Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old

Review of “The Thing from ‘Outside’” by George Allan England: Halloween Countdown

Getty Images and tip o’ the hat to Tracy

Plot:

A party of Americans traveling in the Canadian wilderness finds themselves deserted by their Indigenous guides after they come across a “circular print on a rock-ledge.” They hear the guides scream, fire shots, and conclude they’re dead and “out of harm’s way.” On the other hand, the present company is “two hundred and fifty wicked miles from the C. P. R. rails.”

After an uncomfortable night, Jandron, the geologist, discovers another circular print. Out of sight and hearing of the womenfolk, who are busy by the fire, he shows it to Marr, the journalist, and Professor Thorbrun. Both are dismissive. What’s the big deal?

Jandron knows. He’s seen things like this before. The guides knew. Things… happen.

The impression in the ground is cold enough to freeze water that will never melt.

The next morning, Jandron wakes with a splitting headache. He finds Marr in a foul mood, also with a headache. They discover new prints all over their campsite, as if someone/something were watching them in their sleep. Whatever arguing Jandron and Marr might start is interrupted by Professor Thorbrun. His wife… She’s dying. Her sister, Vivian, kneels beside her.

Thoughts:

This story is atmospheric right out of the gate, with our heroes sitting around a campfire talking about the guides running off and dying. The skeptical Marr sneers. The Professor appeals to reason. His wife echoes him. The reader never learns her given name. Her sister, Vivian, does her best; Jandron vows to look after her.

In content and tone, I thought this story was indebted to Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” In both stories, the protagonists face an unseen, unknown, relentless menace. Both stories also involve depressions in the ground.

England writes chillingly of the surroundings (as did Blackwood): “Pale, cold stars watched down from spaces infinitely far beyond man’s trivial world.”

After several tragedies, England writes of Jandron’s internal life: “His thought drifted to better days, when all had been health, sanity, optimism; when nothing…had troubled him. Days when the sizzle of the frying-pan over friendly coals had made friendly wilderness music; when the wind and the northern star, the whirr of the reel, the whispering vortex of the paddle in clear water had all been things of joy. Yes, and when a certain happy moment had, through some word or look of the girl, seemed to promise his heart’s desire.”

This is a horror story in the traditional sense. That is, it relies on dread rather than blood and guts, though there is a rather high body count. It was effective but not enjoyable. “The Willows” works better, perhaps in that sense, but this story is much more accessible.

Bio: George Allan England (1877-1936) was a U.S. explorer, translator, and prolific author. According to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, he published more than 330 magazine stories, including five serialized novels, between 1901 and 1935. Many of his writings dealt with socialist themes. In 1912, he ran for governor of Maine on the Socialist ticket, garnering (OUCH) about 1.5% of the vote.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here:(45:28)

Title: “The Thing from ‘Outside’”
Author: George Allan England (1877-1936)
First published: Science and Invention, April 1923
Length: short story

Review of “The Story of Ming-Y” by Lafcadio Hearn: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

This little morality tale is set during the Ming Dynasty (ruled 1368-1644). Ming-Y’s father is the Inspector of Public Instruction at the city of Tchin-tou. Though only eighteen, Miny-Y stands out for his scholarship, grace, and polite accomplishments. Thus, when the wealthy Lord Tchang seeks a worthy tutor for his children, he engages Ming-Y.

Because Lord Tchang’s house is several miles away, he agrees to let Ming-Y live with him. When the second moon of spring and “The Birthday of a Hundred Flowers” arrive, Ming-Y wishes to see his parents. Lord Tchang grants permission and gives him silver, thinking he would like to buy his parents a present for the festival.

On his way home, he catches a glimpse of a woman’s face in the woods where no one lives. He does the right thing and looks away, but not before their eyes meet.

In that moment, Ming-Y could not avoid discerning the loveliness of her face, the golden purity of her complexion, and the brightness of her long eyes, which sparkled under a pair of brows as daintily curved as the wings of the silkworm butterfly outspread.

Of course, the two later meet and spend a long night drinking and reading the poetry of the masters. The woman seems to have copies of many poets who are long dead.

Ming-Y now does something he has never done before. He lies. He tells his employer that he’s walking home to his parents’ house every night, when in fact he’s spending time with this lovely lady.

Thoughts:

The story may be a little heavy-handed with finger-wagging and tsk-tsking, but the writing is lovely and dreamy. Ming-Y is led astray by a graceful, learned woman who is both more and less than she appears—drinking and reading poetry. She tells him she is a relative of his employer. Maaaybe.

