<P> The book has also been adapted into a stage play by Stephen Mallatratt . It is the second longest - running play in the history of the West End, after The Mousetrap . </P> <P> The story begins with Arthur Kipps, a retired solicitor who formerly worked for Mr. Bentley . One night he is at home with his wife Esme and four stepchildren, who are telling ghost stories . When he is asked to tell a story, he becomes irritated and leaves the room, and begins to write of his horrific experiences several years in the past . </P> <P> Many years earlier, whilst still a junior solicitor for Bentley, Kipps was summoned to Crythin Gifford, a small market town on the north east coast of England, to attend the funeral of Mrs. Alice Drablow . Kipps is reluctant to leave his fiancée, Stella, but he is eager to leave the London smog . The late Drablow was an elderly and reclusive widow who lived alone in the desolate and secluded Eel Marsh House . </P> <P> The house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway . At high tide, it is completely cut off from the mainland, surrounded only by marshes and sea frets . Kipps soon realizes there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally thought . At the funeral, he sees a woman dressed in black and with a pale face and dark eyes, whom a group of children are silently watching . While sorting through Mrs Drablow's papers at Eel Marsh House over the course of several days, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and appearances by the Woman in Black . In one of these instances, he hears the sound of a horse and carriage in distress, closely followed by the screams of a young child and his maid, coming from the direction of the marshes . </P>

What is the story of the woman in black