The Haunted Screen

Informed by the eerie paranoia of horror film, J. M. Tyree’s uncanny novella follows a couple transplanted to Germany.

While in the throes of writing a book on Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a film scholar believes he’s being followed by a strange presence. Is this a supernatural force emanating from the prehistoric caves in the region, one captured in lost footage from horror movies filmed in the area in the 1920s? Or is he being stalked by his ex, a mentor, former lover, and brilliant but problematic critic who claims to have discovered the secret history of a supernatural camera used in films by Murnau and Hitchcock?

When our scholar’s wife disappears and the local police start investigating him, he attempts to unravel a mystery that takes him to Berlin, to Prague, and into the haunted heart of movies whose scenes appear to be recurring in the present.

Moving between the double- life of professional networking and obsessive unease, The Haunted Screen blends the madness and obsession of academia with a dark, thrilling current of psychological mystery.

J.M. Tyree is the coauthor, with Michael McGriff, of Our Secret Life in the Movies (A Strange Object/Deep Vellum), an NPR Best Books selection. He serves as a contributing editor for New England Review and Film Quarterly. His film essay ＂Ways of Looking at Vertigo＂ was published in Bennington Review’s Issue Eleven.