Necromancers by Robert Hugh Benson, Fiction, Horror

by Robert Hugh Benson

The Necromancers is more than that; there is a real Augustinian terror of the void, in the absence of God comes real evil. In the book's climax, Maggie's love for Laurie, and a night of sincere prayer draw him back from the brink - a brink that practical, clear-headed, convent-raised Maggie glimpses in the form of the dark, fiery personality she confronts in the night. This personality can be none other than the Devil himself.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Classics, Fantasy, Gothic, Catholic, Literature

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Mrsgr. Robert Hugh Benson AFSC KC*SG KGCHS was an English Catholic priest and writer. First an Anglican pastor, he was received into the Catholic Church in 1903 and ordained therein the next year. He was also a prolific writer of fiction, writing the notable dystopian novel Lord of the World, as well as Come Rack! Come Rope!.

His output encompassed historical, horror and science fiction, contemporary fiction, children's stories, plays, apologetics, devotional works and articles. He continued his writing career at the same time as he progressed through the hierarchy to become a Chamberlain to Pope Pius X in 1911, and gain the title of Monsignor before his death a few years later.

Reviews

[Tom Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is old old old, but creepy as *F! Turn of the century England, a grieving widower is offered an opportunity to see his deceased spouse in a seance. But what manifests itself might not be the woman he knew. The language is elegant and descriptive, and the mood is spot-on. I only docked it a star because the resolution didn't quite live up to the build up.

[John Corrigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It might be argued that The Necromancers, like so many of Benson’s novels, suffers from an anticlimactic ending. Readers who expect something comparable to The Exorcist will certainly be disappointed.

There are, however, many strengths which more than compensate. The narrative is personable and often amusing. The characters are very sympathetic, and as a character study, The Necromancers excels.

Benson intended the book to serve as a warning against the occult. Its value in this has not diminished, but the novel can also be recommended as an interesting study of grief. The Necromancers requires only small investments in time and concentration, but the return is well worth it.

[K.J. Charles]

Exceedingly slow burn occult novel that attempts to make table-rapping type Spiritualism into a scary experience, not very successfully. Highly snobbish. Regrettably unlike the promise of the cover on my ebook edition, which has a huge terrifying demon. Promises, promises.

[Jeremy Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be a good example of horror novels of its time. While it is easy to dismiss this book as bland and boring, one needs to examine it in terms of the situation in which it was written.
First, the common writing style of the time was much different than today. Therefor, the long, wordy sentences and paragraphs which contain too much detail and not not enough main ideas were the standard for when this was written.
Secondly, horror as a genre was still rather new. When considering what else was available in terms of reading material, this would have been very entertaining to the people who read it. Just think of Bensen as being the Dean Koontz of his time.
Third, the topic of dabbling in the occult was very relevant at that time. People really did this sort of thing all the time back then.
When looking at this from a modern view point, it's still a good read.

[Krodì80 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spirito (della letteratura), batti un colpo!

Fratello del romanziere Edward Frederic (autore del ciclo dedicato a Lucia), da cui non ha mutuato né un barlume di comica ironia, né la capacità di allestire una godibile storia di fantasmi, o meglio, di presenze, Robert Hugh Benson fu un attivissimo scrittore di romanzi storici, saggi sul Cristianesimo, e divenne prete cattolico transitando dalla chiesa anglicana; il suo articolato iter spirituale è raccolto in Confessioni di un convertito. La trama de Gli stregoni (The Necromancers, 1909, di cui esiste anche un’altra versione italiana dal titolo I Necromanti. La vita è più forte della morte), se ben orchestrata, avrebbe potuto generare una storia dalle molteplici potenzialità narrative, affrontando il misterioso tema dello spiritismo - di gran moda fra gli abbienti d’Oltremanica nella seconda metà dell’800 / inizio ‘900 -, qui celebrato con la rievocazione dall’aldilà della povera Amy, la cui morte ha gettato nel più nero sconforto il giovane Laurie. Fra gabinetti medianici, evocazioni, materializzazioni, tavole rotonde et similia Benson avrebbe potuto congegnare un bel romanzetto gotico, e finire magari anche menzionato nella Storia della letteratura del terrore di David Punter, che guarda caso se lo dimentica. Le esperienze delle americane sorelle Fox, le varie leggende metropolitane dell’epoca, i libri sull’argomento di Allan Kardec avrebbero inoltre costituito delle gustose aggiunte agli insipidi ingredienti maldestramente mixati da Benson, il quale ha invece ascoltato i saggi consigli, forse troppo pii, di un reverendo domenicano, come riporta una cortese epigrafe. Gli stregoni altro non è che un tiepido libro forgiato per istruire giovini e fanciulle sulla malvagità dello spiritismo e dell’occultismo, ma con tale scialbo nerbo strutturale e l’inesistenza inequivocabile di vita narrativa, che il lettore odierno rischia davvero di cadere in uno stato di trance soporifero senza ritorno.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd, frightening and unsubtle tale against spiritualism, seances and demonic possession, all overcome by the power of prayer, Courage and Love. "You can be almost anything else, if you're a spiritualist; but you can't be a Catholic."

