"Number Ninety" & Other Ghost Stories ~ B. M. Croker

Bithia Mary Croker (1849~1920) was one of the most well-known novelists of her day. She produced more than forty novels and seven short story collections. In 1871, she married John Stokes Croker, of the 21st Royal Scots and Munster Fusiliers, and, as was customary at the time, accompanied her husband to India, where she remained for fourteen years, and where six of the fifteen tales in this collection are set. Nowadays, as with so many talented Victorian and Edwardian writers, she is all but forgotten by most of the reading public.

"Number Ninety" and Other Ghost Stories was published by Sarob Press as a limited edition of 250 copies in 2000. It is the third volume in their Mistresses of the Macabre series. The tales it contains are: "Number Ninety", The Former Passengers, "If You See Her Face", The Red Bungalow, The Khitmatgar, Her Last Wishes, The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor, "To Let", The North Verandah, The First Comer, Trooper Thompson's Information, Who Knew the Truth?, La Carcassonne, Mrs. Ponsonby's Dream, The Door Ajar.

The first tale, 'Number Ninety', is taken from the Christmas Number of Chapman's Maga-zine of Fiction for 1895. At a rowdy bachelor's party, the discussion turns to ghosts and John Hollyoak, the most outspoken and derisive of the non-believers, declares that he wishes to spend the night in a haunted house. So, the host of the party, who is a believer and a tad ruffled at being ridiculed for it, arranges for him to do just that.

'The Former Passengers' originally appeared in To Let, published by Chatto & Windus in 1893. Mr Lawrence is on his way to Singapore to give his sister away at her wedding and, having missed the steamer he intended to catch, persuades Captain Blane to take him in his cargo boat, the Wandering Star. His accommodation is fine and he thinks he's rather lucky to be travelling on the Star, until they steamer hits bad weather.

"If You See Her Face" first appeared in To Let. Daniel Gregson, political agent to a Rajah, and his assistant, Percy Goring, are travelling to the Delhi durbar when their train is prevented from going on by a break in the line. Gregson decides they should head for the Raja's isolated hunting palace in Kori on foot. They are warned by an old woman not to enter the Khana palace, as it's a place where 'If you see her face - you die!'

'The Red Bungalow' first appeared in Odds and Ends, published by Hutchinson in 1919. In it, Netta Fellowes, newly relocated with her husband to Kulu, India, decides to move into the Red Bungalow, which has been unoccupied for years. Her cousin tries to persuade her against the move, as the place has a bad reputation, but Netta will not listen and takes the bungalow regardless... with terrible consequences.

'The Khitmatgar' first appeared in To Let. The Jacksons' finances are at a very low ebb and they have travelled to Panipore in search of employment. The only lodgings they can find are at the long-uninhabited bungalow in the Paiwene road, but the bungalow is haunted by a murdered servant.

'Her Last Wishes' was published in In the Kingdom of Kerry (Chatto & Windus, 1896). Rev. Eustace Herbert is sent off travelling around India, after having a physical breakdown, and is invited to stay at the home of an old school friend, Mr St. Maur, who has a coffee estate in the Madras Presidency. He is settled in the guest bedroom, but finds that he is not its only resident.

'The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor' was first published in To Let. Mrs Goodchild and Mrs Lloyd are travelling from Karwassa to Chanda to see their husbands for Christmas. After a bit of bullock trouble, the two women are forced to stay the night in a travellers' bungalow at Dakor that hasn't been used for seven years, where experiences after nightfall lead to the solving of an old crime.

"To Let" first appeared in To Let. Having left it very late in the season to travel into the hills from Lucknor, to escape the terrible summer heat, Aggie Shandon asks for a friend's help in locating accommodation for herself, her two children and her sister-in-law, Susan. There is only one property available - Briarwood - and it is amazingly cheap. The two women are incredibly pleased with their summer home, until they hit monsoon season and the reason for the low rent makes itself apparent.

'The North Verandah' was first published in Odds and Ends. It's a rather gory tale set in Kentucky. A chance meeting in a Swiss hotel brings together the English Dormer sisters, Marion and Lucy, and their distant relations the American Washington-Dormers. Following their European trip, Marion and Lucy travel to Kentucky to visit their American cousins' home, Rochelle, but the house has a bad history and Marion experiences rather more than an afternoon's quiet reading when she decides to sit alone on the north verandah.

