This book can be read in conjunction with The Ghost in the Mirror, which takes place simultaneously with Witch-Finder and stars Lewis Barnavelt's friends, Rose Rita Pottinger and Mrs. Florence Zimmermann.
When orphaned Lewis Barnavelt, now age thirteen, and his Uncle Jonathan go on vacation in Europe, they drop in on their English cousin Pelham, who owns the ancestral Barnavelt Manor. The housekeeper's son Bertie, who is blind, takes Lewis on a tour of the old mansion and grounds.
Lewis is especially interested in the maze, which he has read about but never seen, and his new friend Bertie shows him the trick of reaching its center. From the description given in Witch-Finder, it was probably a hedged labyrinth of the sort that became fashionable in the late sixteenth century (see M.R. James's story, Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance for a similar tale of a maze and the awfulness at its center).
All is well, until Lewis discovers an old map of the maze with what might be a treasure in the center. He sets out on a midnight excursion, accompanied by Bertie, to the hidden heart of the maze. Instead of treasure, Lewis accidentally unleashes a demon that summons the ghost of the witch-finder Malachiah Pruitt, three hundred years dead. Lewis and Bertie barely escape the maze with their lives. Back during Cromwell's reign in England, Malachiah Pruitt had accused one of Lewis's ancestors of witchery and tried to have him burned at the stake. Now Pruitt's ghost has been set free by Lewis and Bertie.
Witch-Finder is full of deliciously spooky occurrences, and I enjoyed the 'Sherlock and Watson' role-playing of the two boys as they try to solve the horrible predicament they've gotten themselves into (along with everyone else in the mansion).
author unknown
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