"House of Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I enjoyed this book, probably more so because it was not what I expected. I thought it would be a dark and gloomy gothic novel. Instead, I found Hawthorne to have a light touch, and to be quite modern in his thinking. It is never explicitly stated in the novel that the ghosts actually exist. They are described more as flights of fancy. As far as I can tell, the movies based on this book have been overwrought.