'The First Comer' was published in In the Kingdom of Kerry. Miss Janet MacTavish and her sister Matilda are a couple of well-to-do Edinburgh spinsters. Matilda is ill with bronchitis and wakes in the wee small hours wanting a cup of tea. Her sister makes her way down towards the kitchen in the dark, preparing to light the fire and boil the water for the tea, but someone is already in the kitchen, raking the coals in the pitch black of the night.

'Trooper Thompson's Information' was published in Jason, and Other Stories (Chatto & Windus, 1899). The narrator, Thompson, is a trooper in the Australian mounted police. A fellow trooper, Ned Martin, goes missing and Thompson is charged with finding him. The days pass and he is no nearer finding out what has happened to his comrade, until he receives a night visit from Martin's ghost.

'Who Knew the Truth?' was published in The Old Cantonment and Other Stories (Methuen, 1905). The narrator, Vernon, travels to South Carolina with his brother-in-law and two other men. After a day of shooting in sweltering heat, the party is guided to a nearby house for the night, during which the narrator is woken by a soft, repeated knocking... the sound of an 'empty rocking chair, in vigorous motion!'

'La Carcassonne' was published in The Old Cantonment and Other Stories. Mrs Letty Wagstaff and her companion Miss Fanny Tarr are spending the season on the French Riviera. Miss Tarr purchases an opal ring, and it has a considerable effect upon her character, turning an ordinarily timid, quiet, teetotal spinster into a chatty, reckless, champagne-swilling gambler and reader of notorious novels.

'Mrs. Ponsonby's Dream' was published in Jason, and Other Stories. In it, Mrs Sally Ponsonby has a prophetic dream concerning a planned visit to her brother's house and the criminal intentions of his new butler.

'The Door Ajar' was published in The Old Cantonment and Other Stories. In it, the narrator and her brother, Hubert, are staying in the south of France. Along with fellow inmates of their hotel, they visit Chateau de la Vaye, near the Spanish border. While looking at the paintings within the old house, the youngest member of the group remembers events from a previous life.

"Number Ninety" and Other Ghost Stories isn't all that easy to get hold of now. A fine copy in a similarly fine jacket will cost about £90 (around $135), if you can find one. It's not easy to get hold of Croker's stories anywhere else either, but 'Number Ninety' appeared in Richard Dalby's Ghosts for Christmas, 'To Let' was published in The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, and 'The Dâk Bungalow at Dakor' can be found in Late Victorian Gothic Tales, published by Oxford University Press, which is available as a Kindle ebook or a paperback.

The Room in the Tower & Other Stories ~ E. F. Benson

Following on from last week's post about the first half of E. F. Benson's wonderful collection of spook stories, this post is about the second half. E. F. Benson is one of my favourite writers of spooky tales, so you can take it as said that I think every one of these tensely atmospheric stories is excellent.

In 'The Cat', after a terrible two-month bout of depression, brought on by being jilted, the artist Dick Alingham, whose work was previously merely mediocre, experiences an alteration in his perceptions of the world around him, a sudden surge of artistic in-spiration and a dramatic increase in ability. His friend, Jim Merwick, a rising young doctor, is concerned for the artist's mental health, especially when he agrees to return to painting the portrait of the woman who threw him aside for another man. And he's perfectly right to worry.

In 'The Bus-Conductor', the narrator and his friend, Hugh Grainger, have just returned from two days' ghost hunting in the country. Dining together the evening after their return, the conversation turns naturally to the subject of ghosts, and Grainger tells the story of his own experience with the supernatural which took place eighteen months earlier... an experience involving an empty hearse which left him 'a mere quivering mass of disordered nerves'. 

'The Man Who Went too Far' is set in the village of St Faith's in the county of Hampshire. Darcy visits the house of Frank Halton, a friend he hasn't seen for six years, and is surprised to find that he looks younger than ever before. Halton explains that his youthful appearance and physical vigour are the result of spending years contemplating nature and focusing solely on the cultivation of joy. But there are consequences to obsessively pursuing nothing but personal happiness.

