E. F. Benson - Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories

[dem]

E. F. Benson - Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson (Wordsworth Editions, June 2013)

Nathan Clair

David Stuart Davis - Introduction

The Room In The Tower
The Room In The Tower
The Dust-Cloud
Gavon's Eve
The Confessions Of Charles Linkworth
At Abdul Ali's Grave
The Shooting Of Achnaleish
How Fear Departed From The Long Gallery
Caterpillars
The Cat
The Bus-Conductor
The Man Who Went Too Far
Between The Lights
Outside The Door
The Terror By Night
The Other Bed
The Thing In The Hall
The House With The Brick Kiln

Visible & Invisible
And The Dead Spake
The Outcast
The Horror Horn
Machaon
Negotium Perambulans
At The Farmhouse
Inscrutable Decrees
The Gardener
Mr. Tilly's Seance
Mrs. Amworth
In The Tube
Roderick's Story

Spook Stories
Reconciliation
The Face
Spinach
Bagnell Terrace
A Tale Of An Empty House
Naboth's Vineyard
Expiation
Home, Sweet Home
'And No Bird Sings'
The Corner House
Corstophine
The Temple

More Spook Stories
The Step
The Bed By The Window
James Lamp
The Dance
The Hanging Of Alfred Wadham
Pirates
The Wishing Well
The Bath Chair
Monkeys
Christopher Comes Back
The Sanctuary
Thursday Evening
The Psychical Mallards

Blurb:
‘His body was pressed against the wall at the head of the bed, and the face was a mask of agonised horror and fruitless entreaty. But the eyes were already glazed in death, and before Francis could reach the bed the body had toppled over and lay inert and lifeless. Even as he looked, he heard a limping step go down the passage outside.’

E. F. Benson was a master of the ghost story and now all his rich, imaginative, spine-tingling and beautifully written tales are presented together in this bumper collection. The range and variety of these spooky narratives is far broader and more adventurous than those of any other writer of supernatural fiction. Within the covers of this volume you will encounter revengeful spectres, vampires, homicidal spirits, monstrous spectral worms and slugs and other entities of nameless dread. This is a classic collection that cannot fail to charm and chill.

A 720 page omnibus edition of the four collections of supernatural stories published in Benson's lifetime. We've individual threads for Visible And Invisible and More Spook Stories but neither exactly took off, and somewhere among the polls there's even a bizarre one-man vendetta against The Dust-Cloud.

As brilliant as he was, the greatest hits are the greatest hits for a reason. Not every story is up there with (personal favourites) The Face, The Outcast, The Room In The Tower, Negotium Perambulans .... So, if anybody wants to give us a guided tour ....

[Michael Connolly]

When I was in primary school I read a story that scared the life out of me. While I forgot the name of the story and its author, I remembered the general details for years and what I thought was the last line "Her name was Julia Stone". It wasn't for years that I found out that the story was "The Room in the Tower" by E.F. Benson and it was the second last line I had remembered.

Last week I took the The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson out of my bookcase for re-reading, so it seems that I've been affected for life.

[monker]

I notice this doesn't have the stories from The Flint Knife nor the small handful of ghost stories remaining from Fine Feathers. It was probably a rights or volume issue. Still, it would have been interesting to see what may have been squeezed out to accommodate the best of those stories if it had have been the latter. Perhaps lobolover would have had his wish regarding 'The Dust-Cloud'.

[Chuck_G]

Just got confirmation that my copy should arrive Jan 9th, and I can't wait.

Interesting thing happened. I was reading 'The Room in the Tower' to my 11 year old daughter a couple of nights ago. The weather was rainy, but it wasn't storming or anything, and about halfway through the story our power blinked out for about 30 seconds. It scared my daughter and I have to admit that it creeped me out as well. When the power came back on my daughter's eyes were huge. We looked at each other and just started laughing. Of course she just had to hear the rest, and we didn't have any more problems with the power.