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to read poetry.

Do you ask me who she was,—the beautiful Sië-Thao? For a thousand years and more the trees have been whispering above her bed of stone. And the syllables of her name come to the listener with the lisping of the leaves; with the quivering of the many-fingered boughs; with the fluttering of lights and shadows; with the breath, sweet as a woman’s presence, of numberless savage flowers,—Sië-Thao.

The story has just the right amount of creepiness and dreaminess. If there are few surprises, at least the ride was pleasant. Ming-Y and the lady love each other, but sumpthin ‘taint right. I enjoyed this tale.

Bio: Patrick Lafcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn (1850-1904) was born on the Greek Ionian Island of Lefkada, from which came one of his given names. His mother was Greek, and his father was an Anglo-Irish member of the British military. He was sent to Ireland to live with a paternal aunt after his parents’ divorce.

After his father’s death and his aunt’s bankruptcy, his aunt’s financial manager sent him at the age of nineteen to relatives in Cincinnati, Ohio, who offered him little but good wishes.

Hearn became a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Journal. He also spent time reporting from and writing about New Orleans and the West Indies. He later went to Japan to teach English and became enamored of all things Japanese, eventually becoming a naturalized Japanese citizen and assuming a Japanese name, Yokuma Koizumi.

Among his works are Two Years in the French West Indies (1890), Youma, The Story of a West-Indian Slave (1890), and Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). He also translated some of the works of Guy de Maupassant and Théophile Gautier from French.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here:

Title: “The Story of Ming-Y”
Author: Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904)
First published: Some Chinese Ghosts, 1887
Length: short story

Review of “Smee” by A. M. Burrage: Halloween Countdown

Plot

During a Christmas Eve party, Jackson refuses to play hide-and-seek because he sometimes stays at a house where a girl was accidentally killed playing the game by falling down a flight of stairs. He wasn’t there when this happened, but he was visiting the same house during another Christmas party when something worse happened.

When asked about this “something worse,” he defers and tells the group about a game called “smee” or “it’s me.” It’s like hide-and-seek, except only “it” knows who “it” is. Non-its identify themselves by calling “smee” to each other as they search the house. “It” responds with silence.

In a large, dark old house, it’s essential to keep track of how many people are in your party. A person missing could mean tragedy—for example, someone falling down a flight of stairs. An extra person could mean something entirely different, but nothing happy.

Thoughts:

If this tale is creepy and sad, there are few surprises. A couple of misunderstandings arise. Our hero, Tony Jackson, finds himself in what appears to be a compromising position with Mrs. Gorman. The homeowner, Mr. Jack Sangton, pulls him aside and warns him, in so many words, that he’ll have none of that in his house.

Jackson admits he doesn’t know everyone at the house and is bad with names. He expects the names he’s missing will come up in conversation. They don’t.

That adults—adults old enough to have grown children of their own—play parlor games at Christmas parties may strike the modern reader as a bit odd, but this is 1929. Radio was in its infancy, and commercial television was a couple of decades in the future. References to the accident victim as a “girl” when she was a grown woman also made me reset my thinking; I thought of her at first as this impetuous ten-year-old.

The characters initially enjoy the game, but the fun doesn’t last. Something is off. No one can quite put their finger on it, and most are too polite to say anything.

I liked this odd little story.

Bio: A. M. Burrage (Alfred McLelland Burrage) (1889-1956) was a UK novelist and short story writer active from 1905 into the 1940s. Several of his relatives, most notably his uncle Edwin Harcourt Burrage, were also writers. Because he wrote under several pseudonyms and in various genres, it’s difficult for cataloguers to determine the total number of stories he published. In 1930, Burrage published a scathing memoir of his wartime experiences, War is War, under the pseudonym “Ex-Private X.” He is best known now for his ghost stories, but he also wrote for boys’ magazines, stories of black magic, and a satire set in Arthurian England.

This story can be read here: (slightly different version from what I read)

This story can be listened to here: (23:28)

Title: “Smee”
Author: A. M. Burrage (1889-1956)
First published: Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine, December 1929
Length: short story

Review of “The Signalman” by Charles Dickens: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

Our hero visits a signalman in a railroad tunnel where he works, signaling trains that come through and passing messages along. He announces his presence by shouting from atop the hill, “Halloa! Below there!”

Much to his surprise, the man walks away as if he hasn’t heard him. After some more screaming, the narrator gets directions down the hill to where he might speak with the signalman. The internal passage is damp and unpleasant, but our hero makes the trek and finds his way down to the floor.

