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So I was left, in the end, with nothing but a very complete knowledge of the ghost stories of the world. I still have all my notes, three large notebooks full of them. So now, some twenty-five years late
r, it seems a good idea to put the good ones together in a book.
Good ghost stories, like good children’s books, are damnably difficult to write. I am a short story writer myself, and although I have been doing it for forty-five years and have always longed to write just one decent ghost story, I have never succeeded in bringing it off. Heaven knows, I have tried. Once I thought I had done it. It was with a story that is now called The Landlady. But when it was finished and I examined it carefully. I knew it wasn’t good enough. I hadn’t brought it off. I simply hadn’t got the secret. So finally I altered the ending and made it into a non-ghost story.
The best ghost stories don’t have ghosts in them. At least you don’t see the ghost. Instead you see only the result of his actions. Occasionally you can feel it brushing past you, or you are made aware of its presence by subtle means. For example, the temperature in a room always drops dramatically when a ghost is around. This was scientifically proved by Harry Price in his interesting book The Most Haunted House in England. If a story does permit a ghost to be seen, then he doesn’t look like one. He looks like an ordinary person.
To me, one of the most compelling of all the stories in the book you are now holding was written by a Norwegian, Jonas Lie. It really is a cruel and wonderful tale, though it suffers a good deal in the translation. Jonas Lie, who died in 1908, is a national hero in Norway although he is very little known beyond those shores. I happen to have a fine painting of him by Heyerdal in my living-room. He is wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a black cloak, and wherever I sit, he is glaring at me through steel-rimmed spectacles with a terrible icy stare. He looks more than anything else like an undertaker who knows he’s going to get you in the end. But he was a splendid writer and I am certain you will be disturbed by this story of his called Elias and the Draug. I hope you will be equally disturbed by all the other stories in this book. They were written with precisely that end in mind.
I think I should mention that since 1958 when I originally did my research into ghost stories, I have continued to read as many new ones as I could lay my hands on. I may have missed one or two, but nothing I have seen that has been published since then has come anywhere near the standard of the select group in this book.
W. S.
by L. P. Hartley
The first postcard came from Forfar.
I thought you might like a picture of Forfar, it began. You have always been so interested in Scotland, and that is one reason why I am interested in you. I have enjoyed all your books, but do you really get to grips with people? I doubt it. Try to think of this as a handshake from your devoted admirer,
W. S.
Like other novelists, Walter Streeter was used to getting communications from strangers. Generally they were friendly but sometimes they were critical. In either case he always answered them, for he was conscientious. But answering them took up the time and energy he needed for his writing, so that he was rather relieved that W. S. had given no address. The photograph of Forfar was uninteresting and he tore it up. His anonymous correspondent’s criticism, however, lingered in his mind. Did he really fail to come to grips with his characters? Perhaps he did. He was aware that in most cases they were either projections of his own personality, or, in different forms, the antitheses of it. The Me and the Not Me. Perhaps W. S. had spotted this. Not for the first time Walter made a vow to be more objective.
About ten days later arrived another postcard, this time from Berwick-on-Tweed. What do you think of Berwick-on-Tweed? it said. Like you, it’s on the Border. I hope this doesn’t sound rude. I don’t mean that you are a border-line case! You know how much I admire your stories. Some people call them other-worldly. I think you should plump for one world or the other. Another warm handshake from
W. S.
Walter Streeter pondered over this and began to wonder about the sender. Was his correspondent a man or a woman? It looked like a man’s handwriting – commercial, unselfconscious, and the criticism was like a man’s. On the other hand, it was like a woman to probe – to want to make him feel at the same time flattered and unsure of himself. He felt the faint stirrings of curiosity but soon dismissed them; he was not a man to experiment with acquaintances. Still, it was odd to think of this unknown person speculating about him, sizing him up. Otherworldly, indeed! He re-read the last two chapters he had written. Perhaps they didn’t have their feet firm on the ground. Perhaps he was too ready to escape, as other novelists were nowadays, into an ambiguous world, a world where the conscious mind did not have things too much its own way. But did that matter? He threw the picture of Berwick-on-Tweed into his November fire and tried to write; but the words came haltingly, as though contending with an extra-strong barrier of self-criticism. And as the days passed, he became uncomfortably aware of self-division, as though someone had taken hold of his personality and was pulling it apart. His work was no longer homogeneous; there were two strains in it, unreconciled and opposing, and it went much slower as he tried to resolve the discord. Never mind, he thought: perhaps I was getting into a groove. These difficulties may be growing pains; I may have tapped a new source of supply. If only I could correlate the two and make their conflict fruitful, as many artists have!
