Readers unfamiliar with Ghost Gleams may prefer to read these notes only after reading the collection
When we open Ghost Gleams: Tales of the Uncanny (1921) by W. J. Wintle, we find the paratextual pages. Wintle's dedication:
To Eight Dear Boys:
Philip, Thomas, Gabriel, Illtyd, Brendan, Peter, Gerard, Antony for whose amusement these stories were first written they are now dedicated
In the foreword, Wintle writes:
These tales make no claim to be anything more than straightforward ghost stories. They were written in answer to the insistent demand, “Tell us a story!” from eight bright boys whose names stand on the dedicatory page; and they were told on Sunday nights to the little group crouching over a wood fire on a wind-swept island off the Western shore….
These paratexts, intended or not, lower the reader's expectations about story quality. Story titles themselves reinforce this; they can be poetic, suggestive or contrary, and here Wintle has clearly erred on the side of mostly suggestive titling for his spectral gleams.
If Wintle revised the stories to make them richer than bedtime treats, it might explain consistent thematic preoccupations about income and living standards in the stories, as well as a lack of romantic and adolescent content. Only the second-to-last story, “The Light in the Dormitory,” takes place among school children.
I suspect Wintle's boys enjoyed the melodrama about secret passages, malformed or inhuman gesturing hands, and the burning and scorching that presaged or confirmed supernatural encounters.
“The Red Rosary”
Dabbler in religious anthropology Dr. David Wells
….fancied that he had found traces of a connection between non-human life and certain occult phenomena. In particular he thought that the hostility with which mankind regards the serpent tribe was a mutual one, and had its source in something that lay beneath the surface.
Dr. Wells arranges the theft of a Tartar fetish: a jeweled rosary with a serpent’s head. In the way of such items in such stories, the object has a life of its own, and seems to behave in ways that echo habits of real serpents, much to the misfortune of Wells and the thief who brought the object to him in London.
It seems that he had been again examining the rosary while seated in an armchair after lunch. Feeling drowsy, he laid the rosary on the table at his elbow and composed himself for a nap. About ten minutes later, he was roused from sleep by a loud knock at the door. Then he sprang out of the chair with a cry of alarm. The Red Rosary was no longer on the table. It was coiled on the sleeper's chest; and the snarling head was raised as if to strike! It fell to the ground as Dr. Wells sprang up.
“When the Twilight Fell”
Our narrator, a guest at Mostyn Grange in the Chilterns, senses a number of supernatural events related to the rule of Henry VIII. The King himself appears once, glancing in from outside like any passing tramp. Candle flames burn blue and dogs appear to watch and ward invisible foes.
Then came a sound of horsemen in the distance. The trotting of a company could be heard distinctly as it rapidly grew in volume and nearness. It seemed first to be in the high road which ran between the two nearest towns and passed within a mile of Mostyn Grange. Then it sounded less sharply as the horsemen left the hard road for the drive through the park; and from time to time the trumpets sounded, each time nearer and more loudly. Who could be coming to the Grange at this time of night, and when no one was there but myself? No visitor was expected; and least of all a visitor who arrived in this style.
“When the Twilight Fell” is an acute series of spectral events, mere anecdotes. There is no melodrama here, though we will see that Wintle can deftly handle melodrama when he wants to.
There was absolutely nothing to suggest why someone or something from any other plane of existence should take an interest in the volume, and apparently study it when mere mortals are asleep. But many times afterwards I found the volume lying about when no living person had been there to take it down. The mystery was never solved nor was any meaning for it ever suggested.
“The House on the Cliff” is a modest folk horror short story.
Wintle distances everything about his protagonist’s plight. The begrudging third person narrator focuses solely on a fatal series of strange encounters at a primitive cottage on a cliff overlooking an ocean.
….He fancied that the best way to get away from the worries of life was to get away somewhere by himself: and this is just where he made the mistake. The greatest of all worries is oneself—at any rate it was so in Cyril's case. And just then he really believed that he had ground for worry.
What it was does not concern our story; so we need not stay to speculate about it. But it was something that required treatment, according to Cyril: and the treatment that it required was to get away from things. He had tried the British Museum reading-room in the off season, when everyone is away except the lady who writes the Riviera news for the Upper Ten, and the man who has found out how to square the circle. He had tried a course of University Extension lectures on the Multiplication of the Ego: and he had tried salmon fishing in the lower reaches of the Thames. But he couldn't get away from his worry.
