When Lydia Whitaker inherits her grandmother’s decaying Southern estate, Willow House, she expects grief—not claw marks gouged into the front doors or voices whispering her name from empty rooms. But Willow House doesn’t just hold ghosts; it feeds on silence. As Lydia unearths letters, locked rooms, and the memories of women long erased, she begins to unravel a brutal history buried beneath generations of obedience, fear, and shame. Haunted by the spirit of a woman named Eleanor and guided by her grandmother’s final warnings, Lydia must decide whether to follow the rules passed down in silence—or defy the house and give voice to the forgotten. Grinning in the Dark is a gothic literary horror novel about inherited silence, generational trauma, and the terrifying power of finally listening to the ghosts no one else dared to hear.