Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

Chapter 20

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“I can’t go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla,” said Anne desperately.

Marilla stared.

“The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted Wood?”

“The spruce wood over the brook,” said Anne in a whisper.

“Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff?”

“Nobody,” confessed Anne. “Diana and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places round here are so—so—commonplace. We just got this up for our own amusement.(begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)F12(end superscript) Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There’s a white lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night she appears and wrings her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a death in the family. Oh And the ghost of a little murdered child

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note F12
We began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it's so gloomy[.]


TEXT ANNOTATION

"The Haunted Wood": In her youth, Montgomery and her playmates invented a Haunted Wood close to the Macneill farmhouse. When she wrote Anne of Green Gables, she had in mind the woodland that is now preserved by Parks Canada as the "Haunted Wood," situated between the Mayfair Road and Green Gables House.