Jesse > Recent Status Updates

This is a very intense book. Its laser-focus on Paul’s state of mind and how Annie abuses him is exhausting.

I thought there was going to be more suspense about Annie’s state of mind but, no, both the reader and Paul know very early on. I was caught off-guard with how quickly the abuse begins.

Obligatory SK “tittered”

Hoo boy, a simile equating a woman performing mouth to mouth resuscitation on a dying man to a man raping a woman. I mean, I know where this is headed but that doesn’t make it much if any less gross

Oh okay a FAKEOUT death, flopping from Monty’s imminent death to a supposed one that will nonetheless eventually happen

Oh the kids will ken to the note being a grotesque forgery because it is loaded with horrible grammatical errors

Josephine is already dead? Holy smokes that happened fast!

“The Turn of the Screw”, by Henry James

A young governess’s battle for the souls of two children, wrestling against the ghosts who wish to corrupt them, meted out at a glacial pace. This is a tough read, and some of the cliffhangers and what is implied makes some of what little action occurs tough to follow. The story DOES pick up in the latter part of the book but it’s a slog to get there.

I wanted to read this because of its apparent influence in Peter Straub’s Ghost Story and, pre-reading, I am cackling at the hostile reviews. What chicanery awaits me here??

“Kerfol”, by Edith Wharton

Man checks out a property to buy but there is no one there except a bunch of spooky, silent dogs. The story behind the dogs is a gross account of psychopathic spousal abuse that ends about as well as could be expected given the parties involved. It’s a pretty good story, even if Wharton undercuts it with a cynical jab at her female mc’s LI’s fate as… an ascetic intellectual???

“The Shadowy Third”, by Ellen Glasgow

Shades of Gothic romance with the charming doctor and his wife. The twist isn’t so much that her little girl is a ghost; it is the waiting period for the Good Doctor to get his just desserts. I feel mixed-up about the nurse MC, except that she feels, whether she is fawning over the doctor or gushing with sympathy for his beleaguered wife.

Okay so at this point it is obvious that the child is a ghost?

“The Searcher of the End House”, by William Hope Hodgson


A supernatural detective story, half of which turns out to be a hoax, the other half building a part of the supernatural world rarely explored, that being the ghosts of stillborn children and what is perhaps supposed to happen to them. It’s interesting to see the characters surmise why different people see different aspects of the haunting.

“Thurnley Abbey”, by Perceval Landon

Some dark humor in a story where a man is invited to his friend’s holding in order to confront a ghost only to tear it to pieces after convincing himself that it is only a hoax… and, immediately afterward, falling in with his hosts into mortal terror once he realizes its unreality. “Of course I am much better now”.

“An Episode of Cathedral History”, by M. R. James

Maybe a ghost story, maybe not. There is something similar to the story of the enormous “Christ” statue in the Gothic tale collection, with multiple pagan allusions. It’s a good enough horror story and has overlap with vampire tales as the initial breaking of the seal leads to the slow deaths of a multitude of frailer townsfolk and many more sick.

“The Wind in the Rose-Bush”, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

The American inflection of this story stands out in my mind. It is painfully obvious what has happened to Agnes and abundantly clear that her wicked stepmother is lying and gaslighting her aunt the entire time to keep her from looking too deep. It’s even clear where the dead girl lies buried. But the villainy of Mrs. Dent is morbidly intriguing.

“The House With the Brick-Kiln”, by E. F. Benson

A straightforward ghost story about two well-to-do dudes who rent a house for fly-fishing without checking into its history. It’s haunted, of course, and the horror isn’t so much the matter-of-fact presentation of the ghost but the details surrounding the titular brick-kiln and the role that it plays in the crimes of the past and the haunting of the present.

“The Moonlit Road”, by Ambrose Bierce

A tragedy in three short parts. The skeleton of the story - ghost wife pursues husband who murdered her - is fairly obvious from the son’s narrative, but the wife’s own statement - rendered through a medium - casts the tragedy in a brand new light as she relates the truth behind what her husband saw on both fatal nights.

“Keeping His Promise”, by Algernon Blackwood

I like Blackwood’s writing style. It’s pretty obvious what’s up with the mc’s late-night visitor, but the after-effects of the visit are more of a curiosity than plain ol’ horror. The emotional story of this piece comes from a childhood pact that is adhered to, but it doesn’t have a lot of impact beyond the power of youthful promises.

“The Lost Stradivarius”, by J. Meade Falkner

A long account from a sister to her nephew of her brother’s dissolution. It’s a very slow burn and involves a lot of violin playing. The ghost haunting John is whatever; my favorite parts of the story involve stabs at cosmic horror and paganism seen toward the end, a favorite of Gothic writers. The mystery of the ritual that John reenacted makes for decent horror.

“In Kropfsberg Keep”, by Ralph Adams Cram

Another story about two skeptics who seek out a nasty ghost to whet their appetite for the supremacy of rationality. This particular phantom was of the “lock a debauched party up and burn them alive and then hang yourself” variety and, naturally, things do not go well for the intrepid youths. After the Onions story the nested narratives leave something to be desired.

“The Ghosts”, by Lord Dunsany

The fancied prose of Lovecraft and C. A. Smith has here its progenitor. This is more of a sketch and Dunsany’s writing removes a lot of the immediacy of the threat provided by the sins that come snuffling after the ghosts. His descriptions are almost too poetic to describe action, instead feeling like a procession of beautiful, still framed.

“The Inexperienced Ghost”, by H. G. Wells

Half of this story is a farce, the narrator having ran into a useless specter who doesn’t have the force of will to be the least bit scary. Things take a turn once you find out that the narrator learned most of the gestures that the ghost has to use to return to the spirit realm. At that point the tone of the story does an about-face.

“A Curious Experience”, by Mrs. Henry Wood

Reminds me of the first half of Northanger Abbey with the social intercourse. There are two stories here: John, a young man who is declining and thinking about his imminent death (and heaven beyond), and a room in a house that his family is vacationing at, where no one can sleep because there is a presence of fear and panic that precludes any sort of rest.

“The Cigarette Case”, by Oliver Onions

A story told by the fireside, a sort of fleeting romance where two English lady ghosts take the company of two Englishmen for about an hour of leisure. A lot of the time nested narratives seems stilted, losing their sense of place, but Onions takes pain to note little character details that flesh out his storyteller and anchor the reader in two separate worlds.

So the next short story’s author is deadass Oliver Onions

“The Captain of the Pole-Star”

Familiar ground for anyone who remembers the framing story of Frankenstein. An ice-bound ship; an intellectual with a seeming death wish; and a whole lot of whaling shop talk. The Captain is a Romantic figure, pining for his dead girlfriend, something definitively stated in the postscript, but the vague “circumstances of peculiar horror” raises even more questions.

“The Roll-Call of the Reef”, by Arthur Quiller-Couch

There is a stoic beauty to the story’s climax but it begins in tragedy with a grotesque account of two separate but simultaneous shipwrecks with their sole survivors finding camaraderie in their military service and, well, being the only living souls from either wreck. It’s a nice little tale and the bit with the parson cements the bromance.