For October 15
Plot:
The story is presented in a series of journal entries. Things start happily. The narrator appears wealthy enough to have servants and something of an estate.
He contemplates the invisible though our are senses too poor to perceive it: “we can see neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water; our ears deceive us, for they transmit to us the vibrations of the air in sonorous notes.”
The narrator feels a sense of dread that he cannot account for and has trouble sleeping. He consults his physician and sleeps slightly better, but odd, troubling—if trivial—events occur.
He notices water disappearing from a carafe in his room during the night. Who but he could be drinking it? He doesn’t recall doing so. Is he sleepwalking? He devises a series of tests. Even in his locked room, water and milk disappear.
The water and milk stop disappearing—but other weird things happen. His neighbors start having trouble. The servants accuse each other of losing items.
The narrator becomes convinced an invisible being is in the house, causing mischief. He doesn’t know why. Is he nuts? Is he hallucinating?
When he believes he has the being, the Horla, locked in a room, he sets fire to the house.
He could have warned the servants.
Thoughts:
So, is the narrator (call him Pierre) nuts? Has some entity snuck into his house to drink his milk and water? The latter doesn’t sound particularly likely.
Is it a pleasant story? Not particularly. The strength of Maupassant’s tale is that he can take prima facie humdrum incidents like disappearing water and milk, add a couple of unlikely events, and build a horror story that leaves the reader wondering whether Pierre is off his rocker or whether there really is some sort of evil life-force-sucking vampires wandering around. Maupassant skillfully builds the tension. The reader feels for poor Pierre but knows this can’t end well.
Maupassant suffered from migraines and, toward the end of his life, hallucinations (which he sometimes depicted in his writing) brought on by drug and alcohol use and syphilis. In general, he wrote without judgment or comment on his characters’ actions.
An earlier version of the story was published in 1886 under the title “Lettre d’un Fou” (“Letter from a Madman”) in a daily newspaper, Gil Blas. It was shorter, different in structure, and had a different (but no less depressing) ending. Several revisions followed over the next couple of years. The version usually read today appeared in 1887 in a short story collection and was translated into English in 1890.
According to Wikipedia, the 1963 movie Diary of a Madman is based on “The Horla.” Maupassant’s story is believed to have inspired (in part) H. P. Lovecraft’s story, “The Call of Cthulhu.”
Bio: Henry-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a prolific French short story writer and novelist. He studied under Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880, Madame Bovary). While he’d published a few things in obscure journals, the work that made his reputation was “Boulle de Suif” (“Ball of Fat”) (1880). Another of his well-known stories is “La Parure” (“The Necklace”). After a suicide attempt, Maupassant was confined to an asylum, where he shortly died at the age of 43.
The story can be read here.
The story can be listened to here.
Title: “The Horla”
Author: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First published: (in French) 1887; English translation 1890
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 
Maupassant is famous but this was a story I have not read even though I think I might have heard of it. He certainly had unfortunate and short life. You presented the story very well.
Thanks for your kind words. Yes, Maupassant was an interesting and influential writer. He might have lived longer had he had access to modern medicine, but who knows?
I’ve read some of his short stories, but none in this genre.
He wrote a lot. Especially late in life, and he was becoming mentally ill, he wrote the weird stuff. It’s often sad.