• The Apparition Phase

  • By: Will Maclean
  • Narrated by: Theo Solomon
  • Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (2 ratings)

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The Apparition Phase  By  cover art

The Apparition Phase

By: Will Maclean
Narrated by: Theo Solomon
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Publisher's Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Tim and Abi have always been different from their peers. Precociously bright, they spend their evenings in their parents' attic discussing the macabre and unexplained, zealously re-reading books on folklore, hauntings and the supernatural. In particular, they are obsessed with photographs of ghostly apparitions and the mix of terror and delight they provoke in their otherwise boring and safe childhoods.

But when Tim and Abi decide to fake a photo of a ghost to frighten an unpopular school friend, they set in motion a deadly and terrifying chain of events that neither of them could have predicted and they are forced to confront the possibility that what began as a callous prank might well have taken on a malevolent life of its own. 

An unsettling literary ghost story set between a claustrophobic British suburban town and a menacing Suffolk manor, The Apparition Phase is an unnerving novel, which, like all the best ghost stories, pushes us repeatedly over the line between rational explanation and inexplicable fear. It asks us to consider what might be lurking in the shadows and questions what is real and what is simply a trick of the mind - and whether there's really a difference between the two.

©2020 Will Maclean (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

"A delight for both the expert and the uninitiated, this creepy tale is a carapace of cosy nostalgia wrapped round a solid thread of dread.... A page turner that keeps you in dreaded suspense of what you are about to be shown.... A claustrophobic and entertaining read that left me breathless.... Horror for the connoisseur." (Alice Lowe)

What listeners say about The Apparition Phase

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Profile Image for Andy Kelly
  • Andy Kelly
  • 11-04-20

Impossible to listen to...

I don't know who directed the reader, but i don't think it could have been read any slower, audible should have a setting where you can speed up the playback, at least as long as idiots like this continue reading their books.

8 people found this helpful

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  • G R Collia
  • 12-14-20

The narrator ruined it

There were points in this book where I actually got caught up in what was happening, but the narrator was so awful that I had to stop listening regularly just to get away from his voice. Who chose such a dead, flat, emotionless, slow, boring narrator? He went on and on, and on, and on... In the end, though I did manage to listen to the whole audiobook, my brain chose to selectively forget most of it the moment it was finished. The book - trying very hard to ignore the narrator for a minute - was nothing spectacular. I didn't find it creepy or unsettling. An average book... done to death by an awful narrator.

7 people found this helpful

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  • C. Meyer
  • 12-13-20

Nostalgic spooky tale

I really enjoyed the story, it was well written, creepy and entertaining. I found the narration really annoying. He made some bizarre choices for different character voices - like he was so desperate to differentiate he went really over the top. One 17 year old boy sounded like Zippy from rainbow, and a girl like a Victorian street wench. Very distracting - I’d recommend reading rather than listening

4 people found this helpful

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  • Brian Eeles
  • 07-09-21

Dull, slow and overwritten.

I think there are some decent ideas hidden among this overwritten, overhyped book. The 70's hauntology references seems to be just thrown in randomly to appeal.to a certain type of reader without adding anything to the story. I really struggled to make it through and finally gave up after the first two parts as very little had actually happened. The narrator does their best but cannot elevate this book. Very disappointed.

2 people found this helpful

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  • James
  • 04-01-21

Make you're own mind upcxd

From reading the other reviews I was expecting a train-wreck of a production. After taking a chance, I was happily surprised and thoroughly enjoyed both the narration and the story it told.

2 people found this helpful

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  • Clarabelle
  • 04-27-23

Good story but narration disappointing.

I really enjoyed the story and the general narration was ok but I struggled with the character voices. They were all nasally and the accents were over done making some of the characters, particularly Seb, Neil and Polly difficult to listen to.

1 person found this helpful

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  • shine
  • 08-12-21

brilliant story line .Couldn't stop listening

loved it .Especially the ending ,so different .A most enthralling story.i would recommend it

1 person found this helpful

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  • G. Findlay
  • 05-13-21

70's 80's set and excellently done.

Very good. Very British. Felt like a contemporary retelling of a great Hammer House of Horrors tale.

1 person found this helpful

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  • Amazon Customer
  • 05-12-21

Great story!

Fantastic story, highly recommend! Don’t let the slow narration put you off, I listened at 1.3 speed and it sounded perfect!

1 person found this helpful

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  • Robbie
  • 05-15-23

Disappointed

This is read as if it’s a poem not a story. Didn’t like the reading style at all. I found it very distracting. The story was just boring. There was no element of suspense, no change in intonation anywhere. Just flat, blah blah blah. I just couldn’t get interested in it. Or care about the characters.

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Profile Image for B. Rawlings
  • B. Rawlings
  • 02-04-22

Really torn on this one It was a bit if a roller.

First off, I want to warn potential readers that this story is quite depressing. Not that it's overly dark or graphic, but the depiction of Tim's life and, in particular, the ending, are quite sad and leave you feeling empty. In saying that, they are also quite realistic.

This story is broken into several sections. The first, Tim and Abby's childhood. This section has its moments and is generally entertaining. Then it skips forward in time to Tim's general adolescence. This section, although necessary to the story, makes it feel more like a coming of age story than anything horror or thriller. But this section inevitably leads to the main part, and easily the most interesting part, where Tim (quite randomly) joins a group of strangers staying in an old, supposedly haunted, house, where they conduct numerous séances together. The characters here are much richer and more 3D than any of the others and it's easy to get hooked on this portion of the story. I certainly did! But alas, it comes to a crashing end, and a bleak one at that, and then there's one more final section for the last hour or so, the downward spiral and epilogue, much of which feels disjointed and destructive of the rest of the story. It made it hard to enjoy, that's for sure, but I'm wondering if perhaps that was the point and the intention of the author.

Anyway, the narrator does a decent job, and the story telling is reasonably well done. One of my main qualms is that chapters always ended at a good part, then the story jumped forward in time for the next chapter, so you missed out on important reactions and happenings. It started to feel cheap over time, the more it happened. There were also random blocks of time where nothing occurred between the characters, even though they were all together and doing nothing. How does it take 7 hours for a bored group of people to discuss something important? It just isn't believable.

4/5 overall for me. Listen to it just for the "haunting" aspect, but be prepared for a life story being thrown in with it.

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  • sandra darling
  • 12-01-20

Creepy ghost story

Absolutely loved this story! Spooky, well paced, and a story within a story- I will encourage listeners to bear with the narration, because the story is truly worth it.