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Weird Stories
A collection of short ghost stories by Victorian writer Charlotte Riddell. Includes: Walnut-Tree House, The Open Door, Nut Bush Farm, Sandy the Tinker, and Old Mrs Jones. With their monstrous women and uncanny children, their tales of dissolution, greed and murder behind the facade of splendid houses, these stories will appeal to the modern aficionado of supernatural fiction.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1882
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About the author
J.H. Riddell
219 books14 followersAKA: Mrs. Joseph H. Riddell and Charlotte Elizabeth Lawson Cowan Riddell. Sometimes published under the names C.E.L. Riddell, Catherine Riddell or F.G. Trafford
Charlotte Riddell aka Mrs J.H. Riddell (30 September 1832 – 24 September 1906) was one of the most popular and influential writers of the Victorian period. The author of 56 books, novels and short stories, she was also part owner and editor of the St. James's Magazine, one of the most prestigious literary magazines of the 1860s.
Born Charlotte Eliza Lawson Cowan in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Ireland on 30 September 1832, Riddell was the youngest daughter of James Cowan, of Carrickfergus, High Sheriff for the county of Antrim and Ellen Kilshaw of Liverpool, England.
In the winter of 1855, four years after her father's death, she and her mother moved to London. Charlotte was visited by death again the following year when her mother died. In 1857 she married Joseph Hadley Riddell, a civil engineer, originally from Staffordshire, but resident in London. It is known that they moved to live in St John's Lodge between Harringay and West Green in the mid-1860s, moving out in 1873 as the area was being built up. She was the author of many ghost stories, six of which were published as Weird Stories in 1882.
Her husband died in 1880. Charlotte lived a lonely life thereafter until she died from cancer in Ashford, Kent, England on 24 September 1906.
Charlotte Riddell aka Mrs J.H. Riddell (30 September 1832 – 24 September 1906) was one of the most popular and influential writers of the Victorian period. The author of 56 books, novels and short stories, she was also part owner and editor of the St. James's Magazine, one of the most prestigious literary magazines of the 1860s.
Born Charlotte Eliza Lawson Cowan in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Ireland on 30 September 1832, Riddell was the youngest daughter of James Cowan, of Carrickfergus, High Sheriff for the county of Antrim and Ellen Kilshaw of Liverpool, England.
In the winter of 1855, four years after her father's death, she and her mother moved to London. Charlotte was visited by death again the following year when her mother died. In 1857 she married Joseph Hadley Riddell, a civil engineer, originally from Staffordshire, but resident in London. It is known that they moved to live in St John's Lodge between Harringay and West Green in the mid-1860s, moving out in 1873 as the area was being built up. She was the author of many ghost stories, six of which were published as Weird Stories in 1882.
Her husband died in 1880. Charlotte lived a lonely life thereafter until she died from cancer in Ashford, Kent, England on 24 September 1906.
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March 9, 2025
Note, March 9, 2025: I've just edited this now, only to remove a clause in one sentence that was left over from when I was reading, and reviewing, the book piecemeal (and which got overlooked as I was editing those parts into a whole).
Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906), who usually wrote as Mrs. J. H. Riddell, was one of Victorian England's more successful and prolific writers of ghost stories, as well as other fiction. My only previous acquaintance with her work was through reading "The Last Squire of Ennismore" in Great Horror Stories: 101 Chilling Tales (which I liked, but didn't comment on in my review of that anthology). This collection was originally published in 1882, but was reprinted in 2009 by Victorian Secrets, a British small press that reprints now neglected but worthwhile 19th-century works for the benefit of a new generation of readers. It contains just six stories; but as "short" stories go, a couple of these tend to be on the longer end of the spectrum. (Not counting the Introduction, the book has 173 pages, so the average length of the tales is almost 29 pages.)
Having the right expectations is important for readers going into this book. First, Riddell did not subscribe to the idea that manifestations of the supernatural have to be malevolent in order to be interesting. Her characters/narrators may find brushes with the ghostly/uncanny to be inherently unsettling and disturbing, sometimes with lasting effects along that line, simply because they ARE uncanny and so out of comfortable, normal expectation; but her revenants are not necessarily malevolent, and grisly-gory content in the mold of modern schlock "horror" is not what she offers. She's also deeply interested in the character and human relationships of her protagonists, and she takes time to develop these and to set the stage for the stories; she's writing primarily about people who are experiencing supernatural phenomena, not primarily about the phenomena as a literary end in itself, if that distinction makes sense. If those features would turn you off, as they do some reviewers, you're better off with a different author. Personally, I didn't have any issue with either of them; I felt they indicated better-than-average depth in the author's vision.