In 'Between the Lights', Everard Chandler is sitting on the croquet lawn on Christmas Eve when the view before him is replaced by an interior scene from 'some epoch of dim antiquity', where the atmosphere is foul and oppressive and its inhabitants are scarcely human. For months he is haunted by his vision, and his doctor suggests a change of air. So, he travels to Glen Callan, in Sutherland, for a spot of stalking, but whilst out shooting he gets lost in the mist in unfamiliar territory. He spies a light coming from an opening in the wall ahead of him and, passing through it, finds himself in a circular enclosure. But once there, the vision returns.

In 'Outside the Door', Mrs Aldwych suggests a theory that explains certain supernatural phenomena, then tells a ghost story to illustrate her point. A month earlier, whilst home alone, she awoke suddenly in a state of terror. A little while later she heard the sound of someone descending the stairs towards the landing on which her room was situated, groping about in the dark as they tried to find their way. This, I think, is the weakest of all the tales in this collection, due to its explanatory nature and Mrs Aldwych's response to encountering a ghost. It's still a good story, just not as good as the rest.

In 'The Other Bed', the narrator is in Switzerland at the Hôtel Beau Site, in a first-floor room with two beds in it. He feels a distinct repugnance at the idea of occupying the bed prepared for him, so moves to the other one. But his mind begins to dwell on that other bed, and he starts to fear it. He feels a presence in the room, and more than once he wakes to find that the covers of the other bed have been disarranged during the night, as though it has been occupied. 

'The electric light was burning brightly, and there seemed to me to be a curious stain, as of a shadow, on the lower part of the pillow and the top of the sheet, definite and suggestive, and for a moment I stood there again throttled by a nameless terror. Then taking my courage in my hands I went closer and looked at it. Then I touched it; the sheet, where the stain or shadow was, seemed damp to the hand, so also was the pillow.'

'The Thing in the Hall' is the account of Dr Francis Assheton regarding the events which took place prior to the death of his old Cambridge friend, Louis Fielder. Fielder, who liked to try everything, had been trying his hand at spiritualism and had thrown open the door to his soul and invited something in. Wanting to discover more about the strange phenomena occurring in Fielder's home, the two men held regular séances and interest turned to obsession, until the Thing materialised before them.

The narrator of 'The House with the Brick-Kiln', along with Jack Singleton, travels to the Manor of Trevor Major, which stands in a lonely spot in the vicinity of Lewes in Sussex, in the hope of doing some dry-fly fishing. The fishing is good and the manor is comfortable, but the place has a dark history, and the narrator begins to feel 'something unseen and unheard and dreadful' near to him. And that sensation intensifies as time passes, until 'unseen' becomes decidedly 'seen'.

'The Terror by Night' is a story about precognition. The narrator and his old friend Jack Lorimer find themselves troubled by feelings of apprehension, as though something is about to happen, though they know not what. No matter what they do, they cannot shake the ominous feeling that something is about to unfold.

The first edition of The Room in the Tower is a very rare book, and a copy in fine condition would cost several hundred pounds, but it's very difficult to find one in that condition. At the moment, a good copy goes for about £150, but they're not all that common either at present.

Ash-Tree Press published The Terror by Night in 1998, and that contains all but two of the tales from The Room in the Tower: 'The Room in the Tower' and 'The Confession of Charles Linkworth'. A fine copy with like dust jacket sells for around eighty to a hundred pounds ($120~150) at the moment. There's a Kindle version, and that's available for a little over five pounds.

There's also the paperback Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson, published in 2012 by Wordsworth Editions. That contains all of the stories from The Room in the Tower, plus many more besides. There's a Kindle edition of that too, for a mere £1.49.

Photograph at top of post: Edward Frederic Benson, 1st of August 1926, by Lafayette Ltd. ©National Portrait Gallery, London.

The Room in the Tower & Other Stories ~ E. F. Benson

Edward Frederic Benson (1867~1940) is probably best known these days for being the creator of Mapp and Lucia. His acute satirical novels about warring upper middle class Sussex ladies during the inter-war years never seem to wane in popularity. The TV series of the 1980s had a cult following, and the BBC aired a new adaptation only last year. But Fred, as he was known to his chums, had several strings to his bow and was a prolific writer; he was also an archaeologist, memoirist, and writer of excellent and unsettling weird short stories. His tales are genuinely creepy and sometimes pretty horrific, so it's best not to read them when you're home alone, in the dark... not a soul to hear you scream for help, etc.

