"The Thing in the Hall"
by E.F. Benson
Synopsis:
A man invites an unknown spirit into his home. This proves to have been unwise.
My Reaction (with SPOILERS):
I don't have much to say about this one. It has some gruesome and creepy elements, but I didn't find it particularly effective, overall. Not destined to be a favorite, I'm afraid. The main thing that stuck out in this one, for me, was the fact that cheating at cards is presented as roughly the equivalent of torturing one's own pet to death. Both are described as "depravity", but needlessly, intentionally hurting an animal (especially one you've agreed to protect and care for) is several orders of magnitude worse than card sharping, in my opinion. The two aren't even comparable. I've observed this attitude in books before: In the past, at least in certain circles, cheating at cards was seemingly a much bigger deal than it seems to me. Not that I condone cheating, of course, but it simply doesn't feel deserving of quite the level of gravity that some authors grant it.
That my main focus from this story was this should tell you that the rest of it fell a bit flat for me. There are some things going for it, but they are undercut by the same pseudo-scientific approach and strange pacing that plague many of these stories (from what I can recall of the ones I read years ago). There are moments of horror and eeriness, but sometimes they're buried under too much "evidence". Does the author think we can so quickly forget that these are fictional short stories? Frankly, I'm not interested in made-up science or "proof", because—how can I put this politely?—I know you just made it up. Trying to dress it up as scientifically documented truth is pointless. Just make it feel creepy! To be fair, Benson is doing essentially the same thing as M.R. James and many other successful "ghost story" writers, framing his tales in realism and attempting to lend them a sense of verisimilitude, but maybe he's just not as good at it. Some of his horror tales are lacking in a sufficiently haunting atmosphere and instead have an almost clinical feel.
And...that's it! That was the last story in the collection of E.F. Benson's short horror fiction!
This was a bit of a weak note to end on, but I'm glad to have finally finished this collection of short stories so I can scratch it off the list once and for all. I can't believe it was sitting neglected on my Kindle all this time with only two stories left to read!
It's been so long since I read the bulk of the stories that I no longer recall much about the individual tales. My opinion is that Benson is a much better satirist / humorist than writer of horror, but that's not to say that his eerie stories aren't worth reading (and some might be worth a re-read, at some point). However, I suspect most of them may be a little too dry to appeal to the casual modern reader; they're better suited to people who appreciate a more old-fashioned writing style.
