The Witching House by John Everson
Flame Tree Publishing (October 20, 2026)
Reviewed by W.D. Gagliani
Making a sharp U-turn from his last two giallo-inspired thrillers, veteran author John Everson (Covenant, NightWhere, Voodoo Heart, Siren, The Devil’s Equinox, Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds, The Bloodstained Doll, and numerous others) returns to the supernatural with his new novel, The Witching House. And it’s a quick ride down the slippery slope of grievance and resulting despair, spiced with sweet revenge. As in most tales of vengeance, it’s a case of the joy of serving that “cold dish,” blended seamlessly with a healthy serving of “be careful what you wish for.”
Set in a small town in the more remote part of southern Illinois, where high school student Gianna’s “complicated” family has just resettled from the Chicago area due to her father’s new job. It’s a far cry from the bustling place she called home. Lonely without her friends, saddled with a mostly aloof older brother, plus a pregnant stepmother who treats her (in her view) as a “slave,” and missing her institutionalized biological mother, Gianna’s attempts to fit in at school generally lead to disaster, but net one decent friend, the loyal Lisa. Unfortunately, the town’s elite families are now represented by her new classmates, and—sensing her outsider’s instinctive disdain for their insular hamlet—they immediately begin tormenting the new girl by first pretending to welcome her. These kids are not nice, and Gianna can’t help but feel picked on or bullied by everyone: classmates, teachers, parents, her brother…
But the rear of Gianna’s new house faces a vast corn field with the partially burned-out hulk of a rambling old farmhouse rising like a gravestone from its center, a blackened carcass whose surviving tower hides a plethora of secrets—and a ghost. The ghost of Madelyn, to be exact. A generation before, the young Madelyn had been coached in the ways of witching by another renegade witch, Victoria, who was originally instructed by the town’s resident fortune teller and purveyor of spells and potions, the now-aged Levita. This past succession led in its way to the townspeople’s murder of Madelyn, who perished when her house was deliberately set alight years before Gianna’s arrival.
Gianna thinks it’s a small-town urban legend that the ghost can be summoned by writing Madelyn’s name in your blood on the mirror in the tower, which has somehow remained mostly untouched since the fire extinguished the life of the last inhabitant. But alas, it’s not merely urban legend… and while Gianna sees in the spectral Madelyn the friend and ally she’s so desperate for, the bitter ghost sees in Gianna the instrument of her own revenge against the townsfolk.
Indeed, The Witching House is like an amusement park ride that moves so fast you barely have time to breathe before it dips you once again into potential oblivion. So quickly that you might miss some references—weaving almost invisibly throughout are (mostly superficial) callbacks to what you might label “the three Cs,” Candyman, Cinderella, and Carrie. And they work, offering familiar touchstones with which to process the action while reminding the reader that Gianna is ultimately a victim whose experience with vicious bullying in the new town leads her inexorably toward seeking retribution for herself and also for Madelyn—retribution that includes in one case a rather personal type of mutilation… a nice bit of extreme body horror.
In the end, the novel may at heart be a morality play built around taking responsibility for one’s actions, allowing for redemption, but in the hands of Stoker Award winner Everson, this tale of teenage angst weaponized from beyond the grave—and turned loose on enemies both real and perceived—ultimately morphs into a wicked feast of tropes for fans of that Halloween and folk-horror original, the witch. Full of eerie vibes perfect for the season, The Witching House is another winning and entertaining notch in Everson’s expanding canon.
