Be Kind, O Ghost

The Uninvited (1944)
directed by Lewis Allen
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on VHS from Cinefile Video

There is much in common between the mood of stormy spring days and windy October ones, and late February rain is better than dead of winter snow for haunted house tales. Haunted houses creak and moan and sit on bluffs beside the sea. Rain through real-life open windows gives shape and pattern to the silences that interrupt the sleep of The Uninvited's stars. When the film was done, I slept on a sofa beside the television and watched night and a storm pass through the city.

The protagonists of the story, a brother and sister, are modern sorts, practical and unbelieving. When they are at last convinced a spirit roams their halls and lawn, they conjure up the apparition and try to send her on. The ghost, when she is seen, is a trick of light, hollow-eyed and spectral. But more often than not, she is wind and cold air only, nearly unnoticed at the back of the neck but for a pale shiver at the throat.

And that is how it goes as the trees begin to bud and there is enough dampness near the nightstand to keep a fire in the hearth, if you have one. A house comes back to life again, shakes off the snow and sags with rain. Movies fill the air.