A Haunted House

“Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting.”

The opening line of the short story sets the main tone of the narrative, which is its ambiguity. No specific time is defined. This line sets an ambience of disorientation that permeates the whole short story.

“[…] a ghostly couple.”

The use of an adjective to describe the couple is an indication that the ghost story is not a conventional one. Instead of writing “a couple of ghosts,” which would clearly define the type of character of the story, Virginia Woolf uses the term “ghostly,” which provides the ghost characters with an ethereal, unreal trait.

“But it wasn’t that you woke us.”

The use of “us” in this sentence adds a layer to the point of view of the story. It reflects the ambiguity of the narrative: It is unclear whether the narrator is talking to the reader, as in Quotation 1, or mentally addressing the ghosts.