Strayers from Sheol

R. Wakefield

Description

In 'Farewell to all Those', the introduction to his 1961 collection STRAYERS FROM SHEOL, H. R. Wakefield stated 'I've written my last ghost story', continuing with the bleak sentence 'I believe ghost story writing to be a dying art.' However, he concluded his introduction on a more cheerful note, urging readers not to be too sure that 'none of the old magic endures'; and the fourteen stories collected in the original edition of the book show Wakefield to have been still very much at the top of his form. Indeed, STRAYERS FROM SHEOL opens with one of the author's finest and most frightening tales, the classic 'The Triumph of Death'.

Sujets

• Ghost
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 02 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456636562
• Langue: English

Extrait

Strayers from Sheol
by H. R. Wakefield
Subjects: Fiction -- Ghost Stories; Horror

First published in 1961
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
STRAYERS FROM SHEOL




H. R. Wakefield

Farewell to All Those!
I’ve written my last ghost story. Altogether I’ve had over ahundred published; some of them have been reprinted many timesand in half a dozen different languages. I merely mention these egotisticalstatistics to establish my bona fides—I should know what I’mtalking about—not to suggest I’m any genius at the art. I make no pretenceto that.
I believe ghost story writing to be a dying art. It’s just possible thatanother Montague Rhodes James may appear some day, but I profoundlydoubt it. James had certain great advantages, besides his imaginationand technique: he was an antiquary and an amateur. Antiquarianlore, old legends of antique places, old ruins and enigmas—from suchworn stones and hallowed dust ghostly inspiration is readily breathed.And he was an amateur of amateurs. His comparatively sparse outputwas spread over a long life, and he never wrote save when the spiritmoved him. His early tales were all composed for private circulation,and the financial aspect never, I believe, interested him much. And I canassure would-be aspirants that no one in his senses ever tried to writeghost stories for a living. Even James’s first tales were published in ratherobscure periodicals, and it was only the sinister and superlative meritsof Ghost Stories of an Antiquary which slowly secured him a widerpublic. Even so, it was never very wide.
Many—perhaps most—people simply can’t read ghost stories, thosepoor relations of fiction. They’d as soon read binomial theorem stories.A large number of strangers have written to me over the years to thiseffect: “Why concern yourself with such inane tripe? Why waste asmall talent on this bogusness? You’re capable of better, saner things.”I’ve found that the cult of such tales is confined mainly to a small subsetof highest brows. They are extremely hypercritical, somewhat resemblingballet-maniacs in their encyclopaedic knowledge and zeal forodious comparisons. Even so, I think I should use the past tense, for Idoubt that many of them survive. So I think James was the last of thegreat ones; he closed an epoch. Why is this?
James, in a kindly review of one of my books, rather suggested, Ithought, that the author of ghost stories need not be a very violent believerhimself. That I categorically deny. Unless the writer can, at leasttemporarily, alarm himself, he will never alarm anyone else. While Jameswas writing “ Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad ,” I’m certainhe was also casting a furtive inner eye at spectral heaped bedclothesforming into fearful shapes. No doubt he soon laughed the image away,but he must have known it for a time. But it is becoming ever harder toget and transmit those tremors because psychic phenomena are nowbeing subjected to scientific treatment (whether they are yielding tothat treatment is another matter) and the public takes it for grantedthat such phenomena are no longer subjects for fiction, and that theghostly fictionist is an interloper and mere scarifyer. I think that’s partlywhy I’ve lost inspiration, too—that and advancing years.
But beware of supposing the mystery has been in any way solved. Imust have read several million words on psychic research, most unremunerativewords. Masses of alleged evidence, a welter of eager discordanttheories—but the key to the maze remains perennially elusive.I doubt that the question, “Which phenomena are supernatural?” hasbeen answered. Is telepathy supernormal? Is it not merely an extensionof an old mystery—that of communication between man and man,though its modes are more flagrantly puzzling? Fooling about withmarked cards seems to me the essence of futility. I’ve no doubt that somepeople are lucky with telepathic cards, just as some are “lucky” at bridge.
Why was I persuaded into this arduous (ghost stories are very difficultto write) and unremunerative game? I am a skeptic by temperament,though not, I hope, a wooden one, and the skeptical temperament isessentially a fair, open-spirited one, ever avid to examine and, if necessary,to accept evidence adverse to its creed. And I received such evidenceduring two weekends spent in a superficially charming and harmoniousQueen Anne house about a mile and a half from Richmond Bridge. Imustn’t locate it more precisely because—and it is a significant fact—eventhe most rampant unbelievers often refuse to live in a reputedlyhaunted house.
