Thursday, July 24, 2014

"The China Bowl"

"The China Bowl"
by E.F. Benson


Synopsis:
While still settling into his newly purchased home, a man is witness to a persistent apparition. 


My Reaction (with SPOILERS):
It didn't take long for me to recognize this story.  I've certainly read it before-- probably as part of a collection of ghost stories I read before starting this blog.  (Or at least I think it was that long ago...)  In any case, I remembered most of the story.  The significance of the china bowl was immediately clear-- though that might not be difficult to figure out on the very first read-- but I had forgotten the gruesome ending. 

So... Decent run-of-the-mill ghost story, but not in any way outstanding.  Predictable-- and the ghost itself isn't even scary.  (She's basically a grown-up version of that little girl from The Sixth Sense.)  What is it with ghosts being "witnessed" by multiple people at the same time?  I've written about this before, and it still mystifies me.  Is it supposed to lend credence to the tale that two or more people are seeing the same thing?  Because if that's the purpose-- don't make me laugh!  Now, on rare occasions it works, but in general, it simply doesn't. 

Saturday, July 19, 2014

"An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House"

"An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House"
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu


Synopsis:
On the advice of his doctors, an invalid takes his family and servants to a rented home by the sea-- but it turns out that the house already has a group of occupants.  (Helpful Hint: The other occupants are ghosts.)


My Reaction:
(This was a stop-gap "shared read".  I.e. no detailed notes.)

The story has a few creepy moments, but on the whole was rather dry and included so many going-nowhere details that my total impression was something like a shiver followed by mild interest... succeeded by a period of waiting for something to happen... concluded with a shrug. 

What creepy moments there were, were effective.  I just could have wished for more of them!

Cold Comfort Farm

Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons


Publisher's Blurb:
...a wickedly funny portrait of British rural life in the 1930s. Flora Poste, a recently orphaned socialite, moves in with her country relatives, the gloomy Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, and becomes enmeshed in a web of violent emotions, despair, and scheming, until Flora manages to set things right.


My Reaction: 
(This was shared read.  As such, there are no detailed notes.)

We saw the 1990s film adaptation years ago-- so long ago that I had only the vaguest memories of it.  However, I feel safe saying that the book is better.

What higher praise can you give a book than to say that it made you laugh (in the intended places)?  Well, we laughed!
 
(A couple of slightly spoilery things follow, so if you want to remain innocent of all spoilage, sneak out the side door now.)  



At times, I could have wished for more explanation--  Flora's "rights"!  The exact nature of the "something nasty in the woodshed"!  How did Flora's conversation with Aunt Ada Doom begin?!  (Yes, I realize that we aren't meant to know those things and that they were very intentionally left out.  But I still want to knoooooow!)


...It was just fun to read.  I'm satisfied. 


Wednesday, July 9, 2014

"The Other Bed"

"The Other Bed"
by E.F. Benson


Synopsis:
When a man checks into the last vacancy available in a Swiss resort, he is thrilled to find that he'll be enjoying a large room for an excellent price.  He'll even have two beds all to himself-- or will he~dun Dun DUN!~


My Reaction (with a chance of SPOILERS):
This one is predictable.  I figured out the nature of the ghostly roommate pretty quickly, and for the rest of the story was just waiting for the inevitable conclusion.  Still creepy, though. (And I was surprised that the narrator actually glimpsed the face of the ghost.  Gruesome...)

I feel that I've read several hotel-based ghost stories over the years, but I can't recall if any of the others were by Benson.  At least a few by M.R. James, one or two by H.R. Wakefield.  Anyway, I guess hotels are a natural choice for a ghost story setting-- so many people coming and going, each with his/her own life story--  no way of knowing who occupied your bed in the weeks, months, and years before-- a rare place that is not home where you give yourself up to the vulnerability of sleep.

(Confession:  I kind of hate hotels.  I view them as a necessity only-- not a place where I'll actively enjoy spending time.  I'm not afraid that a hotel room might be haunted, though I've written before that I find 1408 particularly awful.  No, for me, the horror is mostly on the microscopic level...  I don't like knowing that those sheets and pillows-- that bathtub-- those chairs-- that remote control have all been used by so many unknown people who have left behind their unknown germs.  ~shudder~  Much more frightening than your average silly ghost story.  ...Also, sleeping in an unfamiliar place is not always easy, so I worry that I'll wake up and be unable to fall back to sleep... or that there'll be a fire... or a break-in... or... well, I just don't like hotels, ok? ;o)) 

Back on topic...
The best parts of the story might have been the little touches of humor:

-- "Once I made him come in, but I saw him cross himself as, with a face of icy terror, he stepped into the room, and the sight somehow did not reassure me."  Ha!  Yes, it's never completely reassuring when hotel staff cross themselves before entering your room...