The signalman invites him into his cabin.

The narrator offers the following assessment:

“In the discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had to do was done.

“In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, opened the door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy damp), and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel.”

The signalman seems to be content—a job that requires attention, but no hard physical labor. He admits something is troubling him, however, and will describe it if our hero visits him again.

Notably, he asks if the narrator visits him again, not to call out. A specter once called out to him, just as the visitor had, and six hours later, a terrible accident occurred on that line. A second incident occurred. The specter has been back; false alarms ring; what is its warning? How can he prevent another tragedy?

Thoughts:

This is a poignant tale of a haunted man who witnesses tragedy but is powerless to prevent it. Adding insult to injury, no one takes him seriously. Our hero, the narrator, assumes he’s mentally ill, even while he admires his attention to his job. The signalman insists he recognizes the difference between a real alarm and a supernatural one, yet he didn’t see the narrator as real at first.

While the story revolves around the signalman, I have to ask, why did the narrator visit the signalman in the first place? He doesn’t know him. Is he curious about the train and the setup there? Had he been walking around and decided that day to let his curiosity get the better of him?

Overall, it is a tightly written little piece with a sense of forboding throughout.

Bio: Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was a UK author, novelist, actor, and editor. Among his most famous works are the often imitated/parodied “A Christmas Carol” (1843), “David Copperfield” (1850), “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859), and “Great Expectations” (1860). He achieved great popularity during his lifetime, though it was not until after his death that it became known that he had known poverty. As a child, he’d left school and been forced to work to support his widowed mother after his father’s early death. At his death, he left the novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished. Others have attempted to adapt it for the screen or complete it.

This story can be read and listened to here:(42:17)

Title: “The Signalman”
Author: Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
First published: All the Year Round, Christmas Number, 1866
Length: short story

Review of “The Shadow” by Edith Nesbit: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

A girl faints during a dance at a country house over Christmas in Victorian-era Great Britain. She is sent to recover in a dressing room. Other girls sleep in a bedroom attached to the dressing room. Of course, they don’t sleep but sit up, telling each other ghost stories. While they’re scaring themselves, a knock comes at their door. It’s Miss Eastwich, the “housekeeper, companion, and general stand-by” of the narrator’s aunt. She noticed the light and thought the girls were up late. She doesn’t say much, but she’s concerned about the girl who fainted.

“She’s fast asleep,” the narrator assures her.

The youngest girl invites her in and offers her cocoa. The narrator confesses irritation toward the youngest, referring to her as “young, crude, ill-balanced, subject to blind, calf-like impulses.” The youngest explains to Miss Eastwich that they were telling ghost stories, but they don’t believe in ghosts—not one bit. She asks Miss Eastwich if she knows any ghost stories.

The narrator bristles. Prim and proper Miss Eastwich? Tell a ghost story?

She does. Twenty years earlier, her two best friends married. The implication is that she was in love with the guy. After a year or two, the guy invited her to stay with them while the wife was “ill,” delicately saying she was in the middle of a difficult pregnancy.

Miss Eastwich goes. She finds the wife “weak and excitable,” but the husband looking worse. Thinking he may be in debt or something of that sort, she doesn’t ask but waits for him to speak. He tells her of something wrong with the house, something he almost sees, almost hears…

Thoughts:

While Miss Eastwich describes her story as “hardly worth telling,” it becomes clear that there is more below the surface of this low-key ghost story. Dread, fear, and an unknown horror, barely perceived, haunt the new “warm and welcoming” house. Couple that with a difficult pregnancy and the very real danger of death in childbirth at the time,

This sad little tale may (according to some commenters) reflect something of Nesbit’s own living situation. The narrator respects Miss Eastwich, understanding her reserve almost to the point of not wishing to speak to her in order to avoid disturbing her. The youngest girl, whom the narrator despises, may speak of the pretty young things Nesbit’s philandering husband always seemed to be chasing. Miss Eastwich’s dear friends echo a situation closer to home. A close friend of Nesbit’s lived with her and her husband, only to be impregnated by him twice.

Few points in the story are scary. Dread and sorrow are most prevalent. What is it that Miss Eastwich’s friend almost sees? Why is she concerned about the present? Why does she agree to tell her story now? The youngest girl, whose misunderstandings might be funny in other contexts, are merely uncomfortable.

Much of the action takes place between the lines, in the context. The story takes a little patience. A quick, superficial read will disappoint.