All of the stories are set in the England of the author's own time; unlike an earlier generation of writers, she does not set her supernatural phenomena in settings removed from her readers in space or time. She writes with late-Victorian diction, but not in a particularly flowery fashion. I especially appreciated the fact that her stories often have a note of skepticism and irreverence towards the role of class snobbery and prejudices in the England of her day, and a dislike of the attitude that "genteel" families should "keep up appearances" for their station, even if it runs them into debt.
In one story, the seemingly supernatural phenomenon is unmasked as natural; but in all of the others, we're intended to understand that the phenomena are "real." Those are mostly ghost stories involving haunted houses, but one selection involves an encounter with Satan (which doesn't ring true theologically). Most of the stories have a murder as a backdrop. Of the individual stories, "The Old House in Vauxhall Walk" is the least satisfactory. The underlying idea had promise, but it seemed to me probably hastily written and not fully developed (at 17 pages, it's the second shortest tale in the book). Some key developments are left unexplained and murky, and a crucial, major conversation that produces a 180-degree change in the protagonist's behavior is mentioned in one sentence, but we're never told the content of the conversation. However, I liked all of the other stories at least moderately well. At 43 pages, the longest one, "Old Mrs. Jones," could be improved by shortening (the two-page sermon on the importance of saving for a rainy day as part of proper household management would have been a good candidate for the axe!); but it does have some wonderful dry humor, and a vivid climactic scene that shows the influence of Jane Eyre. My favorite story in the book was "Nut Bush Farm," but "Walnut-Tree House" is also right up there.
Emma Liggans (whose credentials aren't stated) contributes a five and 1/2 page Introduction (which I read as an afterword to avoid spoilers --and it has some of the latter). It packs good information into its short length, including biographical material on Riddell, some effort to contextualize her in the ghost story subgenre of her day and to explain the appeal of these types of stories to Victorian readers, and discussion of some of her stylistic characteristics and themes (such as the prominence of female characters in her work). Riddell's entire corpus of ghost stories was posthumously collected under the editorship of E. F. Bleiler (The Collected Ghost Stories of Mrs. J.H. Riddell, 1977), one of the few academics of his generation to take supernatural fiction seriously and specialize in studying it. That collection is one of four books Liggans suggests for further reading, along with a couple of American or British university-press monographs on Victorian supernatural fiction. (She also lists The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories; but the only Riddell story in that anthology also appears here.)
Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906), who usually wrote as Mrs. J. H. Riddell, was one of Victorian England's more successful and prolific writers of ghost stories, as well as other fiction. My only previous acquaintance with her work was through reading "The Last Squire of Ennismore" in Great Horror Stories: 101 Chilling Tales (which I liked, but didn't comment on in my review of that anthology). This collection was originally published in 1882, but was reprinted in 2009 by Victorian Secrets, a British small press that reprints now neglected but worthwhile 19th-century works for the benefit of a new generation of readers. It contains just six stories; but as "short" stories go, a couple of these tend to be on the longer end of the spectrum. (Not counting the Introduction, the book has 173 pages, so the average length of the tales is almost 29 pages.)
Having the right expectations is important for readers going into this book. First, Riddell did not subscribe to the idea that manifestations of the supernatural have to be malevolent in order to be interesting. Her characters/narrators may find brushes with the ghostly/uncanny to be inherently unsettling and disturbing, sometimes with lasting effects along that line, simply because they ARE uncanny and so out of comfortable, normal expectation; but her revenants are not necessarily malevolent, and grisly-gory content in the mold of modern schlock "horror" is not what she offers. She's also deeply interested in the character and human relationships of her protagonists, and she takes time to develop these and to set the stage for the stories; she's writing primarily about people who are experiencing supernatural phenomena, not primarily about the phenomena as a literary end in itself, if that distinction makes sense. If those features would turn you off, as they do some reviewers, you're better off with a different author. Personally, I didn't have any issue with either of them; I felt they indicated better-than-average depth in the author's vision.
