Graphic Content: Graveneye by Sloane Leong and Anna Bowles

 In the haunted house subgenre, it takes a special kind of book to stand out from all the other haunted house tales, both past and present. Graveneye by writer Sloane Leong and artist Anna Bowles definitely stands out as an original tale thanks to several unique aspects of its story and its medium. The fact that it’s a graphic novel is not the most unusual element of this tale of hunger and obsession, nor is it the fact that there is minimal dialogue in this piece. No, what makes this book stand out from all the other haunted house tales is the narrator, which is the house. Not a ghost in the house, but the house itself.

The story itself is actually conventional. Ilsa lives alone in her large mansion deep in the woods. Marie, the new housekeeper, knows there is something fascinating about the house and about its lone inhabitant. Brave, confident Ilsa is free to do as she wishes. Whenever she wants to hunt on her property, indulging in her bloody fantasies, she is able. Marie sees Ilsa’s freedom, as well as her confidence, and wishes she could live life as boldly as Ilsa. But Marie is too timid to escape the burden she is trapped under, and she does not realize the terrible secrets that Ilsa and the house keep hidden.

The house as a narrator speaks directly to the audience, not as something that was once human who has somehow become a house, but as a house that has somehow become sentient, a silent witness to the depravities of its residents. The house narrates not only as a dispassionate observer but also as an observer who only knows humanity from the strange actions it has seen as a house. Along with Leong’s strange narration of this Gothic tale, plus her eschewing of traditional dialogue, there is Bower’s artwork that sticks mostly to a black and white pallet, except when the scene calls for a visceral red. Haunted house stories sometimes sabotage their own scares by suddenly becoming loud to the point of being obnoxious. Leong’s show of restraint establishes tension that Bower’s minimalist art style only magnifies with its depiction of cold and colorless rooms nevertheless teeming with shadows and secrets. The house, the reader discovers, is the right person to tell this story. It has studied the past of where it was built, who has lived in it, and it’s as implacable as any structure designed to stand for hundreds of years.