The Apparition Phase Shortlisted for the 2021 McKitterick Prize

Tim and Abi are precocious, macabre-obsessed twins growing up in early-1970s England, united by a shared fascination with the occult and the uncanny. When they fake a ghost photograph to scare a schoolmate, Janice Tupp, the prank works far too well—and Janice's insistence that the photo is real, 'or will be soon,' opens a crack that will not close.

Years later, an adolescent Tim joins a group of teenagers for a psychic experiment in a decaying old house in Suffolk, where the past and the paranormal begin to close in. Shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize, Will Maclean's The Apparition Phase is an atmospheric, slow-building ghost story steeped in the textures of 1970s Britain—a haunted-house horror about grief, guilt, and the danger of getting exactly what you pretended to want.