The Haunting at Cliff House by Karleen Bradford, 1985.

This is a relatively short chapter book, but suspenseful, thoughtful, and well-written.

When her father inherits an old house in Wales from a distant relative, Alison, a young teenager, finds out that he plans for the two of them to spend the summer there.  Alison’s father is a university professor and is writing a book, and he thinks that the house in Wales sounds like a great place for him to get some writing done while he and Alison have a look at his new inheritance.  Alison isn’t enthusiastic about the trip, but she and her father are very close, especially because she lost her mother at a very young age.  Besides, the only place she could stay in Canada would be with her grandmother, and her grandmother didn’t seem enthusiastic about having her.

From the moment they arrive at the old house, called Pen-y-Craig or Cliff House by the locals, Alison has a bad feeling about it.  It stands on a lonely cliff by a small town.  The carved dragon over the door gives her the creeps, and there is something disturbing about a particular room in the house.  Sometimes, she can almost hear a voice calling out to her, and she has visions of another girl, about her age.  At first, she tries to tell herself that it’s all her imagination, but it soon becomes obvious that it’s not.

Some of the local people know that the house has an unhappy history, and Alison eventually learns that the great-aunt that her father inherited it from even refused to live there during her last years because it disturbed her too much.  A little more examination of the room that had disturbed her helps Alison discover the reason why.  After having a vision of a young girl hiding something behind a brick in the fireplace of one of the bedrooms, Alison searches the spot and finds a diary dating from 1810, written by a girl named Bronwen, who was the same age as Alison.  Like Alison, Bronwen was brought to the house by her widowed father and was unhappy about it, but those aren’t the only parallels between Bronwen’s life and Alison’s.

Alison becomes uncomfortable with her father’s new friendship with a Welsh neighbor, Meiriona.  Alison likes Meiriona’s younger brother, Gareth, but when it looks like her father’s friendship with Meiriona is turning into romance, Alison becomes jealous and fears changes in her close relationship with her father, a situation that mirrors Bronwen’s life when her father falls in love with her governess, Catrin.  Although Meiriona tries to be nice to Alison, Alison can’t bring herself to like her, and she argues with her father about it.

The only person who seems to understand her feelings at all is Gareth, and Alison confides her worries in him, both about Meiriona and about Bronwen, whose spirit keeps calling out to Alison to help her, although Alison doesn’t know how.  She struggles to read through the diary, whose pages are not all legible anymore because they’re damaged with age, to learn what happened to Bronwen and what Bronwen wants her to do now.  Gareth tries to reassure Alison that her father’s relationship with Meiriona will not be as bad as Alison thinks.  He thinks that the relationship would be good for both Alison’s father and Meiriona because they are both lonely, and he doesn’t think that Alison should worry about losing her father because he’s not worried about losing his sister, even if she goes to Canada to study and spend more time with Alison’s father.  At first, Alison isn’t comforted by these reassurances.  However, Gareth agrees that the matter of the ghost is serious, and he can feel her presence as well. Gareth warns Alison to be cautious about the ghost but to try to help if she can and to call out to him if she’s ever in danger.  Alison would really rather just go home to Canada, run away from her father and Meiriona, and forget the whole thing about Bronwen, but history seems to be repeating itself, and Bronwen’s voice calls out to her insistently for help that only Alison can give.

It’s a bit of a spoiler, telling you this, but although Alison at first thinks that the diary ends with Bronwen killing herself in despair, thinking that her father only loved Catrin and not her and that there was nothing left for her to live for, the truth is that Bronwen’s suicide attempt didn’t succeed and that she made another mistake that she wants Alison to help her to change.  Bronwen attempted to kill herself by going to a cave by the sea during a terrible storm, planning to allow herself to drown, but when the water started rising, she became too frightened and decided to leave by a secret entrance to the cave.  Not knowing that Bronwen was safe, Catrin attempted to save her and drowned in the cave herself.  As Bronwen was climbing to safety, she heard Catrin calling for her but was too frightened of the storm and angry at Catrin to go back for her.  Although Bronwen lived on after the incident, she could never get rid of her guilt at Catrin’s death, realizing that, even in the middle of her resentment toward Catrin, Catrin loved her more than she knew, even to the point of giving up her own life while attempting to save hers.

Now, the anniversary of Catrin’s death is approaching, and so is a storm very much like the one that killed her.  At the top of the cliff by the cave, Alison finds her time merging with Bronwen’s, and she will only have one chance to help Bronwen make the right decision the second time around.  Helping Bronwen to prevent the worst mistake of her life and to make a better choice also helps Alison to reconsider her own choices and future.  Just as Bronwen misjudged Catrin, Alison may have also misjudged Meiriona. Instead of losing her father or being forced to accept a poor substitute for her mother, Alison may be gaining a kind of sister who will love her more than she realizes.