Drablow house and Jennet blames Alice for his death. Soon after, Jennet dies, but she slowly wastes away, becoming a skeletal-like figure. Ever since her death, whenever she is seen by anyone in the town, a child dies. 

Ghost Stories at Christmas

Despite being released in October of 1983, there would have been no promotional tie-in whatsoever to Halloween, mainly because the British – up until recently – never acknowledged the day. Interestingly, in Britain, Christmas was seen more as the spooky season. The British have a long association with festive ghost stories, dating back to the Victorian era. Families, loved ones and friends would gather around fires to tell and listen to ghostly tales in a bid to entertain one another through the long winter nights. Soon after, ghost stories were immortalised with the advent of the printing press. Tales of spooks and ghouls were captured in print for the masses – both rich and poor - to enjoy. Arguably, the most popular Christmas ghost story was one that had a happy and upbeat ending. A Christmas Carol was released in 1843; it had four ghosts and countless adaptations, reimaginings and retellings. However, this classic novella wasn’t the last famed festive short story. MR James wrote a slew of ghost stories in the early 1900s, many of which were adapted by the BBC in the 1970s as part of their A Ghost Story for Christmas series. This series has recently been revised under the expert hand of Mark Gatiss; the next instalment is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lot 249 and stars Games of Thrones’ Kit Harrington. 

So, given the longstanding tradition of ghost stories at Christmas, it should be of little surprise that The Woman in Black begins at 9.30pm on Christmas Eve. An older and wearier Arthur Kipps is forced to tell a ghost story, but having lived through one, he scornfully rejects the offer. He later writes down his tale in order to exorcise himself from the horrors of his past.

Susan Hill and the Writing of a Classic

Susan Hill’s writing career began early and successfully - at the age of 15 she wrote her first book, Enclosure which was published when she was at university. One British newspaper even covered the story, but not with a headline one would put in a scrapbook - ‘Schoolgirl writes sex novel’, was the angle the Daily Express took. Hill was prolific – from 1968 to 1971 she wrote six books and by 1972 she had won several prestigious literary awards. However, she didn’t write another novel for nine years, but during that time she read a lot of ghost stories and she found that many were short stories, so she set herself a challenge to write a full-length book that would attempt to keep the scares and suspense high. The challenge would pay dividends and The Woman in Black was unleashed on the world. During an interview with The Curve, Hill said ‘I have always loved reading ghost stories but had realised in recent years not a lot had been written’.

The Woman in Black was Hill’s first out and out ghost story, her first scary chiller, and it has arguably become her most celebrated work. The book is a classic ghost story, filled with all the elements one would expect: loss, regret, sorrow, guilt and revenge. Before she began writing, Hill made a list of key elements that a good ghost story needs. That list included: atmosphere, an isolated location, and a ghost with motivation to be in the realm of the living.

These three ingredients are what makes The Woman in Black rise. The isolated location in The Woman in Black is a character in itself. The fictional market town of Crythin Gifford is a closed off community and Hill’s writing makes it easy to imagine the small winding roads, the residential and commercial buildings and the vast areas of open land that surround it all. The town doesn’t just house the local community, it also plays a reluctant home to a dark secret. And, within this rural community is the former home of Alice Drablow, a recently deceased ‘rum-un’ (eccentric or strange), which is the epicentre of the town’s secrets. The house is connected to the mainland by a thin strip of land and travel is only possible when the tide is out. Hill has done amazingly well to create an isolated location within an isolated location.

The story of The Woman in Black is a rather simple, but effective one. And it shares much in common with the celebrated works of the genre that came before it, namely The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House. And, much like these works, The Woman in Black has been successfully adapted for different mediums, including the theatre, and although the theatre adaptation was mainly performed in the heart of London’s theatre district, it started life some 250 miles away in Scarborough, via Greece.

Stage-Fright

The play was adapted by actor and writer Stephen Mallatratt, who was a writer on British soap opera Coronation Street when he brought Susan’s Hill novel to life on the stage. Mallatratt picked up a copy of the book at the airport before he flew to Greece on holiday; he read the story on the beach and thought he could adapt it. He contacted Hill with a proposal, but she thought he was ‘mad’.