Bio: British author Edith Nesbit Bland (1835-1915) is now best known for her several children’s book series: the Bastable series, the Psammead series, and the House of Arden series, among other children’s books. She wrote children’s tales of adventure, fantasy, and magic, as well as more realistic stories. Her best-known works include The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), The Wouldbegoods (1901), The Revolt of the Toys, What Comes of Quarreling (1902), and The Railway Children (1906).

Additionally, she wrote fiction for adults and poetry.

She and her husband, Hubert Bland, were among the founders of the Fabian Society, a democratic socialist organization that still exists. It attracted people such as George Bernard Shaw, a friend of the Blands. Its goal is to slowly bring about lasting social change rather than through sudden radical change or revolution. Nesbit and her husband edited the Society’s journal, Today, and entertained friends and colleagues at their home.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (49:28)

Title: “The Shadow”
Author: Edith Nesbit (1858-1924)
First published: as “Portent of the Shadow” in the London magazine Black and White, December 23, 1905
Length: short story

Review of “The Shadow in the Corner” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

Wildheath Grange sits back from the road, the last remnants of a once-vast estate of the Bascom family. The house has a bad reputation among the locals in the nearby village of Holcroft, but it suits the current owner, Michael Bascom, a middle-aged bachelor who spends his days among his books in scientific reading. The only other occupants of the house are his two servants, Daniel Skegg and his wife.

One day, Skegg approaches the master and asks that he hire “a girl” to help his wife, who is getting on in years. Distracted, Bascom agrees but wants her kept out of his way. Skegg explains they’ll have to find someone outside the area because the villagers believe the Grange is haunted.

Bascom reacts with annoyance, but the reader learns that an ancestor of his lost most of the estate and then “destroyed himself” in the Grange.

What luck! Mrs. Skegg finds a girl who has just lost her father and is now homeless. She’ll whip her into shape. Skegg assigns her an attic room to sleep in. It’s the only one up there where the roof doesn’t leak, and it also happens to be where old Anthony Bascom destroyed himself. But what does that matter?

Sometime later, Bascom comes across the girl, Maria, and finds her visibly disturbed. He asks what is wrong. After some hesitation, she tells him she can’t sleep. Her room terrifies her.

He dismisses her; it’s all in her pretty little head.

…but the more he thinks about it, the more he wonders.

Thoughts:

This is a poignant tale, one that deals more with the most vulnerable of Victorian society than with ghosts. The common Victorian trope of a death by suicide leading to a restless spirit appears, but is not dwelt on. At the center of the story is the plight of the orphan girl, Maria. Through no fault of her own, she is cast into the world without friend or protector. She grieves for her father but never shows self-pity. Nor does she complain about the hard work that is now her lot in life. On the contrary, she expresses gratitude for being able to work.

Maria cannot defend herself. She is dependent on the goodwill of those around her and has no appeal should they choose to oppress her. If she makes too much of a nuisance of herself, those in authority could toss her out on her rear end. Her recourse lies in the workhouse, the world’s oldest profession, or starvation.

As science fiction would a century later, “ghost” stories sometimes addressed social issues in the late 19^thcentury. After all, the story isn’t advocating women’s rights or anything. It’s a ghost story, isn’t it?

While it’s sometimes a bit slow for 21st-century readers and can be a bit on the nose, I enjoyed this poignant tale.

Bio: Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) was associated with “sensation” fiction, a melodramatic genre from the latter half of the nineteenth century that often incorporated elements of crime and drama while drawing on Gothic and romantic traditions. Her most popular work is the novel, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), which was loosely based on a real-life event and involved unintentional bigamy and (presumably intentional) murder.

Braddon founded the monthly magazine Belgravia in 1866 and edited it until 1876. Concentrating on sensation fiction, Belgravia featured poems, short stories, and serialized novels.

After others purchased the magazine, Braddon was removed from the editorship, and Belgravia went on to bigger things, publishing works by Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, and Arthur Conan Doyle. It folded in 1899.

Braddon and the married publisher John Maxwell lived together without scandal while his wife was confined to an asylum. They married when the wife died. One of their six children, William Babington Maxwell, became a novelist. He also served in World War I.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (37:47)

Title: “The Shadow in the Corner”
Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915)
First published: All the Year Round, 1879
Length: short story

Review of “Scoured Silk” by Marjorie Bowen: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

Some twenty years earlier, Mr. Humphrey Orford moved to Covent Garden with his young wife. The understanding is that his family was from Suffolk, where he had considerable estates that he never visited. Only a few weeks after they arrived, his wife, Flora, fell ill and passed away. He erected a small plaque: Flora, wife of Humphrey Orford, Esq. of this Parish, died November 1713, Aged 27 Years.