Benson's first collection of weird tales, The Room in the Tower and Other Stories, was published by Mills & Boon in 1912. It contains: The Room in the Tower, Gavon's Eve, The Dust-Cloud, The Confession of Charles Link-worth, At Abdul Ali's Grave, The Shootings 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 Other Bed, The Thing in the Hall, The House with the Brick-Kiln, The Terror by Night.

As there are seventeen tales in this collection, and I don't want to just skim over them to avoid writing an overly long post, I'm going to split this post into two. I'll cover half of the stories in this post and the other half in a second post next week.

Over a period of fifteen years, the narrator of 'The Room in the Tower' repeatedly dreams of visiting the home of Jack Stone and his mother Julia. Each time, he is given the room in the tower. The dream develops over the years, but it always ends in the same way - with a feeling of mounting terror. Then the narrator goes to stay with his friend, John Clinton, at his home in Sussex, and he finds himself in the house of his terrible dreams, where he is once again given the room in the tower.

'Gavon's Eve' falls on the 15th of September. On the bank of a pool in the vicinity of the village of Gavon in Sutherland stand the ruins of a Pict castle, 'built out of rough and scarcely hewn masonry'. At the hour of midnight in this location, 'the evil and malignant spirits which hold sway on Gavon's Eve are at the zenith of their powers', and the narrator and his friend Hugh Graham decide to go and see for themselves what ungodly things take place in that remote, wild place.

'The Dust-Cloud' put me in mind of Stephen King's Christine. The narrator's host, Harry Combe-Martin, tells the story of a ghostly automobile, a twenty-five horse-power Amédée... a brute of a car that ran over a child and killed its owner, Guy Elphinstone, a savage driver who ran over his own dog rather than brake or swerve to avoid it.

In 'The Confession of Charles Linkworth', Charles Linkworth is facing execution for having murdered his mother, but even when his appeal is rejected he refuses to confess his crime to Dr Teesdale. He continues to assert that he is innocet... at least, he does as long as he is alive.

'At Abdul Ali's Grave' is set in Luxor, Egypt. Abdul Ali, the oldest man in the village, has died, but his cache of money is nowhere to be found. During his last days, he was attended by the notorious Achmet, a practitioner of the dark arts who is partial to robbing the bodies of the recently deceased. The narrator and his friend, Weston, have a servant, Machmout, who is clairvoyant. Wanting to confirm the accuracy of one of Machmout's visions, the two Englishmen go by moonlight to the grave of Abdul Ali, where they discover just how far Achmet is willing to go to get his hands on the riches of the dead.

'The Shootings of Achnaleish' is one of my favourites of this collection. The narrator and his wife, with Jim and Mabel Armitage, rent a farmhouse in Achnaleish, in Sutherlandshire, for fishing and shooting during the summer. En route to their holiday home, as they speed through the dark landscape, enormous black hares dash before their car, one of which they run down, much to the horror of the locals. To make matters worse, Jim is determined to bag some hares when he goes out shooting. But nobody shoots hares at Achnaleish... not if they value their own lives.

In 'How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery', Church-Peveril is a house that is 'beset and frequented by spectres, both visible and audible'. Generally speaking, the Peverils are proud of their defunct family members and find them amusing, but there are two ghosts which they never laugh at - the ghosts of twin-babies, murdered by Dick Peveril in 1602, who appear in the long gallery. None who see the twin spectres live long afterwards, and the long gallery is avoided at all costs after nightfall. But Madge Dalrymple has had a bad fall and is left reading in the long gallery, where she nods off... and she is still sleeping there when the light fails.

'Caterpillars' is set in the Villa Cascana, which stands on a hill not far from Sestri di Levante on the Italian Riviera, looking out over the sea. The narrator and Arthur Inglis are staying there with Jim Stanley and his wife. But there is something not quite right about the place. During the first night of his stay at the villa, the narrator is unable to sleep and goes downstairs to fetch a book. The door to an empty bedroom lies open, so he looks inside... only to find that the bed is far from unoccupied. Personally, I've always found caterpillars to be rather cute; at least, I did until I first read this story.

To be continued...