[Craig Herbertson]

I've been trying to work up to a review of Benson but only got as far as

'Can't recommend these Wordsworth editions enough. These tales demonstrate that Benson is a Premier League player in the horror world. Although at times the plots become fairly predictable the prose is sublime and there are a few gems which raise the bar considerably.'


on amazon

I don't think you'll be disappointed.
.

[dem]

"Some people call them ghosts, some conjuring tricks, and some nonsense." - The Terror By Night.

The first of Benson's Bachelor in peril collections, The Room In The Tower is the one I've not read through cover to cover, so Night Terrors provides opportunity to put that right.

The Room In The Tower: (The Pall Mall Magazine, Jan. 1912)."“Suddenly a voice which I knew well broke the stillness, the voice of Mrs. Stone, saying ‘Jack will show you to your room: I have given you the room in the tower.’ It seemed to come from near the gate in the red-brick wall that bounded the lawn, and looking up, I saw that the grass outside was sewn thick with gravestones. A curious greyish light shone from them, and I could read the lettering on the grave nearest me, and it was ‘In evil memory of Julia Stone.’

Of Benson's vampire stories, still think this is the absolute finest. From his early teens the narrator has been plagued by the same ominous dream. Now aged 30, his premonition is played out for real when he visits his friend John Clinton at his Sussex cottage and Mrs. Clinton repeats those words he’s come to dread ....

The Cat: (Illustrated London News, Nov. 27th 1905). "She was one of those blonde, lithe, silken girls, who, happily for the peace of men's minds, are rather rare, and who remind one of some humanised yet celestial and bestial cat." . Rare they may be, but Benson's thoroughly decent chaps have an unhappy knack for finding these ruthless predators and falling into their clutches.

Dick Alingham is an overnight sensation on account of three canvases exhibited at the National Gallery. These, he explains to his friend and soon-to-be esteemed medical practitioner, Dr. Merwick, were created following a period of suicidal depression after his fiancée threw him over in favour of bigger catch, Lord Madingley. After two months misery, something inside Alingham snapped and he became not only riotously happy, but finally capable of transferring the paintings in his head to canvas. Copious amounts of whisky also played a part. Despite their acrimonious break up, Dick agrees to complete his portrait of the now Lady Madingley, and, no longer an item, the pair get along famously.

Dick repairs to his Godalming studio to apply a vivid floral background. To bring it all to life, more work is needed on the eyes. Her Ladyship's orbs always did remind him of those of a cat, his most detested domestic animal - "they make me feel actually faint". As appallingly luck would have it, there's a grey, phantom feline prowling his garden. Cats takes hellish glee in torturing a weaker prey to death.

How Fear Departed From The Long Gallery: (The Windsor Magazine, Dec. 1911). The sporting mad Peverils of Church-Peveril House are haunted around the clock by the ghosts of their ancestors. The Blue Lady is a bit of a bore, but they've grown fond of the spectres of dastardly Sir Anthony and great-great-great Grandmother Bridget, who decapitated a man then disembowelled herself with a sword used at Agincourt. The ghost twins are another matter. This luckless pair perished in the fireplace back in 1602 - they were thrown in by their debauched father, 'Handsome Dick', the most villainous Peveril of all - and even young Blanche can find nothing amusing in that. The spectral toddlers visit death or, in the case of the brilliant and beautiful Mrs. Canning , far, far worse, on any who have the ill-luck to set eyes on them.

A gloriously over-the-top Gothic horror for the most part, which, depending on your point of view, is marred/ rescued by the introduction of kindly cousin Madge whose sympathetic nature puts an end to the curse. According to David Stuart Davis, it was Benson's favourite of his own spook stories.

