The Haunting of Rakers Wood

This is a love story. It is also, as the title suggests, a ghost story.

The setting is a rambling old house called Rakers Wood. It has a sinister reputation that the new owners, Carol and Adam Baker, have yet to hear about. By the time they move in it is already too late to avoid what is coming.

The Bakers’ new home is a very old house on a site with a fearsome history dating from pagan times. It was founded in blood and that blood has tainted the place, as if for all time.

It is also located at a spot where several ley lines intersect. These are hypothetical straight lines,dating from prehistoric days, which some people regard as having paranormal properties. It is hardly surprising that dark deeds are thought to have been committed within its bounds, and for echoes of those deeds to pervade the place and to be invoked, subconsciously perhaps, when the necessary nervous energy exists within the property, the very sort likely to be generated by the tensions that exist in the Baker family, the new people at Rakers Wood. There is so much anguish there, the sources of which are remarkably strong.

Particularly vulnerable to the malign elements beginning to awaken once the new owners move in is Carol Baker, still grieving over the drowning of her five-year-old son. Her daughter Ann, deeply unhappy at being separated from her boyfriend by the house move, is also a likely target. And then there is Peter, Ann’s boyfriend, despised by Carol Baker because of the reduced circumstances of his family, down on his first visit to Ann in her new home. He is made aware of Carol Baker’s disapproval from the moment he arrives, and no matter how much he tries to avoid upsetting Ann’s mother, she is relentless in her determination to break up their relationship.
Carol is also increasingly resentful of her husband's long absences as he strives to master his new responsibilities connected with his demanding job. He, too, is seriously stressed, and his wife's continual sniping is not helping him. It is inevitable that something dire will happen, and it surely does.

But when all seems lost for Peter and Ann, help comes from a surprising quarter, and it comes at a time that is very significant indeed – Midsummer's Eve.