For a book published in 1921, Ghost Gleams has little to say about the wars and revolutions that inaugurated the 20th century and destroyed so much of Europe's human and material culture. Is Cyril an example of someone suffering deferred effects of events outside the text?
The situation, apart from its loneliness, was simply gorgeous. The house stood almost on the edge of a lofty limestone cliff which fell a sheer hundred feet without a break to the waves that beat about its base. The cliff stood out like a miniature headland beside a little bay bestrewn with vast boulders round which the long oar-weed clung and twined like ever-writhing water snakes as the tides ebbed and flowed. All around, the cliffs were pierced by caves that the waves had worn out of the ancient rocks by their ceaseless surging, while overhead hung clinging masses of samphire and other green things….
What happened at the house on the cliff, and how the horror came and grew until it ended in appalling disaster, no man knows with any certainty now. Cyril's lips are silent for ever: and the Thing that watched and waited has done its ruthless will and perhaps has ceased from troubling. All that we have is a disconnected collection of brief notes, written on loose half sheets of note- paper. They were no doubt written in the order of the occurrences; but when found the wind had blown them about the floor, and it was impossible to do more than guess at the intended sequence. We can only put them together in what seems the most probable order and weave a consequent story as best we may….
Disturbances seem initially modest or misunderstood. Our narrator, drawing on meager and disordered notes left by Cyril, does not indulge in conjecture.
….just as he was going to sleep again, an odd thing happened. The moon was shining in through the window, to which his back was turned, and he noticed that while part of the room was in bright light, part seemed to be in shadow. It was as if a blind were partly drawn across the window. He turned drowsily in bed to look at the window, when the shadow suddenly vanished! This was rather startling, for it certainly seemed as if someone had been looking in through the window.
Cyril sprang out of bed and ran to the window. There was no one there; nor could anyone be seen when he went to the door immediately afterwards. Not a soul was stirring, except a few rabbits that bolted at the sight of him. He could only put the whole thing down to fancy when half awake: or it was just possible—but hardly probable—that some wandering tramp had found his way to the place….
Several times during the day he was haunted by this threatening danger: and the Thing that was biding its time was evidently gathering strength. He had an idea that the final attack was not very far off now. In fact he made up his mind to leave the place next day. But it was waiting for the next day that was to cost him his life. The last thing that his notes record seems to have happened during the afternoon of this day. He was sitting in a deck chair, reading a book, when he saw out of the corner of his eye something like a great wing rise above a rock on the left at a little distance. It seemed to stretch itself and then sink down, as if the bird were resting behind the rock. It had just the appearance of a raven's wing: but no bird of such size was ever seen by human eye. Cyril did not see it quite clearly. He was looking at his book without paying any great attention to it; and he saw the wing indirectly and as it were slightly out of focus. When he looked directly at the rock, there was nothing unusual to be seen.
“The Spectre Spiders”
Wintle's students clearly got more information about the adult world than they bargained for.
Like MRJ, Wintle in “The Spectre Spiders”
spoils proceedings with a villain drawn as an antisemitic caricature. Ultimately, he gets the cobwebs and stinger of a spider thingy as vengeance for being unscrupulous.
In this, however, Wintle's Ephraim Goldstein falls short of Mr. Homberger in James' "The Uncommon Prayer Book."
(My notes on James’ hymn to “Gregory singin’” can be found here and here.)
“The Footsteps on the Stairs” is an underpowered crime melodrama.
….When Thomas Boston, general merchant, removed his place of business to No. 15, he removed himself and his family as well. The lower regions of the house were devoted to the purposes of the business, and the upper ones to those of the household.
The latter consisted of Mrs. Boston and a general servant whose name was Angelina and for that reason was known as Sarah. What the business consisted of is not quite so easily stated. The business of a general merchant is like charity in that it covers a multitude of sins.
Mr. Boston is, to use a U.S. term, a fence for stolen goods. He waits up most nights for secret door knocks when suppliers arrive to unload their loot.
But as “The Footsteps on the Stairs” opens, some peculiar events also commence.
….He reached the area door in perfect silence, but he did not open it at once. He first made a slight scratching noise on the door with his finger nail: and in reply came three very soft taps from the other side. Then he smiled again, and opened the door.
No one was there! Mr. Boston instantly closed the door. He had no wish to attract attention; and it at once struck him that his visitor had heard the approaching footsteps of some quite unnecessary policeman and had taken cover in the disused coal cellar, the door of which was always kept unfastened for such emergencies. He would only have to wait a minute for the coast to become clear again.
