The Whitby Witches is the first book in 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 they have lived 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 the 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.