Mr. Orford settled into a scholar’s life until he decided he wished to marry again and chose Miss Elisa Minden, the daughter of his friend Dr. Minden. The narrator tells the reader there was nothing remarkable about the match; Mr. Orford was “not much above forty-five or so, an elegant, well-looking man, wealthy, with no vices and a calm, equable temper.” Miss Elisa, “though pretty and well-mannered, had an insufficient dowry, [and] no mother to fend for her.”

Mr. Orford even talked of giving up his bookish ways for his intended and taking a trip to Italy. He’d always wanted to see Italy.

Shortly before they were to be married, he brought Miss Minden to the church to see where the first Mrs. Orford lay buried.

Not creepy at all.

“That is to her memory,” he told her. “And you see, there is nothing said as to her virtues.”

Well, that’s ambiguous. And the creepy vibe just shot to eleven.

“She’s buried under your feet,” Mr. Orford continues. “Quite close to where you are standing. Why, think of that, Lizzie, if she could stand up and put out her hand, she could catch hold of your dress.”

Oh, but don’t worry, he tells her when she starts to tremble. Flora is dead.

Do you think Lizzie can get her deposit back from wherever they’re holding the reception? *SHUDDER*

Thoughts:

It really is the quiet ones you have to watch out for.

The story starts slowly. Several pages in, the narrator says, “And [this] is really the beginning of the story.” Yet, the author creates such an atmosphere of dread in what had been ordinary—if not dull—circumstances that the slow boil is not only forgivable but also useful.

Elisa seems a little slow on the uptake, but our heroine is merely crossing her t’s and dotting her i’s. Because she’s been paying attention, she solves a mystery that baffles everyone else. Never fear; the bad guy gets his comeuppance in spades.

I would hesitate to call this great literature, but this was fun in a Sunday matinee sort of way. I enjoyed it, even if I guessed what was going on.

Bio: Marjorie Bowen (legal name Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell Long) (1885-1952) was a prolific British author of horror, historical fiction, mystery, and crime fiction under various pseudonyms. Her alcoholic father left the family and was later found dead in the street. She turned to writing to help support her mother and sister (the Encyclopedia of Fantasy refers to them as “extravagant.”) and later her own children.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (53:39)

Title: “Scoured Silk”
Author: Marjorie Bowen (legal name Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell Long) (1885-1952)
First published: All-Story Weekly, June 8, 1918
Length: novelette

Review of “The Open Window” by Saki

Plot:

Mr. Nuttel’s doctors have recommended that he get rest for his nerves. With letters of introduction from his sister, he visits people she knows better than he does. He stops one day at the Sappleton residence. Mrs. Sappleton is late in meeting him, so her “very self-possessed” fifteen-year-old niece speaks to him, letting him know the window is open in observance of the anniversary of a tragedy.

Thoughts:

In this short-short, the reader’s perspective shifts 180 degrees in just a few lines. It is cute, but the tale is more like a joke than a story. Nevertheless, it is effective. The change that is supposed to come to the characters comes to the reader and is one of understanding rather than insight or a shift in worldview.

Nevertheless, this is cute. It involves people talking past each other, and people yanking other people’s chains with a straight face.

Bio: H. H. Munro (1870-1916), better known by his pen name “Saki,” was a British author and journalist now best remembered for his epigrammatic short stories, often satirizing British society’s upper crust. Many of his stories dealt with talking animals, and few of them ended happily. Munro was gay at a time when same-sex relations were considered a crime. Though he was overage, he enlisted for service in WWI and died in 1916 at the Battle of Ancre. According to the story, his last words were, “Put that bloody cigarette out!”

This story can be read and listened to here: (1:08)

Title: “The Open Window”
Author: Saki (legal name Hector Hugh Munro) (1870-1916)
First published: The Westminster Gazette, November 18, 1911
Length: short short

Review of “Negotium Perambulans” by E. F. Benson: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

The narrator describes an isolated fishing village he was sent to when he was ten, “a small boy, weak and sickly and threatened with pulmonary trouble.” He slept not in the house but in a “shelter” in the backyard of his uncle, the local vicar, and spent his days wandering. His uncle taught him about the local fauna and flora. His aunt and uncle lived in a grand house. They let the vicarage out to an artist, John Evans, whom the narrator recalls fondly.