The play originally ran for six weeks during the Christmas of 1987; reports vary about where it actually opened. Some say it was in a pub and one source states it was the canteen within the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. However, Hill told Piece of Pink Pie that it opened in the studio theatre alongside the pantomime. Two years later the production opened in London’s West End.

1989 was a big year for The Woman in Black – as well as the theatre production opening in London, the story was adapted by Nigel Kneale for TV, and it premiered on Christmas Eve of that year. The film was received well by critics and celebrity fans include Inside No. 9’s Reece Shearsmith and Guillermo Del Toro, but it has been reported that Susan Hill didn’t care much for some of the changes made by Kneale, including changing the sex of Kipps’ dog companion, Spider, and the random tweaking of names – Arthur Kipps became Arthur Kidd in Kneale’s version, although Hill has warmed to the TV version in recent years. The film went missing for a long time, it was shown on TV again five years after its initial broadcast, but lay dormant until it was released on Blu-ray in 2020.

The play took residence in London and it became a staple of the West End for 33 years. The story has been amended and tweaked slightly, but only so it fits the format of a theatre production. In the theatre adaptation an older Arthur Kipps seeks the help of an actor so that he can tell the story of the woman in black to his friends and family. The actor tries to help Kipps present himself with more verve and charisma, and what entails is the actor and the older Arthur Kipps acting out the entire story; the actor plays a young Arthur Kipps and the older Arthur Kipps plays everyone else. 

The play has generally always been performed in smaller theatres of about 400 seats or so, and this is what greatly benefits the atmosphere of the play. The more intimate setting means audiences are on top of the action and much closer to the scares. They are the third person in the room, and those who turn up slightly late are asked to wait outside the auditorium so that the older Arthur Kipps can explain what has happened in between the scenes on stage. And, when the woman in black does appear, she doesn’t always appear on the stage, so as a member of the audience you see her in the distance – in the aisle, the stalls – not quite knowing what you’re seeing. For that moment in time, you become Arthur Kipps.

Despite the success of the play, its residency in London came to an end on 4th March 2023, due in part to financial reasons. Producer Peter Wilson said, ‘the economic reality of attracting so many young people has caught up with us in a world of rising prices’. For a London show, The Woman in Black was reasonably priced and there were always many deals and incentives that allowed customers discounted entries, but alas, not even the power of the woman in black can stop the cost of living crisis.

Despite leaving London, the play isn't dead and buried – a production of The Woman in Black is currently touring the UK and there are plans to stage productions in New York and Tokyo in 2024.

The Woman in Black on the Silver Screen

There is one more incarnation of the story – 2012’s The Woman in Black movie starring Daniel Radcliffe. The movie was a financial success – it had the biggest opening for a Hammer film in the USA (earning £20 million) and it was also the highest-grossing British film in 20 years. Despite the film being a success, in this writer’s opinion it never reached the heights of the book and the play. Too much of the story was needlessly changed, although there are a considerable amount of jump scares, and Susan Hill likes it. She told the Guardian in 2012, ‘what a screenwriter must do is remain true to the spirit of a book, and Jane (Goldman – the screenwriter) has’. A sequel, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death was released in 2015, and despite Susan Hill helping to outline the story, the film didn't achieve the same level of success.

Even though the West End show closed after 13,000 performances, The Woman in Black still lives on. She’s always out there. Looking. Waiting. Ready to pick her next victim. All incarnations of The Woman in Black are genuinely terrifying and you are encouraged to seek out – especially the book - at your earliest opportunity! 

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Available from Penguin, we have 5 copies of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black and Other Ghost Stories to give away to Daily Dead readers in the UK! For a chance to win one of the five copies, send an email to contest@dailydead.com with the subject “The Woman in Black UK”. Be sure to include your name and mailing address. The contest will end at 12:01am EST on January 10th. This contest is only open to those who are eighteen years of age or older that live in the United Kingdom. Only one entry per household will be accepted.