--  The ("Sensitive") young hotel attendant (or whatever he's called in the story) apologizes for (repeatedly) bringing a bottle of alcohol to the room, under the mistaken impression that the narrator has rung for it, suggests that perhaps the other gentleman staying in the room might have rung for it, then corrects himself that, oh yes, you told me last time that there is no other occupant... "It was on the night when this happened for the second time that I definitely began to wish that I too was quite certain that the other bed was unoccupied." 

--  And then the end... "No, monsieur had not rung.  But monsieur made himself a couch in the billiard-room."

Reminds me of the Lucia books.  I'll have to re-read them, one of these days...

Sunday, July 6, 2014

"The Terror by Night"

"The Terror by Night"
by E.F. Benson


Synopsis:
The story of a ghostly phenomenon demonstrates how people's sensitivities and perceptions differ.


My Reaction (with a chance of SPOILERS):
Benson evidently was very fond of this type of set-up.  He (or rather his narrator) tells you one of his theories regarding ghosts, etc., then provides a story to back it up.  That might not be a problem if you're just happening across a tale now and again in a magazine, but that literary device gets a bit repetitive when you're reading a collection of his stories.


-- "...They may appeal to any of the senses.  Some ghosts are seen, some heard, some felt, and though I know of no instance of a ghost being tasted, yet it will seem in the following pages that these occult phenomena may appeal at any rate to the senses that perceive heat, cold, or smell."  Very clinical, aren't we?

--  "The following story, however, to my mind, is interesting because it shows how different pieces of what no doubt was one message were received and recorded by several different people simultaneously."  I've already read this exact premise (that different people perceive a ghost differently) in Benson's own "The Dust-Cloud".

--  "Ten years have elapsed since the events recorded took place, but they were written down at the time."  Why ten years?  It seems that the passage of a certain length of time is required, in these cases.  It's very rarely, "Oh, hey, let me tell you about this ghostly experience I had two days ago."

--  "'Oh, don't look so woebegone, Jack,' his wife had said; 'you'll see me again before long.'"  (~shivery-chuckle~)

--  "...I remember going to sleep feeling quite cheerful, but I awoke in some dark still house and It, the terror by night, had come while I slept.  Fear and misgiving, blind, unreasonable, and paralysing, had taken and gripped me."  I know this is supposed to be something more than just that horrible feeling you can get when you wake at 3 a.m. and can't stop thinking about every little worry and fear lurking in the corners of your mind-- but it reminds me of it, anyway.  What is it about three o'clock in the morning?  It's the worst hour of the whole twenty-four for lying awake and worrying. 

"Between the Lights"

"Between the Lights"
by E.F. Benson


Synopsis:
A gathering of friends telling ghost stories by firelight are chilled by their host's tale of a brush with the supernatural. 


My Reaction:
Eh, not a favorite.  There was a pleasantly spooky atmosphere, but Benson's narrator rather ruined it a few times by butting in where he shouldn't have.  Also, the denouement was somewhat lacking for me.  


Snippets (with SPOILERS):
--  The subject of skeletons comes up... "'...I don't even mind that.  Why, there are seven, eight skeletons in this room now, covered with blood, and skin and other horrors.'"  Yes!  It's so strange to remember that all of us are walking skeletons...

--  "'...the nightmares of one's childhood were the really frightening things, because they were vague.  There was the true atmosphere of horror about them because one didn't know what one feared.'"

--  "'But really the-- well, the nightmare perhaps, to which I was referring, is of the vaguest and most unsatisfactory kind.  It has no apparatus about it at all.'"  (Well, we can't say he didn't warn us...)

--  "Now the angler lands his fish, the stalker kills his stage, and the speaker holds his audience.  And as the fish is gaffed, and as the stag is shot, so were we held.  There was no getting away till he had finished with us."  See, now that little interruption from our helpful narrator takes the reader right out of the story!  He does the exact opposite of what the fictional storyteller has just done, breaking the spell instead of casting it. 

--  "'It was no good my telling myself that I was disquieting myself in vain, for it was as if something had actually entered into my very soul, as if some seed of horror had been planted there.'"

--  "'And that is all?' I asked.  'Yes, it was nearly too much for me.  I think the dressing bell has sounded.'"  ...The End?  ...Ok, then. 

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

"The Caterpillars"

"The Caterpillars"
by E.F. Benson


Synopsis:
While visiting his friends' Italian villa, a man has a terrifying encounter with otherworldly creatures.  Is it a nightmare or something very real and deadly?


