{"id":785,"date":"2019-08-21T09:37:09","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T08:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hebulstrode.co.uk\/?p=785"},"modified":"2019-08-21T09:37:23","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T08:37:23","slug":"night-terrors-the-ghost-stories-of-e-f-benson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hebulstrode.co.uk\/?p=785","title":{"rendered":"Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The fatness of this volume<\/a>, clocking in at over 700 pages, bears testimony to E.F. Benson\u2019s prolific output of ghost stories and supernatural tales. Their range, in terms of both subject matter and tone, is wider than that of most who have written in the genre, which should not be surprising given that he was a highly-successful author of the satirical Mapp and Lucia novels, amongst others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the best known of the short stories included in this anthology is The Bus-Conductor, an unnerving tale that was included in the classic 1945 portmanteau horror film Dead of Night<\/a>, but many readers may well also have encountered his chilling The Face and In the Tube in horror anthologies alongside the works of other authors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a collection of this size, the\nreader is bound to encounter stories that grip the imagination, whilst others may\nfall a little flat, but this economical Wordsworth edition is worth every penny\nfor those that do hit the mark, and of them there are many. To enumerate all of\nthe titles included would be tedious for any reader of this review, but I shall\nmention those that I found particularly appealing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benson drew heavily upon Scottish\nfolklore in both Gavon\u2019s Eve and The Shootings of Achnaleish, with the latter\nin particular possessing a notably folk-horror vibe, prefiguring elements of\nThe Wicker Man and Straw Dogs. How Fear Departed the Long Gallery, on the other\nhand, is a charming ghost story set in an old country house, whose many\nspectral inhabitants are largely harmless but for those who perished as a\nconsequence of a dastardly act at the close of the age of the Virgin Queen. Perfectly\ndelicious with a touch of whimsy. The House with the Brick-Kiln is quite\nmurderous, whereas Monkeys would appear to have been informed by Benson\u2019s\nsister\u2019s expertise in the field of Egyptology, and possesses a most chilling\ntwist. Humour comes to the fore in stories such as Mr Tilly\u2019s S\u00e9ance, Thursday\nEvenings and the singularly titled The Psychical Mallards, with the latter\nfeaturing a pair of levitating mediums who reach the heights of absurdity. Benson\nthus proved himself to be equally adept at raising a smile and a shudder, and\nthis is to his credit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like M.R. James<\/a>, Benson\u2019s protagonists are more often than not of a particular type, with both men tending to favour bachelors like themselves. Whereas James\u2019s fellows normally proved to be of a scholarly bent, Benson\u2019s were of a more frivolous type \u2013 upper-middle-class chaps of independent means who possessed no greater pleasure than a rubber of bridge of an evening (no, I hadn\u2019t heard of that term either until I read these stories), and renting a house for a month or two to escape the unclean air of London. Whilst all of the stories in this volume may be viewed as period pieces, firmly embedded within the social milieu that was familiar to the author, their ability to entertain the reader remains undiminished. This is a volume to be savoured by any lover of ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click on the following title to view on Amazon: Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson <\/a><\/p>\n

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