What is it about ghost stories and New England? If Amityville had been in Omaha, would it still have been scary? Anyway, Bohjalian understands how to set the stage for maximum eeriness: a quaint, isolated New Hampshire village, a gingerbread Victorian house with secret passages and an earthen cellar, and some very nosy 'herbalists' who smile a lot and take an inordinate interest in 10-year-old twin girls. Chip and Emily retreat to Bethel, NH, after Chip's commuter jet crashes in Lake Champlain, killing the majority of his passengers. Their new haven is not what it at first seemed, however. Bohjalian does an expert job of keeping you guessing whether Chip is merely traumatized or truly possessed by spirits, and whether the plant ladies are only hyper-organic or something far more sinister. Most impressive to me were the long descriptive sequences of the plane crash...ultimately far more terrifying than any haunting.
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