My Reaction (with SPOILERS):
I don't remember where I first heard/read about this story, but I've had a secret horror of it ever since-- without ever having ever read it myself!  The subject matter is more deeply frightening than the usual "scary story" fare.  Vampires?  Ghosts?  Zombies?  Various and sundry supernatural happenings?  Unsettling, yes, but most of us don't believe in those things, so they're essentially empty of real, lasting fear.  Even stories about flesh-and-blood terrors-- merciless murder-- can mostly be argued away.  Such things are unlikely to ever touch us personally.  This, on the other hand... Disease is all too common.  I prefer horror I can scoff at and, if it gets too unnerving, put away in a box labeled "Not Going to Happen". 

I don't care to pick this one apart.  It gives me the creeps.  I've read it once; that's enough. 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

"The Room in the Tower"

"The Room in the Tower" 
by E.F. Benson


Synopsis:
A man is haunted for years by an inexplicably horrifying recurring dream that always ends in a room in a tower.  Then, when he least expects it, he finds himself standing, wide awake, before the scene of his nightmare...


My Reaction (with SPOILERS):
I enjoyed the lead-up to the inevitable end.  It's nothing earth-shattering, but still a nicely old-fashioned creepy tale. 

--  "It is probable that everybody who is at all a constant dreamer has had at least one experience of an event or a sequence of circumstances which have come to his mind in sleep being subsequently realized in the material world. But, in my opinion, so far from this being a strange thing, it would be far odder if this fulfillment did not occasionally happen, since our dreams are, as a rule, concerned with people whom we know and places with which we are familiar, such as might very naturally occur in the awake and daylit world. ... But occasionally it is not so easy to find such an explanation, and for the following story I can find no explanation at all. It came out of the dark, and into the dark it has gone again."

--  "All my life I have been a habitual dreamer: the nights are few, that is to say, when I do not find on awaking in the morning that some mental experience has been mine, and sometimes, all night long, apparently, a series of the most dazzling adventures befall me. Almost without exception these adventures are pleasant, though often merely trivial. It is of an exception that I am going to speak."

I too am a "habitual dreamer".  Every now and then I'll have a nightmare, but they are less common these days than they used to be.  It's interesting that there is such variation in how people dream and whether or not they remember those dreams... Something to do with brain structure and chemistry, most likely.

--   "Now that dream or variations on it occurred to me intermittently for fifteen years." 

I've had recurring dreams, too, though I'm not sure I've had one that's come back over the course of fifteen years.  (Also, so far none of my recurring dreams have come true.  It's a good thing, too, because the one I think of most involved a large tree that had come to life and was holding me and bunch of other people captive in a house...)  I think that these days, I'm less likely to dream the exact same series of events repeatedly than I am to experience multiple dreams set in the same two or three houses.  These aren't places I know in waking life, but in my dreams, I recognize them from dream to dream.  One has a vast, low-ceilinged basement crowded with furniture-- some of which I recognize from real life as old, cast-off pieces.  Another has a creepy vibe and feels like the set for some early-80s horror movie... Then there's the "missing room" from our current house-- the one that doesn't actually exist except in my dreams.  It's usually cluttered with packing boxes and sometimes has serious problems-- like mold or a leaking ceiling.  At least I'm no longer dreaming about finding/remembering a tiny, neglected-- but still miraculously living-- baby that I forgot I was supposed to be taking care of.  ~shudder~  I hated that dream. 

--  The way the "characters" in the narrator's recurring dream age and change... creepy! 

--  Also creepy:  The blood-stains on the hands of the men who move Mrs. Stone's portrait.  And the narrator reaching out in the dark and feeling the portrait back on the wall.  ~shiver~

--  So, the conclusion... Mrs. Stone was/is a vampire, then... But I'm a bit confused by the strange coincidence that the narrator's friend is living in the same house that apparently once belonged to his former classmate's family.  Why was it necessary that the narrator should have known Mrs. Stone's son at all, since the son himself never makes an appearance?  I guess it makes it more plausible that he'd be dreaming about that family to begin with-- they weren't total strangers, though he'd never met any of the classmate's family before. 

-- This story reminded me of the myth that those who commit suicide might return as vampires.  I keep forgetting that, as I've only learned it fairly recently.  It doesn't feel nearly as much a part of popular vampire myth as so many other things-- garlic, wooden stake through the heart, "allergic" to the sun/holy water/the cross, returning to a coffin/native soil during the day, etc.  The suicide connection seems an out-dated and and uncharitable inclusion in a silly monster myth. 

-- The coffin filled with blood is a nasty touch.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense-- as opposed to the rest of this highly logical and realistic story, of course-- but I'll grant that it's creepy. 


I enjoyed the classic cadence of this story, after The Reapers are the Angels.  Next up is one of E.F. Benson's stories that I've seen mentioned numerous times-- and one that I've kind of been dreading!  "The Caterpillars"...