[booklady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creepy. A grieving young man looks for answers in spiritualism and ends up with more than he bargained for. Benson keeps you on the edge of your chair. Not my usual kind of book, but I could not put it down.

[Dfordoom · Rating 1 out of 5]

A young man is engaged to be married, but his intended bride dies. He becomes involved with Spiritualists, starts attending séances and discovers that he has hitherto unsuspected power as a medium. He grows obsessed with the idea of making contact with his deceased sweetheart. Benson was a Catholic priest, and this 1909 novel is a thinly-disguised polemic against the evils of Spiritualism. And that’s really the most interesting thing about this novel, the light it sheds on the extraordinary controversies that raged on this subject in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s more of an historical curiosity than anything else, but the author’s obvious hysteria does provide some entertainment. It’s easy to forget just how big an issue Spiritualism was at that time. Rather similar to more modern outbreaks of hysteria about subjects like satanic ritual abuse and so forth.

[Marko · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5.0

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story starts with lots of flowery Victorian descriptions, but then comes overwhelming grief over the death of a loved one. That brings for young Mr. Baxter the crack and fracturing of his faith and ultimate despair. Something has to fill the void. The main character, in a desperate attempt to connect with his dead fiancé, gets involved in spiritualism. Evidently seances were a very common parlor activity at the turn of the last century when this was written. This novel is about spiritual battle and will leave you shivering in your boots. It's another great book by Fr. Robert Hugh Benson.

[Lucy Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd never read anything by the OTHER Benson, the one who isn't EF, and he comes off well by comparison. His prose is quite witty and page-turning, and the characters are attractive. Servants and the "lower orders" play a role in the story, tho the departed Amy Nugent's parents seem to be more upset about losing their chance to hobnob with the gentry, and the heroine Maggie is very dismissive of poor Amy. The dead girl's bedroom is described in detail, with its family groups, depictions of Queen Victoria, and illuminated Bible quotes. The more upmarket Lady Something has a drawing-room full of "watercolours".

Good moments are the "flowery, Victorian" depictions of the garden and the changing seasons, and the truly hellish storm that arises on the night of the climactic seance. The resulting apparition is genuinely scary. Sometimes shivery events happen off-stage, filtered through the perceptions of the servants in their cosy sitting room, or even some cats looking through the windows.

However, the film, called variously Spellbound/Passing Clouds/The Spell of Amy Nugent is better. It's full of noirish shadows and well-played by a cast including Derek Farr as Laurie and Felix Aylmer as his skeptical tutor. It benefits from a very funny (yes, really) script by Miles Malleson.

[Chris Fellows · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was like a Charles Williams novel, except it made sense. Usually my complaint with books about occult weirdness is that the build-up is too quick and the crazy frenzy of weirdness is drawn out too long, but this is not five stars for the opposite reason: the final confrontation between good and evil is too compressed, and the book ends too quickly after it.

[Mark Carver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty intense. Despite a heavy writing style that tended to be too clinical or verbose, this book was quite chilling and creepy. The characters were very vulnerable and realistic, which made their terror very believable. Moral of the story: if you play with fire, you're gonna get burned...

