Have been hunting out some creepy books to read now that the curtains are being drawn early and the nights are getting darker and Halloween is just around the corner. May I recommend, amongst others, the Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton to you all? I was initially rather surprised to find that she had written in this genre and while they are not spine chillingly scary, they are beautifully written, as you would expect, and have a a vaguely unsettling air about them. I have been flicking through them again recently and decided to post about a couple of my favourites.
Afterward
Ned and Mary Boyne, an American couple who have made their fortune through a mining project, decide to buy a house in the English countryside. They find the house of their dreams, and in order to make everything perfect jokingly wish for a ghost. They are told 'Oh there is one but you'll never know it. Well, not till afterwards at any rate'.
Life settles down into a happy routine until one day a young man is seen walking up the avenue to the house, but disappears when Ned goes down to greet him. It is shortly after this mysterious visitation that Mary senses all is not well with her husband and she received a press cutting from America in which she finds out that he has been the subject of a claim on his mining interests by an investor and he may not have behaved in an honourable manner. When she confronts him, he shows her a letter in which he has been told that the claim has ‘come to an end’ and it is all settled.
Time passes and then one morning Mary finds her husband has received a visitor and they have left the house together. He does not appear for the rest of the day or night and though the countryside is scoured he appears to have vanished into thin air. The true story of the suit brought against her husband comes to light and though it appears her husband behaved quite legally, morally it might be a different story. An investor who lost heavily in the enterprise, shot himself and lay dying for two months. On seeing a photograph of the man in question Mary is horried to realise that this is the young man who first came to visit earlier in the year and then returned later - after a two month gap. This was the day her husband disappeared. She then realises that she will never see her husband again and that the young man she saw was a ghost. She remembers the words of her friend 'that she would not realise until afterwards'
Kerfoil
This is the name of a house in France and a prospective buyer, with a view to purchase, is annoyed to find nobody there to see him when he arrives and that he is followed around by a pack of dogs in a rather unnerving silence. They do not bark, whine or make any noise. On returning to his hostess and mentioned the peculiar behaviour of these animals she gives him some old papers to read relating to the trial of an ancestress, Anne, who was charged with the murder of her husband after he had been found dead and covered in blood at the top of a flight of steps in the old house.
It was revealed during the trial that Anne had slipped out to meet a purported lover but she insisted that she had not murdered her husband. She had been afraid of him but had not killed him. When asked why she had been afraid of him she replied that 'he strangled my dogs'. He had been jealous of the attention she lavished on them and every time she had a dog, or even petted a stray, she returned to find the dog dead on her bed.
When asked by the judge who had killed her husband, if not her, she replied 'The dogs. My dead dogs. I heard them snarling and snapping.... once or twice he cried out then he was silent. Then I heard a sound like the noise of a pack when the wolf is thrown to them, gulping and lapping'. The marks on the body were consistent with such an attack.
Although found not guilty of the murder she was taken out of court and handed over to the keeping of her husband's family who shut her up in the keep at Kerfoil where she died many years later.
The house sale did not go through by the way...
More creepy recommendations tomorrow.
