The Whitby Witches

Infobox Book |
name = The Whitby Witches
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = First edition cover
author = Robin Jarvis
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = The Whitby Witches
genre = Fantasy novel
publisher = Hodder Wayland
release_date = 1991
media_type = Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0750005815
preceded_by =
followed_by = A Warlock in Whitby

"The Whitby Witches" is the first book in the "The Whitby Witches" series by Robin Jarvis. It was originally published in 1991.

Plot Summary

After the deaths of their parents, eight year old orphan Ben and his older sister, Jennet, have been pushed from foster home to foster home for the majority of their young lives. After living at a dreary hostel for a few months, the mistress Mrs Rodice has the children hauled off to live in the seaside village of Whitby, with relish. Ben and Jennet do not get along as Ben possesses a sixth sense meaning that he can see the spirits of dead people, including his parents. Jennet does not share this gift and therefore assumes he is lying and deliberately causing trouble. It is Ben's uncanny ability to see the dead that has caused him and his sister to be shunted between homes, as the families fostering them are unnerved by Ben.

Upon arrival in Whitby, the children are adopted by a kind and eccentric elderly spinster named Miss Alice Boston, a former university lecturer. She and the children take to each other almost immediately, despite the children being a little bemused by Miss Boston's (or Aunt Alice as they grew to call her) odd mannerisms and lifestyle. Miss Boston tells Ben the scary stories of Whitby much to his delight as he adores horror stories, but Jennet does not approve as she believes it will encourage his lies and his stories that he can see their dead parents.

Miss Boston is friends with many of the elderly spinsters in the Whitby community. The widowed Mrs Prudence Joyster, whose late husband was in the army; the batty, cat-loving Miss Matilda Droon, Miss Edith Whethers the postmistress, and the wealthy and grossly obese Dora Banbury-Scott, twice the widow who refuses to grow old gracefully. Ben and Jennet settle into Whitby and Ben encounters the "Fisher Folk", or the "Aufwader" as they call themselves. A reclusive and mysterious tribe of humanoid dwarf-like beings who are unseen by all except those with the sixth sense. Ben meets Nelda Shrimp, the youngest of the diminishing tribe and her aunt, Hesper Gull. They tell them that their kind are forbidden to fraternise with humans as it has done nothing but cause grief in the past. But Nelda has a premonition that Ben is involved in the fate of their tribe.

The Fisher Folk were once plentiful in centuries past, but after the witch-doctor of the tribes, Oona, fell in love with a human fisherman and together they produced a half-breed child. Enraged with this act of violation the Lords of the Deep, spirit-lords of the oceans, killed the fisherman and Oona commited suicide. Cheated of revenge, the Lords of the Deep turned to the Fisher Folks and condemned all the females to die in childbirth, meaning that the tribes would never prosper. Nelda's own mother fell victim to this terrible fate along with so many other female Aufwaders.