[Sarah Yasin · Rating 5 out of 5]

terrifying and entertaining

[Emmanuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a bad book, but it's far from what we would call "horror" these days. It portrays unsettling themes and focuses a lot on the psychology of the characters — in a way, it felt more like a character study, but the psychological aspect is so heavy-handed that it leaves little to subtext. I love Mons. Benson's writing, but I must say, it was really needed to talk so much about nerves? The scene from the cat's POV was very strange. I understand its purpose, but it could have been one line or a paragraph long, and refrain from talking about the cat's nerves. Also, the epilogue felt preachy.

Those things aside, I know how fierce and passionate Spiritualists can be and how brave Mons. Benson was to publish this novel at that time. My family is still deeply Kardecist, and I myself have a few stories to tell about those people. It's true, demonic influences in these cults are mostly subtle and rarely manifest themselves in a scary way; but I know of cases where a nervous temperament meets with the demonic and there are ugly consequences. Nervous breakdown, hallucinations, or even convulsions. They called my aunt a medium and a very spiritually sensitive person. Ten years ago, I remember waking up at 3 AM and hearing her crying during her sleep, and it felt like one of these ghosts of weeping women. Unfortunately, she tried to fake a suicide and passed away three years ago.

Maybe my past experiences made this read a lot harder than it should have been. Even so, the story is slow, the climax doesn't hit as Benson's other novels and the characters are not that memorable, aside maybe from Maggie. As a cautionary tale, I still prefer a lot "An Average Man", and Percy was much more interesting to follow than Laurie.

Well, it's just not a book for everyone.

[Frederick Frankel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy meets Girl. Boy meets Second Girl. Second Girl dies unexpectedly. Boy is distraught, and tries to see Dead Girl again through occult means. This turns out to be not a good idea, as Demon from Hell dresses up in Dead Girl's clothes in attempt to seduce Boy, and his intentions are not really of the romantic kind. A sense of impending doom takes over. Fortunately, through the love and prayers of the First Girl (or let's just call her Girl), the powers of heaven intercede. Boy and Girl wake up, as from a dream, and try to forget all of this. After all, they are English, and middle class, and it is 1905, the beginning of the 20th century, for goodness sake.

But I had no trouble believing any of this.

[Sarah Yasin · Rating 4 out of 5]

once I got past the hundred-year-old language I found this book to be quite creepy

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't actually finish this book. I hate to give up halfway through, but it just never caught my attention.

[Margaret Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the Project Gutenberg edition.

[Craig Herbertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable hockum with that Denis Wheatley conundrum: not sure whether to back the pious christian who're going to win regardless or the naughty spiritualists

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

rather plodding, and the characters are fairly bland. plus the ending is pretty abrupt and unexciting. it was an ok read, but not exactly a classic of supernatural fiction.

[Karthik Mangipudi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had to leave it half-way. Full of flowery Victorian descriptions and lacks substance. Never caught my attention and was helpful in putting me to sleep.

[Mbuye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Hugh Benson appears to have been extraordinarily versatile for a Victorian-Edwardian writer, the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with two brothers, who like himself, wielded a creative pen. (One brother is very well known: E F Benson, author of the Lucia and Miss Mapp books, among others). Robert Hugh too was a writer, but he was much more. Starting as a Church of England clergyman, he converted to the Catholic faith, and later became a priest. His conversion did not affect his writing, though it tended to be more philosophical and theological. He wrote, like his two brothers, books for children, historical novels, plays, ghost and supernatural fiction as well as, surprisingly, dystopian novels set in a future amazingly realistic in our time. At the time of his death in 1914, when he was barely 42 years, he held the honorary title of ‘Monsignor’ by virtue of being an aide to the Pope. As might be expected, after his conversion to Catholicism, his writing takes on the doctrinal slant of the Church of Rome. This does not mean that his work is stilted or aggressively proselytic. On the contrary, his language is light hearted but excellent, his plots are well worked out, his characters stand out and in general his work stands out among other writers of the same period for sheer superiority.

‘The Necromancers’ is a short novel about demonic possession, exorcism, and the absurdity as well as the dangers of spiritualism. The Spiritualist Movement in late Victorian England is believed to have arisen to fill the gap caused by a loss of faith in conventional religion following the publication of Darwin's ‘Origin,’ and it is a fact that eminently respected and respectable men and women succumbed to its lure - Arthur Conan Doyle, for one, Rudyard Kipling, and the poet Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. Queen Victoria, the temporal head of the Church of England, is recorded as hosting séances together with her very sane husband.