The third postcard showed a picture of York Minster. I know you are interested in cathedrals, it said. I’m sure this isn’t a sign of megalomania in your case, but smaller churches are sometimes more rewarding. I’m seeing a good many churches on my way south. Are you busy writing or are you looking around for ideas? Another hearty handshake from your friend,
W. S.
It was true that Walter Streeter was interested in cathedrals. Lincoln Cathedral had been the subject of one of his youthful fantasies and he had written about it in a travel book. And it was also true that he admired mere size and was inclined to undervalue parish churches. But how could W. S. have known that? And was it really a sign of megalomania? And who was W. S., anyhow?
For the first time it struck him that the initials were his own. No, not for the first time. He had noticed it before, but they were such commonplace initials; they were Gilbert’s, they were Maugham’s, they were Shakespeare’s – a common possession. Anyone might have them. Yet now it seemed to him an odd coincidence; and the idea came into his mind – suppose I have been writing postcards to myself? People did such things, especially people with split personalities. Not that he was one of them, of course. And yet there was this unexplained development – the dichotomy in his writing, which had now extended from his thought to his style, making one paragraph languorous with semi-colons and subordinate clauses, and another sharp and incisive with main verbs and full-stops.
He looked at the handwriting again. It had seemed the perfection of ordinariness – anybody’s hand – so ordinary as perhaps to be disguised. Now he fancied he saw in it resemblances to his own. He was just going to pitch the postcard in the fire when suddenly he decided not to. I’ll show it to somebody, he thought.
His friend said, ‘My dear fellow, it’s all quite plain. The woman’s a lunatic. I’m sure it’s a woman. She has probably fallen in love with you and wants to make you interested in her. I should pay no attention whatsoever. People in the public eye are always getting letters from lunatics. If they worry you, destroy them without reading them. That sort of person is often a little psychic, and if she senses that she’s getting a rise out of you, she’ll go on.’
For a moment Walter Streeter felt reassured. A woman, a little mouse-like creature, who had somehow taken a fancy to him! What was there to feel uneasy about in that? Then his subconscious mind, searching for something to torment him with, and assuming the authority of logic, said: Supposing those postcards are a lunatic’s, and you are writing them to yourself; doesn’t it follow that you must be a lunatic too? He tried to put the thought away from him; he tried to destroy the postcard as he had the others. But something in him wanted to preserve it. It had become a piece of him, he felt. Yielding to an irresistible compulsion, which he dreaded, he found himself putting it behind the clock on the chimney-piece. He couldn’t see it, but he knew that it was there.
He now had to admit to himself that the postcard business had become a leading factor in his life. It had created a new area of thoughts and feelings and they were most unhelpful. His being was strung up in expectation of the next postcard.
Yet when it came it took him, as the others had, completely by surprise. He could not bring himself to look at the picture. I am coming nearer, the postcard said; I have got as near as Coventry. Have you ever been sent to Coventry? I have, in fact you sent me. It isn’t a pleasant experience, I can tell you. Perhaps we shall come to grips after all. I advised you to come to grips with your characters, didn’t I? Have I given you any new ideas? If I have, you ought to thank me, for they are what novelists want, I understand. I have been re-reading your novels, living in them, I might say. Je vous serre la main. As always,
W. S.
A wave of panic surged up in Walter Streeter. How was it that he had never noticed, all this time, the most significant fact about the postcards – that each one came from a place geographically closer to him than the last? I am coming nearer. Had his mind, unconsciously self-protective, worn blinkers? If it had, he wished he could put them back. He took an atlas and idly traced W. S.’s itinerary. An interval of eighty miles or so seemed to separate the stopping-places. Walter lived in a large West Country town about that distance from Coventry.
Should he show the postcards to an alienist? But what could an alienist tell him? He would not know, what Walter wanted to know, whether he had anything to fear from W. S.
Better go to the police. The police were used to dealing with poison-pens. If they laughed at him, so much the better.
They did not laugh, however. They said they thought the postcards were a hoax and that W. S. would never show up in the flesh. Then they asked if there was anyone who had a grudge against
him. ‘No one that I know of,’ Walter said. They, too, took the view that the writer was probably a woman. They told him not to worry but to let them know if further postcards came.
