Do you believe in ghosts? According to a 2009 CBS News poll, more Americans say they do than don't, and over one in five say they've experienced paranormal activity. There's a specter running loose in Lakewood Playhouse right now, in a masterful production that demonstrates what talent, commitment, hard work, and impeccable direction can accomplish on a relatively minor budget.

Here's the setup, inherited from Susan Hill's faux-Gothic novella: Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor from London, travels to a desolate, fog-shrouded village on the coast of eastern England to process the estate of the recently deceased Mrs. Drablow. The locals offer little help with this assignment; only one dares cross a treacherous low-tide causeway to the island estate. It doesn't take long before Kipps finds he isn't alone in Eel Marsh House; nor will he fulfill this assignment unharmed. Kipps's story is told years later by an actor who finds himself drawn into its creeping allure.

It seems strange that theater can elicit almost any reaction or emotion other than outright fear. I won't say you'll be terrified by The Woman in Black - a few chills, I suppose, but nothing to make wearing Depends a necessity. What you'll be is impressed. I won't name the roles played by Nathan Rice and Dylan Twiner, as those roles overlap, but both performers apply exceptional skill. Rice, for example, deploys a résumé's supply of UK accents and characters. The Woman in Black is, for all intents and purposes, a two-hander, and two-actor plays are enormously labor-intensive. As for adapter Stephen Mallatratt's title character, she's played by Kat Ogden, along with a battery of special effects.

Ghost stories take time to set up, so we see little of the Woman in Act I. We see little of anything supernatural, in fact, though the unit set (by Larry Hagerman and Hally Phillips) is gorgeous to behold. Every set dressing element adds to the story. Nic Olson's imaginative lighting rig evokes the shroud of a haunted mine. And those sounds! Oh, those wonderful sounds: Keith Jewell uses Lakewood Playhouse's surround speakers to craft a world in empty air. Even Spider, Kipps's canine protector, is given plausible life out of nothing. I could recommend this production based solely on its spine-tingling soundtrack, which becomes even more dramatic when the ectoplasm hits the fan in Act II.

The Woman in Black at Lakewood Playhouse is as convincing a demonstration I've seen in recent years of the binary difference between artistic direction, exemplified here by Beau M. K. Prichard, and mere supervision. Nothing, not one detail, feels out of place. I admired Alex Lewington's costumes and the efficiency of each near-blackout scene change. Prichard's spook story is an obvious labor of love. It conjures images that linger in the mind. I suppose one might say I've been haunted by them.

LAKEWOOD PLAYHOUSE, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, THROUGH MARCH 17, 8 P.M. FRIDAY-SATURDAY, 2 P.M. SUNDAY, $18-24, 5729 LAKEWOOD TOWNE CENTER BLVD., LAKEWOOD, 253.588.0042