RH Benson’s story uses the framework of spiritualism for a far greater warning: do not look at the forbidden, “for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Lawrence Baxter, Catholic by conversion, attends a séance where he hopes to meet the soul of his dead love. The medium, an “honest” man, does not want him to get too deeply involved, because the subject is a “sensitive” who needs rigorous training first. For what? The participants in the final séance, where Baxter meets the Beast in the guise of his lost love, are terrified out of their wits, and well they might be.

The last few scenes take place in his own village, where the creature that is in the process of taking over Baxter’s soul, mind and body enters in Baxter's form. These chapters are difficult to analyse, except for an oppressive horror that pervades the house and its people. The reclamation of Baxter's mind is done by prayer, and appropriately, on Easter Sunday.

If the story itself is a straightforward horror novel, the novel is raised from the commonplace by the wealth of atmospherics, and especially by the depth and insight into the persons concerned and their relationship to each other. But by far the best part of the book lies in the language, crisp and stark. The epilogue doesn't help to clear up much, but as Maggie, the girl who loved Baxter and prayed for him says, “I’ve looked through the door once, without in the least wishing to; and I don’t in the least want to look again. It’s not a nice view.” Indeed, it is not.

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's funny to read a few negative reviews of this novel calling it slow or boring ... I found it riveting.

I knew someone quite well when she was dealing with demonic possession and saw her set free from it, and in her case as well as in the book, engaging in Spiritualism (automatic writing, seances, calling up spirits) truly opens a door to the demonic. If you understand that the danger is real, then watching the story unfold isn't at all boring!

As always Benson writes beautifully, creates settings and characters that are engaging and believable, and with a particular focus on a person's character.

If you're looking for action-packed thrills and the Exorcist, look elsewhere, but if you want to read about realistic people whose actions and choices lead them to either heaven or hell, Benson is one of the greats.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was written in the early 1900's by a Catholic priest. As such, it's considered an early horror novel. It is much along the same lines as The Exorcist. In this book, though, it's not a child that becomes possessed, it's a young gentleman who has lost his beloved girlfriend and begins looking into Spiritualism to help get him in contact with her. I think this book may be a reaction to the popularity of Spiritualism in the late 19th and early 20th century. A cautionary tale of what happens to those who meddle in the dark arts. Anyway, once you get past the writing form of the time period it's a good, interesting book that i really enjoyed.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately there's not much of a plot.
English convert becomes superstitious sadsack after his gf dies suddenly. Dabbles in spiritualism - nothing flamboyantly diabolic, but definitely unacceptable for a Catholic. Then he is possessed? And saved by the power of Love? (the unrequited love he receives from a French convent trained young lady who's basically his adopted sister) Or maybe that last part was just a bad dream. Huh.
Unless you *really* dig Robert Hugh Benson I wouldn't recommend THE NECROMANCERS.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early ghost story…reminiscent of Pet Semetary. Somewhat suspenseful, but unsatisfying at the end. The climax kind of comes and goes and you don’t really know what happened. And then in the end, you’re left with all the old usual questions and theories that remain unresolved. It is interesting the contrast between spiritualism and the Catholic Church. I guess it just adds a little flavor to the book.

[Stesha · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the earliest of what we think of as the modern horror novel, this one deals with turn-of-the-twentieth-century spiritualism and, possibly, demonic possession. Published in 1909 and written by a Catholic priest, the fun in this book is the characters. They are lively and well written and amongst them is one of the saltiest mothers-of-an-unmarried-son I’ve ever read. Mrs. Baxter, madam, never stop being you!

[Bronwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old horror

Although this book may have packed quite a chill in its day, it feels more like a cozy suspense to this modern reader. Mr Laurie has stumbled into Spiritualism after the death of his beloved Amy. He tumbles down the ghost rabbit hole and must be rescued from the powers of darkness.

[Connie Gamarra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasant read

It's a simple read set in Victorian England, during the time when spiritualism was gaining popularity. It feels like a short story that you can finish in one afternoon.