He waited perhaps two minutes, and then came a very soft tap on the door. Mr. Boston repeated the scratching signal; and in response came the three taps. He opened the door; but again no one was there. He closed the door quickly and silently, scratched his head and looked puzzled. He had never had it happen twice before.
“The Chamber of Doom” is a brief but spectacular story. A contemporary laird decides to investigate a room hidden centuries before by one of his ancestors. He assumes whatever is in the room can only be good news for his family, proving once again that the gentry need to read more horror stories.
Once the room is opened, the protagonist hears a laugh he can only describe as “spiteful.” How right he is.
The castle stood on the side of a hill, sheltered by thick woods on either side and by the rising slope of the hill behind. In front it looked for miles across the country, with not a town in sight, and with very few scattered houses more or less hidden from view. It would be difficult to imagine a more pleasant and attractive site for a house, provided always that its occupant had no objection to the inconveniences arising from remoteness from the nearest town and railway. But the owner of Glenmorris Castle was possessed of motors and horses in more than plenty; and such a thing as inconvenience seldom made itself felt by him.
“When Time Stood Still” is the only story in Ghost Gleams that mentions the war. The mention comes from a funny anecdote in which our narrator speaks with pride about his sense of history. Before the story's end, he'll have touched more history than he ever imagined.
[....] this strange sense of antiquity did not lie in the surroundings merely. It seemed to be to some extent in myself. Not that I felt personally old, but that I seemed to belong to an age long gone by. In a word, I felt old-fashioned—but old-fashioned to an extent passing computation— and it seemed as if the place was old-fashioned too. I seemed out of it, as the popular phrase goes, in relation to the things of to-day. I should not have been surprised to wake up and find that this present-day world was only a dream, and that the world was still young and unspoiled. If I had found the ancient Britons still in possession of the land, with no idea that a mighty nation of conquering Romans would ever be born, it would have seemed simply natural and just what I expected.
Whether the narrator hallucinates or experiences a time-slip, the atmosphere and surprising sights are conveyed with skill. The half-fanciful, half-panicked narrative voice recalls stories Robert W. Chambers included in his 1904 collection In Search of the Unknown.
“The Black Cat” is a third-person story about the mental collapse of an independently wealthy middle-aged man.
Again I wonder what Wintle's young male audience made of his depiction of adult life. There are many protagonists in these pages with no spouses and no money worries; but their sanity and physical safety are precariously balanced. It doesn't require digging up cursed Templar whistles or lost crowns to kill them off.
Protagonist Sydney should have skipped the study of ancient Egypt – no other academic subject has achieved such a high body count. Although Sydney also seems unsound in other ways:
The next notes in the book that Sydney seems to have devoted to this curious subject appear to be a series of mere coincidences: and the fact that he thought them worth recording shows only too clearly to what an extent his mind was now obsessed. He had taken the numerical value of the letters C, A, T, in the alphabet, 3, 1, and 20 respectively, and by adding them together had arrived at the total 24. He then proceeded to note the many ways in which this number had played its part in the events of his life. He was born on the 24th of the month, at a house whose number was 24 and his mother was 24 years old at the time. He was 24 years old when his father died and left him the master of a considerable fortune. That was just 24 years ago. The last time he had balanced his affairs, he found that he was worth in invested funds—apart from land and houses—just about 24 thousand pounds. At three different periods, and in different towns, he had chanced to live at houses numbered 24; and that was also the number of his present abode. Moreover the number of his ticket for the British Museum Reading Room ended with 24, and both his doctor and his solicitor were housed under that same persistent number. Several more of these coincidences had been noted by him; but they were rather far-fetched and are not worth recording here. But the memoranda conclude with the ominous question, “Will it all end on the 24th?”
“The Black Cat” was recently included in the British Library weird story anthology Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Night, which I wrote about here.
“Father Thornton's Visitor” shares several similarities with R. H. Malden’s superb story “Between Sunset and Moonrise.” Both deal with lonely parishes and physically demanding work, including long treks on foot like those John Buchan inflicted on Richard Hannay.
The priest told a friend afterwards that it was rather difficult to explain exactly what then occurred. The intruder vanished; but the method of his going was peculiar. He did not disappear like a flash; neither did he sink into the earth; it was more as if a blind had been suddenly pulled down in front of him. The upper part of him seemed to vanish just a second before the rest of him. This was not exactly it; but Father Thornton said that it was the nearest way he could describe it. Anyway, the man vanished before it was possible to speak to him or even to see his face.
