A novella that is based on old folklore and sweeps you away with the fairies.

• Originality factor: ★★★★★
• Folklore vibe: ★★★★★
• Found footage vibe: ★★★★★
• Haunted house factor: ★★★★☆

Wylding Hall is a folktale and a haunted house story with mysterious happenings, a great seventies hippie vibe, the folklore of the wren, interesting characters and a story with unique and multiple narratives that keeps you guessing what actually happened that summer. 

It consists of 176 pages. 

Plot

In the summer of 1972 band manager Tom Haring rents the mansion Wylding Hall in the countryside for the progressive folk band Windhollow Faire to work on their new album. The band consists of Lesley Stansall, the lead singer and songwriter, Ashton Moorehouse, the bassist, Jonathan Redheim, on drums and percussion, William Fogerty, rhythm guitar, fiddle and mandolin and Julian Blake, singer and songwriter and lead guitar. 

The mansion is huge and the place is idyllic. They play a lot and everything goes well. But they also experience some strange things in the mansion. And Julian is especially  vulnerable to otherworldly things. Just like Nancy O’Neill who comes to visit them and is Will’s girlfriend. Things get even stranger when a girl on bare feet shows up at the local pub where the band goes for a drink and to perform. That girl is mainly interested in Julian and he feels attracted to her. 

Then one day Julian disappears. This is the story of what happened that summer recounted by the other band members and Patrica Kenyon, a journalist who also came to visit and Billy Thomas, a local boy with a camera who shot the album cover pure by coincidence. 

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Short Review

The novella feels like a documentary. Everybody is being interviewed to recount their experiences in the mansion. Each of them have experienced different things. Some of them never noticed anything strange. But Julian does, being the esoteric one and who also lost his girlfriend last year, due to a fall from a balcony. There are also a lot of things going on between the band members, love affairs, a conflict between the two singers/songwriters, drugs and alcohol also play a role in their experiences. 

Each of them tells their own story about what happened that summer and their stories try to piece together the events that led to the disappearance of Julian. 

The old folklore that the story is based on is about the Wren. A wren is a bird, but it’s also a wicked creature, a Fairy woman that disguises itself as the wren. The story has multiple perspectives which makes it very interesting to find out how different people experienced and felt that summer. They all tell their story in the first person, like they are telling their story to you in person. This feels like a very practical approach and makes the contrast between the idyllic place and wonderful summer, in an mysterious mansion all the more apparent. It also feels more intimate this way, like a friend telling you their summer vacation. It does however make the narrators, also unreliable narrators, because they recount not the truth nor the objective events, but their colored subjective experiences. At the same time it makes them as characters more real and believable. It also makes the whole atmosphere surrounding that place more mystic. 

All the characters are very interesting and they have also interesting things to say. Their observations are engaging and sometimes they even contradict each other. Making the story come to life and more realistic. 

Although there’s not too much attention payed to the house itself. There are some scenes that turn the mansion into a haunted house. Strange impossible things happened inside its walls and they even are connected with the strange girl that shows up and with whom Julian is spending more and more time with. There are endless hallways, many doors, that lead to where you started from or keep you going in circles never finding what you were looking for, unless it lets you. 

Between the lines, their words, there’s a lot to find that was inexplicable and that ultimately led to Julian’s disappearance. It’s an interesting story, an intriguing story and a folktale that is as mysterious as it is idyllic. 

Wylding Hall is an original and authentic novella that mixes music and a genuine seventies vibe with folklore and a haunted house.