And I can assure them they are very wise.
I visited this house in 1917, and during the previous thirty years ithad known five suicides—the old gardener, strictly against orders,blurted out this ominous record in his cups, and it was verified. One hadhanged herself in a powder-closet. One shot himself in the tool-shed.The others had drowned themselves in the river about a hundred yardsaway, always, it was said, at dawn. And now mark this! About a yearafter I went there, the valet of a famous nobleman also drowned himselfin the river at first light. He was seen running down the path asthough a fearful fiend were hard upon his heels and plunging in to hisdeath. I think you’ll agree that gives one somewhat sombrely to think.
Someone who entered this house on a lovely summer day, knowingnothing of its record, remarked in astonishment, “How dark it is inhere!” And that was so. Always it seemed unnaturally dim, as thoughseen through those “reducing” glasses artists use for toning down brightlight.
The moment I passed its threshold, I knew a general feeling of devitalisationand psychic malaise, which remained with me till I left. Thehousehold were affected in varying degrees. Remember, some peoplesimply cannot see or sense ghosts. The cook was one of them; shecouldn’t begin to understand what the trouble was. But one of the maidstwice encountered a stranger, once in the room with the powder-closet,and once on the stairs. She couldn’t “take it” and left. The lady of thehouse had one of those rare temperaments which are not frightened byghosts, and yet she was always seeing and hearing something; for, particularlyafter dark, that house was sparking with venom, an obscuremode of energy, call it what you will.
My own particular bother consisted of a petrified insomnia. I layawake till dawn, oppressed by a fear without a name. Call it just ghostlyfear, if you like. I felt a craven and a worm, but I was utterly unable tosnap out of it. Only those who have experienced something like it willsympathise. I had only one visual bother. I was sitting in the garden oneafternoon under the mulberry tree and happened to glance up at thefirst floor windows. There was a blurred face at one of them. It was aman’s face, but there was no man in the house. I wrote my first storyabout that house and called it The Red Lodge . Last year, a quarter of acentury later, it was republished for the sixth time in America, and aplay based on it was done on the radio. It also appeared in a Dutch anthologyof ghost stories. No credit to me—it must all be given to the permanent residents of the Red Lodge. That is why I disagree withJames. Before you can scare others, you must be scared yourself. Ghostlyfear is transmitted, not concocted.
If some may sniff at my testimony as that of a suspect romancer, letme cite some very famous names in my support. The philosopher Kant,a genius of the most cautious and judicial mind, after examining theevidence, asserted he was convinced that authentic apparitions weresometimes seen. The great Richet spent a lifetime in psychical research,and declared in his final summing-up that such phenomena indisputablyoccurred, though they defied explanation. F. S. Smithe, the famousmountaineer, makes at least three references in his books to apparitionswhich crossed his high paths—one in Scotland, one on theface of Mt. Blanc, one near the very peak of Everest. The word of such aman is impossible to doubt, is it not?
The great difficulty about ghosts is the number of essentially unverifiableexplanations of them. Some are, of course, hallucinations. Hallucinationsare very interesting and complex things about which muchmight be said, but I’ll reluctantly disregard them. Then there are projectedimages. Everyone, with the possible exception of certain Oxfordprofessors, sees images in his head. Some children and a very few adultscan project them externally on to the screen of space in front of them.I have projected some myself. One was a vision of great beastliness,which has remained most vividly as an interior image , to this day. Itwas easy to mistake for a ghost, but I believe it was an image. Are hallucinationsand eidetic images sufficient to explain ghosts away? I’m afraidnot, for they are often seen by several persons simultaneously, which refutestheir subjectivity, presumably.
I have no intention of pretending to a profundity I don’t command,and I’m not going to say anything the meaning of which is not reasonablyclear to me. It’s so easy to talk windily, impressively and vaguelyabout psychic matters, and the temptation must be rigorously resisted.And it is absurd to suggest that I can succeed where Richet failed. I willfirst quote a remark of the famous philosopher, William James—“Wecan easily conceive of things that shall have no connection whatsoeverwith each other. We may assume them to inhabit different times andspaces, as the dreams of different persons do. They may be so unlikeand incommensurable and so inert towards ea