The Dust Cloud: (The Pall Mall Magazine, Jan. 1906). Early example of road rage in East Anglia. Guy Elphinstone buys one of those new-fangled motor vehicles, a 25-horsepower Amédée for those with an interest in such things, and promptly sets to terrorising all living creatures in and around Bircham village. After a culling of the rabbit and hen populations, he next runs down his own hound as it rushes to meet him. Finally, in a separate and less easy to laugh off incident, he drives over a little girl before veering - deliberately? - into the lodge gates, annihilating car and self in the process. Local windbags have since sworn to witnessing a ghostly re-enactment of the tragedy, while a group of youths claim to have met the dead girl wandering by the road. Was Guy Elphinstone really a bad driver, or was his car possessed of a homicidal personality? Benson's friend and fellow motoring enthusiast, Henry Coombe-Martin, suggests the latter, even though he was Elphinstone's passenger when, "grinding his teeth in rage," he deliberately swerved to mow down the dog.

Benson gets so caught up in celebrating the romance of motoring and the nuisance of flat tires that he detours off-plot for three pages before a brief encounter with the phantom car brings us to an abrupt and disappointingly low key end. Perhaps more successful as a period piece than a ghost story. He's better at the "I hate girls" stuff, that's for sure.

Caterpillars: Villa Cascana, Italian Riviera. Benson has dreadful visions of ghostly mutant creatures crawling over the bed of his friend and fellow visitor Arthur Inglis. At breakfast the following morning, Inglis hands him a pill box in which he’s captured a caterpillar with curious crab-like legs – with grim irony he refers to it as species Cancer Inglisensis. Mindful of his ominous dream, Benson hurls it out of the window and into the fountain but the furry little fiend refuses to drown. It seems to have designs on Inglis. Only much later, when Inglis is no longer with us, does Benson learn the dreadful fate of the man who’d previously stayed in his friend’s room.

[dem]

If I were you, I really wouldn't bother with this.

Wrote this ages ago for a "supernatural" fanzine, didn't use on grounds of it being too shit, something I'd not have thought possible considering we frequently ran items by a certain self-styled "best-selling author", the combined sales of whose approximately 1 billion "books" may eventually top thirty. Anyway, hunted down the original for its negligible relevance to E. F. Benson's The Bus Conductor. It truly is amazing what an extensive rewrite, judicious pruning and much last minute tarting up can do for the most miserable manuscript. But not in this instance.

E F Benson, Chambers, Lang & the "Dufferin Curse"

The gist is as follows. In 1883, Frederick, 1st Marquis of Dufferin & Ava, took up residence in Tullamore, Co. Offaly. One night he awoke to the sound of strange and terrible sobbing coming from the grounds of the estate. Rushing to investigate, he spotted a hunched figure, lugging some weighty object across the lawn. Closer inspection revealed this to be a coffin. Perplexed and not a little frightened, Dufferin nevertheless shouted for the intruder to remain where he was and explain his business. On being addressed, the man raised his head and Dufferin caught sight of the hateful, glaring face for the first time. His Lordship advanced on the trespasser until the two stood toe to toe. Dufferin, seeking to impose himself on the situation, took another step forward to see if this weirdo with the coffin on his back would stand his ground. He did. Dufferin passed straight through him.

Fast-forward to 1893 and the Grand Hotel in Paris where Dufferin is attending an international convention of diplomats. He and his valet are about to board the lift when the Marquis catches a glimpse of the attendant. He is the living embodiment of the ghastly trespasser he'd encountered a decade earlier in Tullamore, but minus the expression of gloating malice. Taking this as a bad omen, Dufferin turns smartly on his heels and seeks out the manager. As he walks away, the doors close, the lift descends, and .... crack! The cable snaps. The lift plunges several storeys and it's occupants perish horribly as it smashes into the basement. The management can shed no light on their deceased employee, who has only been recruited that same day, and none come forward to claim him. Dufferin can only content himself that an apparition of the living had saved him from certain death.

Even as recently as the nineteen nineties (**), we find authors willing to trot out the Dufferin Curse as an 'authentic' case of supernatural phenomena. On the surface, the fact that there was indeed a tragedy of this kind at the Paris Grand lends the story a certain iota of credibility ... until, that is, we learn the incident took place in 1878 when Dufferin was halfway across the world, no premonitions of disaster were mentioned, and the one fatality was a young woman.

