Be afraid of the dark

“Years ago a friend of mine was in a museum somewhere in Cairo, and was killing time waiting for a plane by looking around the galleries of Egyptian artefacts,” she says from her home near the Norfolk coast.

“Walking down a long gallery he felt a small hand take hold of his – rather like when children are in a supermarket and think they have taken their mother’s hand.

“He looked down and there was no child – there was nobody else in the gallery. Then the hand took his again. He went around the museum gallery with the feeling of this small child’s hand in his.

“They got to the end of the gallery and it went.

“He’s an intelligent person, not easily spooked.

“Like all real ghost stories nothing else happened – there was no story really – but that is where the novelist begins. It was my jumping-off point.”

The result was The Small Hand. The novel tells the tale of modern-day bookseller Adam Snow who stumbles across a derelict Edwardian house, and feels a small cold hand enter his when he is drawn inside to explore.

Now the book has followed Hill’s 1983 ghost story The Woman In Black onto the stage, with Clive Francis penning the script.

“Re-interpreting a novel as a play is not something I could do – it’s not my skill,” says hill. “I would rather do the originals and leave the plays to somebody else!

“I never interfere – it’s the adaptor’s job, not mine – they don’t want the author breathing down their neck.”

The stage production, which is also going to Eastbourne’s Devonshire Park Theatre from Monday, November 10, to Saturday, November 15, stars Coronation Street’s Andrew Lancel as Snow, with Doctors star Diane Keen taking on all female roles and Drop The Dead Donkey’s Robert Duncan portraying the other male roles.

Whether The Small Hand will have the same success as two-hander The Woman In Black is yet to be seen, as the play only began its tour at Theatre Royal Windsor at the beginning of October.

Since its 1988 stage debut The Woman In Black has become the longest running non-musical play in the West End after The Mousetrap, and was turned into a Hammer horror film starring Daniel Radcliffe in 2012. Hill had penned the original story of lawyer Arthur Kipps and the titular lady in 1983. Following the conventions of a Victorian gothic novel it saw an older retired Kipps tell the story of his horrifying experiences as a young solicitor who finds his peace disturbed by ever-more inexplicable events as he sorts the effects of a recently deceased widow in a remote house.

“I had always loved reading ghost stories,” says Hill. “There weren’t many full-length ones like The Turn Of The Screw {by Henry James} or {Charles Dickens’} A Christmas Carol. I wondered if I could do it myself.”

In preparation she read a lot of Victorian ghost stories and made notes on the essential components of a classic tale – from the atmosphere and weather conditions to the nature of a true ghost.

“A real ghost is not a horror movie thing,” she says. “It’s an actual person, who has actually been alive and is now presumably dead.

“A ghost has to have a reason to be there – true life ghost stories are all completely uninteresting as they are all pointless. You need to know why.”

Although more traditionally a short form, a longer ghost story allows its author to “turn the screw slowly and relax it again”.

“I like long form to get some background and more characters,” says Hill, who took a break from ghost novels after The Woman In Black, penning only The Mist In The Mirror in 1992.

More recently she has started a run of spooky tales, beginning in 2007 with The Man In The Picture, followed by The Small Hand in 2010, Dolly in 2012 and her most recent tale Printer’s Devil Court which was published earlier this month.

Unlike the period setting of The Woman In Black, The Small Hand is based in modern times.

“Although you can’t say nobody ever feels or sees a ghost in daylight, we frighten ourselves in the dark. That’s why primitive man lit fires. We frighten ourselves when we can’t see.

“Our own imagination is always more powerful when you’re reading fiction or listening to the radio. A film slightly contracts our imagination.

“When theatre is well done it leaves so much for the audience to respond to and create a lot of it themselves by their own frightened responses.”

She admits she never thought The Woman In Black would work on stage.

“When they suggested they wanted to adapt The Small Hand I wondered how they could adapt something which is just felt,” she says ahead of The Small Hand’s stage debut.

“It’s left to the cleverness of theatre to make it work – and it does work in the script.”

She admits a big inspiration for her writing comes from her extensive reading. It was something she tackled head-on with her non-fiction book Howard’s End Is On The Landing – which detailed a year she spent reading books she had in her house, rather than bringing in new purchases.

“I can’t understand people who say they want to be a writer so they never read anything,” she says. “It’s like a composer who never listens to music.”

Her latest book, Printer’s Devil Court, was inspired by reading classic Gothic horrors Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Her own advice to wannabe writers is to only read the best.

“It gives you a high aim,” she says. “Reading Henry James I had forgotten how amazing a writer he is. It stops you short and humbles you a bit, but makes you want to have a go.”

l Susan Hill will be at Theatre Royal Brighton on Tuesday, November 4, for a question and answer session following the performance.