All of the stories are set in the England of the author's own time; unlike an earlier generation of writers, she does not set her supernatural phenomena in settings removed from her readers in space or time. She writes with late-Victorian diction, but not in a particularly flowery fashion. I especially appreciated the fact that her stories often have a note of skepticism and irreverence towards the role of class snobbery and prejudices in the England of her day, and a dislike of the attitude that "genteel" families should "keep up appearances" for their station, even if it runs them into debt.
In one story, the seemingly supernatural phenomenon is unmasked as natural; but in all of the others, we're intended to understand that the phenomena are "real." Those are mostly ghost stories involving haunted houses, but one selection involves an encounter with Satan (which doesn't ring true theologically). Most of the stories have a murder as a backdrop. Of the individual stories, "The Old House in Vauxhall Walk" is the least satisfactory. The underlying idea had promise, but it seemed to me probably hastily written and not fully developed (at 17 pages, it's the second shortest tale in the book). Some key developments are left unexplained and murky, and a crucial, major conversation that produces a 180-degree change in the protagonist's behavior is mentioned in one sentence, but we're never told the content of the conversation. However, I liked all of the other stories at least moderately well. At 43 pages, the longest one, "Old Mrs. Jones," could be improved by shortening (the two-page sermon on the importance of saving for a rainy day as part of proper household management would have been a good candidate for the axe!); but it does have some wonderful dry humor, and a vivid climactic scene that shows the influence of Jane Eyre. My favorite story in the book was "Nut Bush Farm," but "Walnut-Tree House" is also right up there.
Emma Liggans (whose credentials aren't stated) contributes a five and 1/2 page Introduction (which I read as an afterword to avoid spoilers --and it has some of the latter). It packs good information into its short length, including biographical material on Riddell, some effort to contextualize her in the ghost story subgenre of her day and to explain the appeal of these types of stories to Victorian readers, and discussion of some of her stylistic characteristics and themes (such as the prominence of female characters in her work). Riddell's entire corpus of ghost stories was posthumously collected under the editorship of E. F. Bleiler (The Collected Ghost Stories of Mrs. J.H. Riddell, 1977), one of the few academics of his generation to take supernatural fiction seriously and specialize in studying it. That collection is one of four books Liggans suggests for further reading, along with a couple of American or British university-press monographs on Victorian supernatural fiction. (She also lists The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories; but the only Riddell story in that anthology also appears here.)
December 22, 2018
A collection of six Victorian ghost stories. This is from a publishing house called Victorian Secrets which publishes books from and about the nineteenth century, some of which might otherwise be difficult to find. This collection certainly fits into the gothic category with rambling old houses recalcitrant furniture and apparitions. It isn’t always a house that is haunted, in one it is a farm. The hauntings are often linked to past injustices.
Charlotte Riddell was a prolific Victorian writer, producing over fifty novels and a number of short stories. Five of her novels are also ghost stories. She wrote for the popular market and was the first pensioner of the Society of Authors. The Victorian readership was very interested in supernatural tales. Riddell liked to write haunted house tales, usually houses that were cheap with local reputations, rented or purchased by the narrator who then discovers why said house was cheap. Many of the ghosts are female, sometimes (but not always) women who have been wronged. In her introduction to the collection Emma Liggins points out that the two Married Women’s Property Acts had recently been enacted and there was increasing debates about the rights of women. Ghost stories can give the author licence to push the boundaries of fiction by exploring female sexuality, property ownership and the strangeness of others. Riddell shows the influence of the Bronte’s (particularly Jane Eyre in the last story).
Although these are ghost stories, there is little horror, the ghosts often point and try to correct past wrongs rather than shriek and howl. There are often economic issues at stake and Riddell points to the futility of both miserliness and overspending. Financial volatility and risk are at the centre of a number of the tales. For many Victorian readers, uncertain finances were as scary as the ghosts and Riddell weaves the two together. Riddell can turn her hand to description as well:
“I looked at it over a low laurel hedge growing inside an open paling about four feet high. Beyond the hedge there was a strip of turf, green as emeralds, smooth as a bowling green - then came a sunk fence, the most picturesque sort of protection the ingenuity of man ever devised; beyond that, a close-cut lawn which sloped down to the sunk fence from a house with projecting gables in the front, the recessed portion of the building having three windows on the first floor. Both gables were covered with creepers, the lawn was girt in by a semicircular sweep of forest trees; the afternoon sun streamed over the grass and tinted the swaying foliage with a thousand tender lights. Hawthorn bushes, pink and white, mingled with their taller and grander brothers. The chestnuts here were in flower, the copper beech made a delightful contrast of colour, and a birch rose delicate and graceful close beside.”