In April 1892, a variation on the theme found its way into the pages of the Rev. Stainton Moses' Light, a spiritualist publication, the location having switched from Paris to London and the beneficiary undergone a sex change. Little information is offered about this woman, save that she is "a personal friend of the editor ... eminently trustworthy and respectable."

Eventually, The Society for Psychical Research, pissed at their being erroneously cited as the reputable body who'd investigated and been entirely satisfied as to the veracity of the Dufferin story, did what nobody else seems to have thought to in the intervening half-century; they contacted the Marquis' surviving friends and relatives. According to researcher Melvin Harris (Dufferin -The Fatal Flaw, Incredible Phenomena, 1984).

"In her reply Lady Dufferin stated that the tale did not apply to her grandfather. It was a new version of an old story he used to tell about someone else! In the original version, though, an unnamed man had taken his holiday in Scotland, at Glamis Castle. And the vision itself had involved a hearse driven by a man with an ugly and hateful face."

There are no shortage of ghostly incidents connected with Glamis Castle, but the one relevant to our story originates from that incorrigible old mischief-maker, Augustus Hare of 'Vampire Of Cronglin Grange' notoriety. The author was staying at the castle one night when a fellow guest watched from his window as a black coach drove up to the castle - without the normal scrunch of gravel - and pull up below him. A minute passed, then the driver looked up and, flicking the backs of his black horses with the reins, drove away. The guest was impressed by his 'marked and terrible face'.

At breakfast the next morning he remarked to Lord Strathmore, 'You had a very late arrival last night'.

At his account of the sinister coachman the earl went pale and answered in a low voice that no-one had arrived at the castle. Some weeks later the same man was staying in Paris on the third floor of a hotel. One day he rang for the lift, and when it arrived and the gates opened he jumped back in shocked surprise - the lift operator appeared identical to the mysterious coachman. Seeing the guest hesitate, the operator immediately clashed the gates together. An instant later a cable snatched and the cage hurtled down the well. All its occupants were killed in the impact (Marc Alexander, Haunted Houses You May Visit, Sphere 1982)

Andrew Lang's The Bachelor of Arts' Story, which appeared in his 1886 collection In The Wrong Paradise, and may well have seen earlier magazine publication, is an absolute ringer for the Hare story. The setting is a Scottish castle. The horse-drawn hearse turns up in the dead of night, and it's spectral driver moonlights as a lift attendant in a Paris hotel. As it transpires, this time the attendant is the solitary casualty when the lift goes into free-fall, but then Mr. Hare was not one to scrimp on the melodramatic touches. Hugh Lamb cites this story as a possible precursor of E.F. Benson's far better known variation on the theme. The Bus Conductor (Pall Mall Magazine, Dec. 1906), later to be filmed as one of the episodes in the fondly remembered Ealing ghost compendium Dead of Night (1945), is told with admirable economy, and holds back on the horrors in favour of sustaining a suitably foreboding atmosphere. As the narrator, Hugh Grainger (yet again!) concedes, the spooky hearse driver was benevolent after his own fashion, the very antithesis of "the worm", the mobile corpse who inflicts such dread on the Washington Square commune in yet another supernatural horror classic from the era.

If Benson's protagonist is fairly run of the mill - a man with a satchel, just a hairy mole on his face by way of a distinguishing feature, Robert Chambers' church warden in The Yellow Sign (The King In Yellow, 1895) is a thing of nightmares, "pudding headed", "soft and mushy", literally decomposing on its feet. "Oh, his face was so white and soft!" is how the model, Tessie Reardon describes him. "It looked dead - it looked as if it had been dead for a long time". Hare's anecdote resurfaces in first Tessie's, then the narrator's prophetic nightmares, so there can be little doubt Chambers' masterpiece was at least partially inspired by the Dufferin Curse. Finally, Carl Dreyer's far later horror film Der Vampyr (1932) has something of The Yellow Sign about it. The narrator, Scott, imagines himself waking aboard the hearse, incarcerated in a glass-lidded coffin, the watchman staring in at him!

(**) Apologies for lack of citations. I've forgotten them.

