The Idea Behind An Ordinary House by Rae Starling

In August 2006 – almost 20 years ago to the day that I’m writing this article – I was living in Germany and driving to collect my young children from a play party. The news came on the car radio with a lead headline about a girl who had suddenly appeared on a street in neighbouring Austria after being missing for eight years. The story sounded fantastical. Thinking my German must have let me down, I quickly tuned to an English-language radio station. What I thought I’d heard was confirmed. Natascha Kampusch hadn’t been seen since she vanished on her way to school at the age of ten. Now, as a resilient eighteen-year-old, she finally escaped from her captor.

World media went mad. Her first TV interview for ORF, the Austrian national broadcaster, aired in full in ten countries, and excerpts were shown in another one hundred and twenty.

Inspired by the case, I thought about writing a thriller that would explore the aftermath of a kidnap victim’s escape and the challenges facing them as they adjust to life outside. It felt like a sensitive issue that would need respectful handling and thorough research, so I enrolled on a PhD at the University of Birmingham.

My thesis title was: Hijacking Survivor Narratives: A Creative and Critical Study of Trauma Appropriation in Fiction. I examined topics in several disciplines, including trauma writing and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, within a month of starting my research, I read one academic article and two personal memoirs that made me rethink my approach.

(i)The article, by Fairleigh Gilmour, examined the media coverage of the ‘Kampusch’ case. Gilmour discovered that initially sympathetic reporting soon turned against the teenager. In Gilmour’s view, Natascha Kampusch received negative press because she did not present as the typical stereotype of a victim. Instead, she claimed her independence and seemed to hold a complex and contradictory attitude towards her abductor.

 Gilmour analysed 355 newspaper articles in English language newspapers from 2006 to 2010 and noted the occurrence of four story ‘angles’ to refer to Natascha Kampusch: the ‘mad’ woman (28% of coverage referred to Natascha Kampusch in this way); the ‘bad’ woman (15%); the ‘sex slave’ (19%); and the ‘virgin bride’ (16%).

The two memoirs that made me review my plans were written by Natascha Kampusch herself. (ii) In her first book, 3096 Days, she powerfully contests each of these stereotypes and (iii) in her second book, 10 Years of Freedom, published some eleven years after she escaped, she is still citing incidents of ongoing media intrusion and unwelcome attention from the public.

Sadly, since hearing what I thought was an unbelievable news story about Natascha Kampusch’s captivity and escape, I have heard of other women and girls – including Elizabeth Smart, Sarah Smith, Jaycee Dugard, Amanda Berry, Gina De Jesus, Michelle Knight, and Katy Morgan-Davies – who all suffered long-term abuse and captivity. I read memoirs by these survivors as well as the two by Natascha Kampusch. One point that several mentioned was the difficulty of readjusting afterwards under a media spotlight.

These memoirs, together with the Gilmour article, inspired me to write about how an individual's experience of crime might be rewritten by the media and social media. When we soak up true-crime headlines, we can sometimes forget about the effects of media sensationalism on the victims.

A recent example concerns the media coverage of the search for a missing Lancashire woman in January 2023.  (I won’t name her as she never had the opportunity for a right of reply to the coverage.) Social media platforms were rife with speculation and keyboard warriors flocked to the River Wyre, where she was last seen, to make videos and play at amateur sleuthing.

With their working hypothesis being undermined by the media and social media, the police divulged private details about the woman’s health, and some TV news channels invaded her family’s privacy. Although there was no survivor in this case – she had sadly drowned – the potentially traumatising effect of media intrusion on her family cannot be overlooked. 

In my thriller, An Ordinary House, a traumatised teenager finds his story sensationalised after rescue from years locked in a suburban house. As well as navigating lurid headlines and false allegations, he must suppress nightmarish memories of his ordeal to stop himself spiralling out of control. We see him face scrutiny not only from the media but also from detectives, lawyers, psychologists and social media keyboard warriors.

If you like dark thrillers, I hope you’ll give this one a go. 

Sources

(i)             Fairleigh Gilmour, ‘The Girl in the Cellar: Media Representations of Natascha Kampusch’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 25. 2 (2013), 645-666.

(ii)           Natascha Kampusch and Heike Gronemeier, 10 Years of Freedom (Berlin: Ullstein Buchverlage, 2017).

(iii)         Natascha Kampusch and Heike Gronemeier, 3096 Days (London: Penguin, 2010)

An Ordinary House by Rae Starling (Hera Books) Out 3^rd September 2026

We lived in a house on Beech Avenue. Outside-People say we're safe now. But one of us wants to go back. Back to that house and the darkness it held. Police raid an ordinary house in a quiet suburban street and find a traumatised teenager held captive with his family. They call him a survivor, but he doesn't know what to believe. His memories don't match what his siblings and the press tell him about his home. As he struggles to make sense of his new world, he must find and face the truth. With one of his siblings set on revenge, should he forget his family, or turn from victim to killer?

You can find more information about Rae Starling and her work on her website.

 Rae Starling can also be found on X @RachelSargeant3 on Instagram @raesargeant3 and on Facebook.