To say that the watcher was taken aback is to put it too mildly: he was simply staggered. Up till now he had not regarded the affair as out of the normal. Even the fact that the intruder cast no shadow, though it puzzled him, had not left any great impression on his mind. But now he was forced to face the fact that his visitor was—well, he did not know quite what to think. He recalled the story about the man who had once lived there and was said to have deprived his dying wife of the consolations of the Church—and he did not at all like it. Still, what could he do? There was nothing for it but to await events. And the events soon arrived.
Father Thornton's spectral visitor is motivated by remorse, and sends the father on his mission to prevent the kind of tragedy he himself caused when alive. Wintle handles the socially high-and-low parishioners deftly, and without indulging in caricature.
The lit fuse that explodes in “The Horror of Horton House” begins with everyday renovations at the ancestral manse.
Over the fireplace an inscription was found carved deeply in the oak. It ran thus:
“Let Horton live, let Horton die;
Pray God the horror come not. nigh.”
Owner John Horton ponders the inscription.
The house had not even the reputation of being haunted; which was rather curious, for it was just the sort of place for a good ghost story. It was old; it was lonely; it was rambling; it had plenty of long passages down which a ghost might wander; there were plenty of echoes ready to catch and repeat the sound of sighs and groans and clanking chains; but nothing of that kind had ever been known in the place. No tragedy had ever occurred there, so far as was known; the family had not a single villain to boast of; there was no curse upon it or any member of it; in fact there was simply nothing at all. The Hortons had been a quiet, respectable, God-fearing set of people; and the very idea of any horror or mystery in connection with them seemed to be utterly absurd….
….If he had known what it was that he was to find out, and how appalling was the horror that he was seeking, he would certainly have been content to let well alone. But he did not know: and that was what brought about the tragedy.
Unlike the other stories in Ghost Gleams, which often feature revenants that scorch what they touch and have extra (or splayed) fingers, the manifestations in “The Horror of Horton House” suggest a pseudo-cosmic effect.
On the evening when this history begins, he was sitting before the fire in his library. It was a chilly evening towards the end of October; he had been shooting most of the day in some coverts near by; and now after dinner he was sitting with pipe and paper before the fire, occasionally glancing at the news but more often gazing idly into the fire and thinking of nothing in particular.
Then his eye caught the inscription over the fireplace:
“Let Horton live, let Horton die;
Pray God the horror come not nigh.”
Once more he wondered what it could mean; and he felt almost inclined to pray that the horror might come nigh in order that he might find out what it was. And then a strange idea took hold of him. There was something unusual about the inscription. The word “horror” was not as distinct as usual. Some change seemed to be coming over it as he looked at it. The two letters O were not as sharply defined as before. There was a blur in each which puzzled him.
Then he started out of his chair with a cry of alarm. In place of the two letters O were two eyes: and the eyes were not those of any creature known to man. In circles of green glowed two pupils of dull red fire! But it was intelligent fire. The eyes were alive; and their glance spoke of a malignancy that might be feared but could never be measured.
John Horton quailed before that stare of horror. For a moment he let his eyes fall; and when he looked again there was nothing unusual to be seen. The inscription was as before, and the word “horror” was as it had always been. He rubbed his eyes and tried to convince himself that he had fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing. But he knew that he had not: he had been very wide awake all the time. His pipe had not gone out.
Wintle's houses are big enough for secret rooms and passages; hand-carved wood paneling is disguised with two centuries of plaster and paper… before someone decides to start peeling and renovating.
“The Haunted House on the Hill” is not horror, but it is an excellent and tightly observed account of a domestic haunting. The narrator, a friend and tenant of the Smith family in their newly purchased home, tries to help his friends and their children understand repeated appearances of an old woman inside the house and in the adjoining garden.
A few nights later, Mr. Smith and I were sitting up rather late, talking over some small matter that happened to interest us both, when a tap came at the window. We went to the door and found the policeman, who had come to say that the light was at that very moment showing at the window under the roof. We all three went up together without delay, and as quietly as we could….
Wintle's carefully controlled and composed dialogic storytelling aesthetic is used in “The Haunted House on the Hill” to excellent effect. The strange experiences of each family member, including the cat, makes for consistent excitement.
To be continued