[cauldronbrewer]

Jan 28, 2013 16:10:40 GMT dem said:

The gist is as follows. In 1883, Frederick, 1st Marquis of Dufferin & Ava, took up residence in Tullamore, Co. Offaly. One night he awoke to the sound of strange and terrible sobbing coming from the grounds of the estate. Rushing to investigate, he spotted a hunched figure, lugging some weighty object across the lawn. Closer inspection revealed this to be a coffin.

Reading this brought back fond childhood memories of reading C. B. Colby's Strangely Enough, which includes a version of "Lord Dufferin's Story." In case anyone is interested, a blog named The Haunted Closet has a nice entry on it. As several commentators observe, "The Whistle" was the scariest tale in the book.

[dem]

Thanks for the link. The Suicide Tree. Can you remember if it has something to do with Elliott O'Donnell?

[cauldronbrewer]

Not that I recall, but my memory of it is hazy. I probably read it thirty years ago.

I'm tempted to buy a copy for nostalgia's sake. I have no idea what happened to my old one.

[dem]

Outside the Door: (London Magazine, Jan.. 1910). At the conclusion of a frustrated experiment in telekinesis, Mrs. Aldwych assures her disappointed guest that the house is indeed haunted, but the ghost is heard, never seen. The phantom footsteps of Helen Deniston, murdered in 1610 by her dastardly fiancé, Lord Southern, still tread the gallery and staircase. Would Benson care to spend the night in a room along her route? He declines her offer. Huh! Whatever happened to putting your readers first?

This is more like it.

The House with the Brick-Kiln: (London Magazine, Dec. 1908). Why Fred would far prefer living in a workhouse, or even "look from my garret windows on to the squalor and grime of Whitechapel" than spend another night at The Manor House, Treve Major, on the Sussex Downs. He and fellow bachelor Jack Singleton lease the property for a fishing holiday during the summer of December 1896, but don't see out the full month. Their first inkling that there's something wrong with the place is provided by the six accomplished watercolours, signed by 'F.A.', depicting the long-disused brick kiln out in the field. There's something rather disconcerting about the grinning figure lurking beside the chimney. Jack learns in the village that the locals give the Manor a wide berth, and it's not long before he understands why. A face at the window, noisy disturbances in the house, and a cloud of white, greasy smoke emanating from the kiln set us up for a final grisly revelation.

[cauldronbrewer]

Jan 28, 2013 17:36:57 GMT dem said:

The Suicide Tree. Can you remember if it has something to do with Elliott O'Donnell?

Now that I have a copy of C. B. Colby's Strangely Enough in my hands--for the first time in around thirty years--I can tell you that "The Suicide Tree" not only has nothing to do with Elliot O'Donnell but is probably the most mundane entry in the entire book (which includes eighty "true" tales). It's about trees that strangle themselves to death by growing odd roots or branches. As a kid, I much preferred "Lord Dufferin's Story," along with such gems as "The Whistle," "The Light in the Window," "Ghosts That Followed a Ship," "The Doomed Sentry," and "Swamp Pirate."

Here is the Scholastic edition, abridged from the 1959 original:

I bought the abridged version for nostalgia's sake. It includes numerous illustrations that add to its charm.

[doug]

Feb 10, 2013 16:26:29 GMT cauldronbrewer said:

Jan 28, 2013 17:36:57 GMT dem said:

The Suicide Tree. Can you remember if it has something to do with Elliott O'Donnell?

Now that I have a copy of C. B. Colby's Strangely Enough in my hands--for the first time in around thirty years--I can tell you that "The Suicide Tree" not only has nothing to do with Elliot O'Donnell but is probably the most mundane entry in the entire book (which includes eighty "true" tales). It's about trees that strangle themselves to death by growing odd roots or branches. As a kid, I much preferred "Lord Dufferin's Story," along with such gems as "The Whistle," "The Light in the Window," "Ghosts That Followed a Ship," "The Doomed Sentry," and "Swamp Pirate."

Here is the Scholastic edition, abridged from the 1959 original:

I bought the abridged version for nostalgia's sake. It includes numerous illustrations that add to its charm.