Cold Harbour ~ Francis Brett Young

Francis Brett Young (1884~1954) was born in Halesowen (historically in Worcestershire, now in the West Midlands), the eldest son of Dr. Thomas Brett Young. He was educated at Iona Cottage High School, a small private school in Sutton Coldfield, and then Epsom College in Surrey, where he edited the Epsomian school magazine and won the Rosebery Prize for English Literature. He studied medicine at the University of Birmingham and went on to become a general practitioner in Brixham in 1907, but continued writing whilst working as a doctor. He achieved popular success in 1927, when he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Portrait of Clare, and he was at the height of his fame during the 1930s. Brett Young wrote thirty novels, four short story collections, and three volumes of poetry. These days, however, he is all but forgotten by most readers.

Cold Harbour was published by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1924. The novel begins on the island of Capri, where a party of four is enjoying an evening on the terrace after dinner. There is the unnamed narrator, his old college friend Ronald Wake, who he hasn't seen for a long time, Ronald's wife Evelyn, and the clergyman Harley. As the topic of conversation turns to the existence of evil, the Wakes appear to be troubled by something and are encouraged to tell their story. The tale that follows is told in part by Ronald Wake, and in part by his wife, with the thread passing back and forth from one to the other as the story progresses.

A fortnight earlier, having been caught in a downpour on the way back home, with a flat tyre to boot, the Wakes stop at an inn for the night. Whilst there, Evelyn meets the strange Mr Humphrey Furnival, who invites her and her husband to his home, Cold Harbour, to view his manuscripts and Roman artefacts. And so they visit the following afternoon, but Ronald takes an instant dislike to both Mr Furnival and his house.

'There it stood, with its dark, grimy brick, a steely light reflected from its windows. It seemed to rise up in front of us monstrously, malignantly, as though it hated us. And God knows I hated it too. If this place were mine, I thought, I'd never rest till I'd got rid of it.' 

As soon as Evelyn is alone with Furnival's wife, the latter confides in her that she fears for Mr Furnival's life and his immortal soul, because he is possessed. The house, she explains, is full of forces of active evil, and many have been touched by its influence whilst staying in it; some have been frightened almost out of their wits, and priests have found themselves unable to pray. And Mrs Furnival sees blood everywhere.

Young constructs an atmosphere of suspense and dread so brilliantly that I don't blame the Wakes for wanting to get away as quickly as possible from Humphrey Furnival, with his terrible laugh and aggressive outbursts, and his oppressive, sinister house.

'We walked away beneath the ghostly autumnal trees. We went like ghosts, the leaves were so thick under our feet. It was as though death hung in the air. Something worse than death. I know death, and this was infinitely worse. Evelyn was tugging at my arm, like a child who is cold and wants to run. I knew what she meant. We began running together. Down the drive, into the road, running away from Cold Harbour, and feeling, all the time, the house behind us, lying there, like a stormy monster, crouched, ready to strike.'

Having placed the facts of the case before their audience, the Wakes ask the narrator and Harley, the clergyman, to offer their opinions. And then Ronald Wake puts forward his own theory regarding the happenings at Cold Harbour and their root cause.

But it's at this point that the novel changes direction and heads back towards the rational: 'the darkness of another world was lifted from us, and the story, which had carried us into regions where our imaginations shuddered and were lost, returned to the familiar plane of human reason'. That might well be a relief for the narrator and his clergyman friend, but it's a bit of a let down for readers like me; I rather enjoy my imaginations shuddering. And the ending is wrapped up far too quickly. So, the end, to my mind, is a disappointment. But the rest of the book is so utterly wonderful that it is still one of my favourites.

A fine copy of the first UK edition of Cold Harbour, complete with dust jacket, is pretty much impossible to find. A near fine copy without the jacket costs about £150 (approx. $120), but it's such a rare book that copies don't turn up very often.

The first American edition was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1925, and that's easier to get hold of. You can pick up a very good copy for about £25, without the jacket.

Ash-Tree Press republished Cold Harbour in 2007, but that edition's out of print and not all that easy to get hold of. Fine copies sell for about £30. I think it's got a rather nice dust jacket (see image left).

House of Stratus published a paperback in 2008, and that's available for a mere £8.99, but as I've never seen a copy of the book I can't pass comment on whether it's a good or bad production. There is, as far as I am aware, no Kindle version available at the moment.