Of course, it wasn’t all wandering around at will and chatting with the kids of the local fisherfolk. Attendance at Sunday services was mandatory. The narrator’s uncle scares the bejesus out of the local kids. One of his tools is the carved panels of the altar rails, salvaged from an earlier church. Among these depictions were the Angel of the Annunciation and the Angel of the Resurrection. A singular one was of a robed priest standing outside the local church holding up a crucifix to what looked like some giant slug-beast, which his uncle referred to as “negotium perambulans in tenebris,” from the Ninety-First Psalm, or the pestilence that walks in the dark. Uncle assured the congregation they could avoid it only by sticking to the straight and narrow. Stories were told of the impious meeting bad ends at the old church—now used as a house.

Thoughts:

The beginning of the story, which recalls an idyllic childhood, is nostalgic and dreamy, though there is an uneasy undercurrent. The fire-and-brimstone sermons of Uncle, meant to put the fear of God in the narrator, the children of town, and their parents, might be viewed with the benefit of years passed with some indulgence. The narrator recalls only being terrified as a boy.

The panel of the slug-like thing is so out of place that it calls out for attention. Later, when the narrator has made his way in life, he returns to the little fishing village. His uncle has passed away. He and his aunt discuss the slug panel. “It made an impression on you, I suppose,” she casually says.

But it’s only part of some local lore, right? One is no more likely to run across the giant slug than to run across, say, the Angel of the Annunciation, right? No one in town would think of blaspheming, anyway. It just wasn’t done.

…but what if…?

This is an odd little tale, combining nostalgia with the terror of scary religion and then a terror of something far stranger. Though a bit wordy and slow in the beginning, it is a nice atmospheric read.

Bio: E. F. (Edward Frederick) Benson (1867-1940) was a British author best known in his lifetime for his 1893 novel Dodo, satirizing British suffragist Ethel Smyth, and his Mapp and Lucia series, which poked fun at the British upper middle class. These have been adapted for TV. In the 80s, British author Tom Holt wrote a couple of sequels. Benson is probably best known today for his short supernatural fiction.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (38:41)

Title: “Negotium Perambulans”
Author: E. F. Benson (1867-1940)
First published: Hutchinson’s Magazine, November 1922
Length: short story

Review of “The Moonlit Road” by Ambrose Bierce: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

The following things happened: Joel Hetman returned from a trip at an unexpected time and used the back door without disturbing anyone. He chased what appeared to be a prowler into the woods, who got away. His wife, Julia, was strangled to death in her bedroom. He summoned his nineteen-year-old son, Joel, Jr., home from his studies at Yale. The son decided to stay and help his father.

A few months later, Joel Sr. and Joel Jr. walked down the road in the moonlight by their house. There was no light in the house. As they approached the gate, the father drew the son’s attention to something he saw. The son saw nothing; the father’s gaze remained fixed. He even took a few steps back. A servant lit a light upstairs. When the son looked for his father, he was nowhere to be found. He never learned what happened to him.

Some twenty years later, a man named Caspar Grattan wrote a statement the night before he was to be hanged. He recalls an earlier prosperous life with a wife and a successful son.

Lastly, a statement is offered through a medium; the other side is very much like this one.

Thoughts:

The story is presented through the statements of three different people at three distinct times. Each offers an honest, if incomplete, account of the story’s events. It’s not difficult for a reader to piece together what happened, of course. It’s not intended to be a mystery, but (as far as I can make out) a comment on how far things can go wrong when people don’t talk to each other.

Each has a unique view of events that the others lack. The three people involved in the story are intimate and love each other, belonging to the same family, but seem to hardly know one another. And they don’t talk. That is the great tragedy because it brings about the death of one character and the ruin of another.

In this ghost story, it is humans, rather than spirits from beyond, who give the reader the chills. So, yeah, it is the typical cheery Ambrose Bierce stuff.

Bio: Ambrose Bierce (1842- disappeared 1914) was an American journalist, writer, and Civil War veteran. Among his best-known works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”—familiar to high school students in the U.S.—and The Devil’s Dictionary, a collection of sardonic definitions of common words. He also wrote a memoir, What I Saw at Shiloh, an unsentimental (at least) account of that battle.

There has been much speculation about his death. He is said to have gone to join the forces of Pancho Villa to observe the Mexican Revolution and disappeared, but a small ocean of ink has been spilled about hows, wheres, and whens.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (29:10)

Title: “The Moonlit Road”
Author: Ambrose Bierce (1842- disappeared 1914)
First published: Cosmopolitan (New York) [not that one], January 1907
Length: short story