Pure Victoriana, if you like that sort of thing, as are the ghosts and the plots. But you can also see the changing role of women reflected in the tales as well.
Charlotte Riddell was a prolific Victorian writer, producing over fifty novels and a number of short stories. Five of her novels are also ghost stories. She wrote for the popular market and was the first pensioner of the Society of Authors. The Victorian readership was very interested in supernatural tales. Riddell liked to write haunted house tales, usually houses that were cheap with local reputations, rented or purchased by the narrator who then discovers why said house was cheap. Many of the ghosts are female, sometimes (but not always) women who have been wronged. In her introduction to the collection Emma Liggins points out that the two Married Women’s Property Acts had recently been enacted and there was increasing debates about the rights of women. Ghost stories can give the author licence to push the boundaries of fiction by exploring female sexuality, property ownership and the strangeness of others. Riddell shows the influence of the Bronte’s (particularly Jane Eyre in the last story).
Although these are ghost stories, there is little horror, the ghosts often point and try to correct past wrongs rather than shriek and howl. There are often economic issues at stake and Riddell points to the futility of both miserliness and overspending. Financial volatility and risk are at the centre of a number of the tales. For many Victorian readers, uncertain finances were as scary as the ghosts and Riddell weaves the two together. Riddell can turn her hand to description as well:
“I looked at it over a low laurel hedge growing inside an open paling about four feet high. Beyond the hedge there was a strip of turf, green as emeralds, smooth as a bowling green - then came a sunk fence, the most picturesque sort of protection the ingenuity of man ever devised; beyond that, a close-cut lawn which sloped down to the sunk fence from a house with projecting gables in the front, the recessed portion of the building having three windows on the first floor. Both gables were covered with creepers, the lawn was girt in by a semicircular sweep of forest trees; the afternoon sun streamed over the grass and tinted the swaying foliage with a thousand tender lights. Hawthorn bushes, pink and white, mingled with their taller and grander brothers. The chestnuts here were in flower, the copper beech made a delightful contrast of colour, and a birch rose delicate and graceful close beside.”
Pure Victoriana, if you like that sort of thing, as are the ghosts and the plots. But you can also see the changing role of women reflected in the tales as well.
Read
January 12, 2024Caught up on my Charlotte Riddell (in an effort to find a suitable story for PSEUDOPOD). I'd already read 3 of the offerings here, so I read the other three. But here's reviews for all.
Half of the offerings were only "okay" stories. I had previously read "Nut Bush Farm" (and found it lacking) so I did not reread it. "The Open Door" has a long, involved set-up where we are introduced to our main character (a well-intentioned and likeable, if a bit unfocused, young man who doesn't take to the office work he has fallen into) who offers to solve the problem of a haunting (a door that will not stay closed) in a property of his employer's, but he asks for a larger reward if he succeeds, and so is sacked. He contacts the Boss directly and again makes the offer, and so sets out to camp in the country hall in which, sure enough, there is a door that will not stay closed no matter how it is latched. But it's all a Scooby-Doo thing in the end, with possibly a brief glimpse of a real ghost. Eh. "Walnut Street House", meanwhile, does feature a "real" ghost (that of a child) but is a "sentimental" ghost story and so there's nothing truly frightening going on and true love solves all the problems. Eh.
"Old Mrs. Jones" is a good but slightly flawed piece which offers us the travails of a family that moves into a house where a husband and wife disappeared - local gossip has it that he murdered her, buried her in the basement, and absconded. And, sure enough, members of the family and staff report running into the small, gray-haired titular ghost in the hallways. But it takes a sleepwalking relative to solve the mystery in full. While the story is clunky and unevenly assembled, it has an interesting focus on how local gossip and people's natural inclination to tell stories muddy the truth of a matter, while also roughly hitting at the truth.
