What initially attracted me to this novel is how Sager played up the idea of not knowing whether the supernatural actually has a reasonable explanation or not, and I was quite glad to see he delivered on this initial promise throughout the rest of the story.

In other words, if I am informed the paranormal is part of the world I am exploring in a book, then I am no longer surprised or even affected by it for its normalcy.Įvery house has a story to tell. Whenever I begin reading a novel with supernatural or ghost-centered elements, I feel a sense of tension is always automatically lost when I know for a fact whether or not the supernatural is real.

The Skeptical Narrative of Home Before Dark What’s more, she finds Baneberry Hall to be filled with relics from different times, hinting at a very real darkness festering in the forgotten corners and behind the old walls of the estate. However, Maggie’s homecoming is a far cry from how she expected, with the locals bearing ill will toward her family for drawing their small town into infamy. When her father passes away and she inherits Baneberry Hall, she decides to renovate the place and put it up for sale ghosts and hauntings are, after all, surely products of pure fantasy. Today, Maggie remembers nothing of what she and her parents went through two decades and a half ago, happily earning her living as a restorer of old homes. Her father, Ewan, eventually recounted the ordeals he went through during those three weeks in his non-fiction horror memoir, which eventually turned into a bestseller. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into an old Victorian estate in the Vermont woods, Baneberry Hall, and fled in the midst of night only three weeks later. Perhaps thankfully, most of us will never have the opportunity to live in a haunted house, but for Maggie Holt in Home Before Dark by Riley Sager, it’s a common fact of her life she has to deal with constantly. I think even those of us who don’t believe in ghosts or paranormal elements are still drawn to these houses, if only for the countless lost secrets from days past they still hold within. Haunted houses have always maintained a certain level of fascination with the general public, to the point where many old homes are only still standing for their value as tourist attractions. Riley Sager takes Maggie to the Horror House

Home before dark a novel