The combination of the historical and the spooky can be deliciously thrilling. But why do these ingredients work so irresistibly well together? Why do ghost stories never lose their power?

To discuss such dark and mysterious matters we have Diane Setterfield, whose novels The Thirteenth Tale and Bellman & Black have won her worldwide acclaim, Rosetta Allan, whose first novel, Purgatory, based on the Otahuhu murders of 1865, has been described by Paula Morris as ‘vivid and engrossing’, and Coral Atkinson, whose Passing Through, set in Lyttelton in the 1920s, memorably explores spiritualism and the strange business of communicating with the ‘other side’. They talk to gothic expert and novelist, Liam McIlvanney.