Then there's "The Old House In Vauxhall Walk". A young man, thrown out of his family home after an argument with his father, finds overnight lodging in the rooms an acquaintance is vacating (because they're haunted, natch). His sleep is disturbed by a dream-vision of an elderly, female miser. This all may sound familiar, and it is, but I enjoyed reading this nonetheless. The plot may move as expected (there are some further mysteries to be solved) but three qualities enhanced the tale for me. One is the focus on poverty and wealth/class/station as an overall theme, deftly sketched (from lived experience, it seems). Two was the studied use of general atmospherics that went hand-in-hand with the theme - the setting is a large, lonely, empty group of cold, dark rooms with a presence that adds spookiness while resonating with the air of penury. Finally the "moral lessons learned" ending (understandably seen as trite by some) worked for me, with its clipped execution resolving the tale into a circular ending. Nice.
And finally, there's "Sandy The Tinker" - another moral fable, but also an enjoyable read - in which a country minister experiences a profound dream of meeting the Devil and entering Hell through a large stone near a local waterfall, where the Devil demands that the minister suffer the torments of the damned OR suggest someone else to take his place (ah, that crafty Devil!). Horrified by what he sees, in a moment of moral cowardice the fearful pastor suggests the titular character, a local reprobate of ill repute. Things turn out as expected - or maybe not - what can I say, I liked it (it has a strange structure - a framing story in which someone relates a story about being told a dream!).
Half of the offerings were only "okay" stories. I had previously read "Nut Bush Farm" (and found it lacking) so I did not reread it. "The Open Door" has a long, involved set-up where we are introduced to our main character (a well-intentioned and likeable, if a bit unfocused, young man who doesn't take to the office work he has fallen into) who offers to solve the problem of a haunting (a door that will not stay closed) in a property of his employer's, but he asks for a larger reward if he succeeds, and so is sacked. He contacts the Boss directly and again makes the offer, and so sets out to camp in the country hall in which, sure enough, there is a door that will not stay closed no matter how it is latched. But it's all a Scooby-Doo thing in the end, with possibly a brief glimpse of a real ghost. Eh. "Walnut Street House", meanwhile, does feature a "real" ghost (that of a child) but is a "sentimental" ghost story and so there's nothing truly frightening going on and true love solves all the problems. Eh.
"Old Mrs. Jones" is a good but slightly flawed piece which offers us the travails of a family that moves into a house where a husband and wife disappeared - local gossip has it that he murdered her, buried her in the basement, and absconded. And, sure enough, members of the family and staff report running into the small, gray-haired titular ghost in the hallways. But it takes a sleepwalking relative to solve the mystery in full. While the story is clunky and unevenly assembled, it has an interesting focus on how local gossip and people's natural inclination to tell stories muddy the truth of a matter, while also roughly hitting at the truth.
Then there's "The Old House In Vauxhall Walk". A young man, thrown out of his family home after an argument with his father, finds overnight lodging in the rooms an acquaintance is vacating (because they're haunted, natch). His sleep is disturbed by a dream-vision of an elderly, female miser. This all may sound familiar, and it is, but I enjoyed reading this nonetheless. The plot may move as expected (there are some further mysteries to be solved) but three qualities enhanced the tale for me. One is the focus on poverty and wealth/class/station as an overall theme, deftly sketched (from lived experience, it seems). Two was the studied use of general atmospherics that went hand-in-hand with the theme - the setting is a large, lonely, empty group of cold, dark rooms with a presence that adds spookiness while resonating with the air of penury. Finally the "moral lessons learned" ending (understandably seen as trite by some) worked for me, with its clipped execution resolving the tale into a circular ending. Nice.
And finally, there's "Sandy The Tinker" - another moral fable, but also an enjoyable read - in which a country minister experiences a profound dream of meeting the Devil and entering Hell through a large stone near a local waterfall, where the Devil demands that the minister suffer the torments of the damned OR suggest someone else to take his place (ah, that crafty Devil!). Horrified by what he sees, in a moment of moral cowardice the fearful pastor suggests the titular character, a local reprobate of ill repute. Things turn out as expected - or maybe not - what can I say, I liked it (it has a strange structure - a framing story in which someone relates a story about being told a dream!).
