The Ghost Story Advent Challenge Week 1
For the month of December I am reading a ghost story
everyday as a kind of Ghost Story Advent Challenge. I’ll post about the stories
that I read at the end of each week. I’m discovery some wonderfully weird
tales.
Day 1: “Bad Company” (1955) by Walter de la Mare
If you thought soul-saving, death-bed confessionals were cutting it close, boy
oh boy, get a load of this ghost. I guess dying and all gives you… perspective.
If it is true that you should never go to bed angry, I suppose it is even more
important not to die angry.
Themes: Regret, Unfinished Business, Needing Help of Living.
Day 2: “The Red Room” (1896) by H. G. Wells
Ahh, to be eight-and-twenty years again! At that age, even I
might have stayed the night in the haunted room of Lorraine Castle. Lots of
shadows, lots of blown-out candles, and weird creepy old people in this one.
Wells’ description of the three elderly castle custodians and the meeting they
have with the young, fearless man at the beginning of the story is alone worth
the whole read.
Themes: Darkness, Fear, Haunted Room, Rationality vs.
Supernatural.
Day 3: “The Wolves of Cernogratz” (1919) by Saki
Ghosts are part of the romantic explanation of the world
while assholes cling to the rational as an old family legend plays out. It is
telling how it is the rationalists that twist truth in the end.
Themes: Rationalism vs. Romanticism, Class, Legends,
Explanation.
Day 4: “’John Gladwin says . . . ‘” (1928) by Oliver Onions
This was a real treat for me. My imaginations is sparked by
the notion of layered realities and juxtaposed, simultaneous sensory
experiences and so was pleased to see that take front and center. The story is
brilliantly constructed in the hands of Oliver Onions.
Themes: Reflecting on the past, Dying, Love, Family, Loss,
Tolls of the War.
This is about a haunted suit. Haunted clothes are scary. If
you like the garmorror genre, then also try “Danse Macabre” by Mervyn Peake, and
“Different Colors Made of Tears” by Marianna Enriquez.
Themes: Troubled Marriage, Cursed Object.
Day 6: "The Rope in the Rafters" (1935) by Oliver
Onions
This is a strange ghost story! It is almost a play-by-play
of how a ghost legend is created (maybe?). It is not straightforward, and there
are a lot of interesting reflections packed in; I’ll have to revisit this soon.
(It is meta and self-referential enough to remind me of some of Paul Tremblay’s
work). When a young veteran with a gruesome disfiguring facial injury comes to
convalesce at an old chateau with its share of ghost legends, he realizes that
ghosts are half-dead/half-alive. Recognizing this, he sees himself as the that
too and becomes a ghost.
Themes: War, Ghost-legends, Physical Disfigurement,
Social Rejection
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