Eerie, intelligent, and quietly brutal. The dead are not the scariest thing here.
A house on a hill should feel safe. In Pixerina: A Haunting by Joanne Anderton, it does not. This suburban Gothic novella transforms familiar domestic spaces into something quietly sinister. The story follows Rebecca, an artist trapped between creative frustration and the weight of unspoken losses. She finds an old house. She becomes obsessed. Anderton builds dread not through jump scares but through atmosphere so thick you feel it in your ribs.
Pixerina: A Haunting by Joanne Anderton Review – Suburban Gothic That Cracks Ordinary Walls
Pixerina: A Haunting by Joanne Anderton is a quietly unsettling and emotionally sharp novella that makes ordinary spaces feel suddenly uncanny. It is steeped in Gothic atmosphere. Framed through the life of Rebecca, an artist struggling with identity and creative frustration, the story transforms an old house on a hill into something far more sinister feeling. It becomes a place where memory festers, an obsession grows, and the boundary between inspiration and destruction begin to collapse.
At its heart, Pixerina: A Haunting is a tale about a haunting, but not only in the traditional sense. Yes, we meet Angelica, the ghostly girl whose presence pulls Rebecca deeper into the mystery of this old house, but the true hauntings are the emotional ones. Rebecca is haunted by her losses, artistic dissatisfaction, the weight of expectations, and by the quiet violence of the sacrifices women are often expected to make in pursuit of their passions. Anderton handles these layers with remarkable subtlety, allowing the supernatural elements to function less as a spectacle and more as an extension of Rebecca’s psychological truths.
What makes Pixerina: A Haunting especially compelling is how deeply it leans into a suburban Gothic feel. We don’t have an isolated castle or sprawling mansion, but a familiar domestic space. Homes, streets, and routines that should feel safe and familiar but instead carry a suffocating sense of unease and secrecy. The old house that is the object of Rebecca’s obsession is more than simply a setting. It feels alive, a palpable manifestation of buried memories and unresolved grief. It becomes both her sanctuary and her trap, reflecting a spiraling relationship with her art, her partner, and herself.
Rebecca is fascinating precisely because she is not easy to simplify. Her anguish and longing make her sympathetic, but her obsession with the home and subsequently, Angelica, pushes her into increasingly uncomfortable territory. There is something deeply unsettling about the way she seeks meaning. It raises questions about who gets to tell a person’s story, when suffering becomes art, and whether creating can sometimes become a form of consumption. Anderton doesn’t hold our hand through this, which makes the reading experience richer and far more haunting.
Angelica is equally compelling because she is not painted as a simple tragic ghost figure. She represents innocence, yes, but also silence, erasure, and the ways in which young girls can be reduced to symbols versus allowed complexity. Her relationship with Rebecca creates tension that feels both tender and eerie. The ambiguity gives the novella tremendous emotional weight. It askes the question of whether Rebecca is rescuing Angelica’s memory or using it to fill the emptiness within herself.
Anderton’s writing is beautifully controlled, often poetic without being indulgent. Anderton trusts atmosphere to do much of the work, building dread slowly rather than using overt horror. The result is a novella that feels simultaneously intimate and claustrophobic. Every detail like floating dust, battered walls, loud silence, and dim light seem charged with emotional significance. There is a dreamlike quality to the prose that gives the supernatural in inevitable feeling, as though the grief held within the homes walls has opened a doorway between worlds.
The story’s Gothic sensibilities combined with the suburban landscape we are set in feels sunlit and ordinary on the surface, but underneath is a persistent strangeness and a sense that history and silence are always sitting just beneath daily life. It gives Pixerina: A Haunting a unique texture and places its ghostly elements in something familiar and disquieting.
At novella length, Pixerina: A Haunting is concise, but never slight. Instead, its brevity sharpens its impact. There is no wasted movement and every scene contributes to the slow tightening of an impending unraveling. It reads like a whisper rather than a scream, but that whisper is deafening. Ultimately, the tale is asking difficult questions about grief, ownership, memory, and the cost of creation. It is eerie, intelligent, and emotionally resonant, offering us a ghost story where the most frightening thing is not the dead, but what the living are willing to do to keep from being forgotten. And, I can tell you when you learn Angelica’s true story, you will be absolutely horrified.
Thank you to Bad Hand Books for providing me an early copy for review. This book is available now directly from Bad Hand’s website or wherever you buy your books!
Pixerina: A Haunting by Joanne Anderton
CAN A PERSON HAUNT A GHOST?
Something about the old house on the hill has always intrigued artist Rebecca Bell, but she’s always resisted its pull. Until now. She becomes obsessed with the building, its history, its inhabitants—and especially the little girl whose spirit seems to linger in the house and on its grounds.
Angelica has been waiting patiently for someone to notice her. For someone to befriend her. For someone to care. Even after her passing.
Meeting Rebecca is a boon for both of them.
But while Angelica thinks she’s gaining a friend, Rebecca … well, Rebecca is gaining a muse.
Will the two of them come to an understanding, or will the dark history at the heart of Pixerina’s decayed foundations repeat itself?
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Abby Wolf is a journalist for The Fandomentals. She is also an avid reader, reviewer and fierce supporter of the horror community. She is also the author of the short story "The Inevitable", her first piece of fiction, which is included in the With Teeth werewolf anthology.
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