August 10, 2015
Not scary. Most of the stories are more like mysteries, where a house is haunted and someone investigates the reason for the haunting. (One story is a "deal with the devil" morality tale.) They all tend to sound the same, after a while. The only decent story is Nut Bush Farm - the rest are mediocre. Not worth your time.
November 7, 2018
(Read in the transcription from mysteryandimagination.wordpress.com)
Stories of the weird (see title), with little horror; these stories are more in the mode of mysteries needing to be solved before the past can be left behind (except for "Old Mrs. Jones," which may or may not have been solved). Almost all the stories concern old houses.
One thing that sets the stories apart from others are the characters: Riddell makes even minor characters memorable in some way, and the main characters aren't all stout-hearted young men seeking adventure. The narrator of "The Open Door" is so obnoxious he was fired and is quite often frightened in the old manor house; the ghost-hunter in "The Old House in Vauxhall Walk" is juvenile, needy, and a little whiny. The collection of characters in "Old Mrs. Jones" is memorable: Mrs. Tippens, trying to keep her boarding house going in the face of a bewildering haunting; crafty, good-tempered Michael; the medical students, who look on everyone with a scientific eye; the people of the neighborhood, who provide commentary. In several stories, there's an undercurrent of humor that keeps them interesting.
And I learned some interesting things here: how an early farm operated ("Nut Bush Farm"), how an old house was set up (paved stableyard, brew house, etc., in "Old Mrs. Jones").
More for mystery fans than horror fans, but an entertaining read.
Stories of the weird (see title), with little horror; these stories are more in the mode of mysteries needing to be solved before the past can be left behind (except for "Old Mrs. Jones," which may or may not have been solved). Almost all the stories concern old houses.
One thing that sets the stories apart from others are the characters: Riddell makes even minor characters memorable in some way, and the main characters aren't all stout-hearted young men seeking adventure. The narrator of "The Open Door" is so obnoxious he was fired and is quite often frightened in the old manor house; the ghost-hunter in "The Old House in Vauxhall Walk" is juvenile, needy, and a little whiny. The collection of characters in "Old Mrs. Jones" is memorable: Mrs. Tippens, trying to keep her boarding house going in the face of a bewildering haunting; crafty, good-tempered Michael; the medical students, who look on everyone with a scientific eye; the people of the neighborhood, who provide commentary. In several stories, there's an undercurrent of humor that keeps them interesting.
And I learned some interesting things here: how an early farm operated ("Nut Bush Farm"), how an old house was set up (paved stableyard, brew house, etc., in "Old Mrs. Jones").
More for mystery fans than horror fans, but an entertaining read.
March 15, 2019
I discovered this book last month when I was doing some research for a blog post about women horror writers from the 19th century for Women in Horror month. I loved these stories. They're more in the vein of psychological horror so no gore and blood and guts here but they definitely have a lovely eerie atmosphere to them. Most are haunted house stories, though not all. If you're looking for something that's a little more readable than Poe but has that same weird feeling, this is a great book to start with.
October 20, 2023
Not actually that scary, but I don't really think it's trying to be. Many of the stories have ghosts who are just there to relatively calmly point out an injustice until it's put to rights. More sentimental than creepy. The writing is great, even though I really would have liked a few more chills.
did-not-finish
December 13, 2021DNF @ 36%, a long time ago lmao.
I don't remember anything about this, which means it must not have been super interesting.
I don't remember anything about this, which means it must not have been super interesting.
January 2, 2023
It was okay.
Currently reading
October 21, 2024Walnut-Tree House is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror
May 5, 2025
4.29⭐
Nut Bush Farm 4.25⭐
Old Mrs. Jones 3.5⭐
Sandy the Tinker 4.25⭐
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk 4.25⭐
The Open Door • (1882) 5⭐
Walnut-Tree House 4.5⭐
Nut Bush Farm 4.25⭐
Old Mrs. Jones 3.5⭐
Sandy the Tinker 4.25⭐
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk 4.25⭐
The Open Door • (1882) 5⭐
Walnut-Tree House 4.5⭐
April 28, 2022
2.5/5 stars
Honestly, I found nothing special or notable about these ghost stories, other than their authorship by a woman during a time period when, because of the absurdities of the patriarchy, many people were extremely skeptical of women as authors of any sort.