I have the early 70s edition that I ordered from the SBC. I wore this out as a kid!





take care.

Doug

[rob4]

Just finished up to Outside the Door so thought I’d post a few quick thoughts on E.F. Benson so far.

The Room in the Tower is clearly the standout in this collection so far. A very unnerving atmosphere is generated and I’m a sucker for ‘old women at the end of the bed’ scares. This is the only one so far that has sent me to sleep with trepidation.

The Dust Cloud is typical of my main criticism of Benson in that a lot of the stories end quite abruptly without IMO a satisfactory denouement. I can see this working in some cases but I find it a let-down that once we have got to meat so to speak… it just ends.

Next three are just ok and then we come to The Shooting of Achnaleish which builds nicely and I was hoping for a Wicker Man (or at least a close escape from) type denouement… which it sort of does but then wimps out and limps to a fairly disappointing end.

How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery is stylistically strange it jumps from whimsy to full blown Grand Guignol child murder to M.R. James type creepiness and the abruptly back to whimsy (sort of). All the parts are handled effectively but as a whole it doesn’t quite work for me.

Caterpillars was a nice story that happened to make creatures I find quite attractive sound really revolting.

The next two were decent time-wasters but nothing special for me.

I also wasn’t really too enamoured of The Man Who Went Too Far either but it did strike me that there was a vein of homo-eroticism in the story – or was it just me? It’s been mentioned that Benson’s heroes are bachelors. Was he gay? I didn’t read the Introduction to the book as I find they sometimes give spoilers.

I quite liked Between the Lights but I’m a sucker for ghost stories around the fire. Unfortunately this one ended too abruptly for me again.
Seem to be getting one read a night at the moment so I might finish it April sometime.

[Craig Herbertson]

Feb 12, 2013 12:22:12 GMT rob4 said:

Just finished up to Outside the Door so thought I’d post a few quick thoughts on E.F. Benson so far.

The Room in the Tower is clearly the standout in this collection so far. A very unnerving atmosphere is generated and I’m a sucker for ‘old women at the end of the bed’ scares. This is the only one so far that has sent me to sleep with trepidation.

The Dust Cloud is typical of my main criticism of Benson in that a lot of the stories end quite abruptly without IMO a satisfactory denouement. I can see this working in some cases but I find it a let-down that once we have got to meat so to speak… it just ends.

Next three are just ok and then we come to The Shooting of Achnaleish which builds nicely and I was hoping for a Wicker Man (or at least a close escape from) type denouement… which it sort of does but then wimps out and limps to a fairly disappointing end.

How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery is stylistically strange it jumps from whimsy to full blown Grand Guignol child murder to M.R. James type creepiness and the abruptly back to whimsy (sort of). All the parts are handled effectively but as a whole it doesn’t quite work for me.

Caterpillars was a nice story that happened to make creatures I find quite attractive sound really revolting.

The next two were decent time-wasters but nothing special for me.

I also wasn’t really too enamoured of The Man Who Went Too Far either but it did strike me that there was a vein of homo-eroticism in the story – or was it just me? It’s been mentioned that Benson’s heroes are bachelors. Was he gay? I didn’t read the Introduction to the book as I find they sometimes give spoilers.

I quite liked Between the Lights but I’m a sucker for ghost stories around the fire. Unfortunately this one ended too abruptly for me again.
Seem to be getting one read a night at the moment so I might finish it April sometime.

Abrupt endings you'll notice more and more. Benson does seem to tire of his stories about two thirds of the way through and the endings often seem as if they needed another page or two. The cancer obsession comes out again later I think - a new thing at the time in terms of recognition of the disease. There are always bachelors but the homosexual element is questionable. Certainly seems to have remained either celibate or guarded about his sex life - the given view was that he had no desire to encumber himself with a wife and not much appetite. However, this seems to be contradicted by really good insights into women which you notice from his wonderful portrayal of them in conversation and I should add the portraits are generally sensitive and sympathetic.