In Walnut-Tree House a brother and sister devoted to each other—twins—are separated by cruel circumstances and the untimely death of the young boy. The child’s ghost wanders, fruitlessly searching the house he died in, and the structure gains a reputation among the locals as haunted. A new tenant scoffs at the rumors and moves in. His skepticism is soon replaced by curiosity and concern after his first sight of the ghost of the forlorn youngster. He gives himself the role of detective and discovers the history of the house he now resides in, which includes treachery of the financial variety so classic among ghost stories—a hidden will. The tale has a happy ending: the new tenant locates the twin sister, alive and pretty and of marrying age, and they settle down. The ghost of her doting dead brother is seen with an expression of approval and peace on its face.
In The Open Door, a young clerk at an auctioneer’s office gets wind of an opportunity to make an easy buck. One of the company’s clients, a fairly wealthy merchant and a gentleman, is unable to live in the refined large house he only recently took possession of via a long lease. There is a strange problem: a door in the house refuses to stay closed, and no one can determine the cause. The merchant’s investment is utterly spoiled, he reports that he cannot live there, presumably because either he is too creeped out by the weird door, his potential servants are too freaked out by it, or possibly both. The clerk needs money and jumps at the chance to earn it by staying in the house for at least a week in an effort to solve the mystery. Upon arrival, the door’s stubborn and eerie refusal to stay shut puzzles him just as it has everyone else. He stares at it for hours, and goes through many experiments in an attempt to understand the pattern of its behavior. It closes the instant he takes his eyes off it, despite the rest of the house being evidently empty, apart from one locked room. Murder and another lost will are involved in this tale. Greedy and very-much-living people are eventually discovered to be the cause of the open door—no ghosts this time. There’s another happy ending, although our narrator is left somewhat traumatized by the strange events.
In Nut Bush Farm, a married man with a young child is urged by his doctors to leave London and his desk job after an unnamed work accident. He searches for a small farm to his liking, but struggles to find anything suitable, until he stumbles on the charming and picturesque Nut Bush Farm. Our narrator meets the unladylike landlord, Miss Gostock, and learns some recent history of the farm. Two years prior, the former tenant of the farm had a falling out with Miss Gostock and disappeared after withdrawing everything from his sizable bank account. At the time he vanished, the tenant owed a year and a half of rent on the farm. Miss Gostock is quite sour about it. It’s widely speculated by the locals that the man ran off with a very pretty young girl from the village, abandoning his wife and children. After some odd haggling, the narrator settles on terms with Miss Gostock and begins his tenancy. He begins fixing the place up and starts farming the land. His wife and child remain in London for the time being, until the house is prepared. The narrator’s sister joins him to help out. At this time, the widespread local rumors of the farm being haunted reach our protagonist’s ears. The ghost of a man, purportedly the former tenant Mr. Hascot, roams a certain area of the property—even in the light of day. The story proceeds in a formulaic manner Charlotte Riddell seems to have had a difficult time throwing off: ghostly encounters, our protagonist plays detective, the mystery is solved, and there’s a mainly happy ending. Surely she’s not the only Victorian author to apply this outline, but that doesn’t make it any less tiring. Only the details vary—you know the meat of what you’re going to read before you begin.
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk:
A young, well-to-do man has a falling out with his father and suddenly finds himself penniless and homeless. As he wanders the streets on a rainy night, he happens upon a former servant who is clearing out the possessions from his new employer’s house. Our protagonist gets lucky and is allowed to stay in the house overnight.
Sandy the Tinker
Old Mrs. Jones
Honestly, I found nothing special or notable about these ghost stories, other than their authorship by a woman during a time period when, because of the absurdities of the patriarchy, many people were extremely skeptical of women as authors of any sort.
In Walnut-Tree House a brother and sister devoted to each other—twins—are separated by cruel circumstances and the untimely death of the young boy. The child’s ghost wanders, fruitlessly searching the house he died in, and the structure gains a reputation among the locals as haunted. A new tenant scoffs at the rumors and moves in. His skepticism is soon replaced by curiosity and concern after his first sight of the ghost of the forlorn youngster. He gives himself the role of detective and discovers the history of the house he now resides in, which includes treachery of the financial variety so classic among ghost stories—a hidden will. The tale has a happy ending: the new tenant locates the twin sister, alive and pretty and of marrying age, and they settle down. The ghost of her doting dead brother is seen with an expression of approval and peace on its face.
In The Open Door, a young clerk at an auctioneer’s office gets wind of an opportunity to make an easy buck. One of the company’s clients, a fairly wealthy merchant and a gentleman, is unable to live in the refined large house he only recently took possession of via a long lease. There is a strange problem: a door in the house refuses to stay closed, and no one can determine the cause. The merchant’s investment is utterly spoiled, he reports that he cannot live there, presumably because either he is too creeped out by the weird door, his potential servants are too freaked out by it, or possibly both. The clerk needs money and jumps at the chance to earn it by staying in the house for at least a week in an effort to solve the mystery. Upon arrival, the door’s stubborn and eerie refusal to stay shut puzzles him just as it has everyone else. He stares at it for hours, and goes through many experiments in an attempt to understand the pattern of its behavior. It closes the instant he takes his eyes off it, despite the rest of the house being evidently empty, apart from one locked room. Murder and another lost will are involved in this tale. Greedy and very-much-living people are eventually discovered to be the cause of the open door—no ghosts this time. There’s another happy ending, although our narrator is left somewhat traumatized by the strange events.
In Nut Bush Farm, a married man with a young child is urged by his doctors to leave London and his desk job after an unnamed work accident. He searches for a small farm to his liking, but struggles to find anything suitable, until he stumbles on the charming and picturesque Nut Bush Farm. Our narrator meets the unladylike landlord, Miss Gostock, and learns some recent history of the farm. Two years prior, the former tenant of the farm had a falling out with Miss Gostock and disappeared after withdrawing everything from his sizable bank account. At the time he vanished, the tenant owed a year and a half of rent on the farm. Miss Gostock is quite sour about it. It’s widely speculated by the locals that the man ran off with a very pretty young girl from the village, abandoning his wife and children. After some odd haggling, the narrator settles on terms with Miss Gostock and begins his tenancy. He begins fixing the place up and starts farming the land. His wife and child remain in London for the time being, until the house is prepared. The narrator’s sister joins him to help out. At this time, the widespread local rumors of the farm being haunted reach our protagonist’s ears. The ghost of a man, purportedly the former tenant Mr. Hascot, roams a certain area of the property—even in the light of day. The story proceeds in a formulaic manner Charlotte Riddell seems to have had a difficult time throwing off: ghostly encounters, our protagonist plays detective, the mystery is solved, and there’s a mainly happy ending. Surely she’s not the only Victorian author to apply this outline, but that doesn’t make it any less tiring. Only the details vary—you know the meat of what you’re going to read before you begin.
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk:
A young, well-to-do man has a falling out with his father and suddenly finds himself penniless and homeless. As he wanders the streets on a rainy night, he happens upon a former servant who is clearing out the possessions from his new employer’s house. Our protagonist gets lucky and is allowed to stay in the house overnight.
Sandy the Tinker
Old Mrs. Jones
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 6, 2013
An interesting collection of supernatural tales. Riddell's strength is in characterization. Otherwise, the stories seem a bit conventional.
The main character in "The Open Door" qualifies for my Chronological Bibliography of Early Occult Detectives, which is available at http://timprasil.wordpress.com/a-chro...
The main character in "The Open Door" qualifies for my Chronological Bibliography of Early Occult Detectives, which is available at http://timprasil.wordpress.com/a-chro...
Want to read
November 26, 2025Read so far:
*Walnut-tree house --
*The open door --
*Nut-bush farm --
The old house in Vauxhall Walk --2
Sandy the tinker --
*Old Mrs. Jones --
***
The banshee's warning (aka Hertford O'Donnell's warning)
Dr. Varvill's prescription
The last of Squire Ennismore --3
A strange Christmas game
A terrible vengeance
*Walnut-tree house --
*The open door --
*Nut-bush farm --
The old house in Vauxhall Walk --2
Sandy the tinker --
*Old Mrs. Jones --
***
The banshee's warning (aka Hertford O'Donnell's warning)
Dr. Varvill's prescription
The last of Squire Ennismore --3
A strange Christmas game
A terrible vengeance
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews