Reading #7 - Gaskell, Collins, Dickens

In the collection of stories The Haunted House, readers are exposed to many elements of sensation fiction, including misdirected letters, drugs, potions, and poisons, characters who adopt disguises, trained coincidences, and heightened suspense detail. Each story reveals the details of an alleged haunting, but none are truly about ghosts. Three stories by Gaskell, Collins, and Dickens explicate the experiences of different narrators who are haunted most prominently by their own minds.

"The Ghost in the Cupboard Room," written by Collins, contains the elements of sensation fiction that include trained coincidences and heightened suspense detail. The narrator explains that he was once a young man who worked on a ship, and ever since then has been terrified of a candle that he claims is haunting him. On the ship, a mutiny occurred and the young man was tied up and left for dead. All the while a candle continued to burn, and supposedly when it was nearly burnt out it would have ignited the ship's cargo (gunpowder) and killed him. However, the candle conveniently did not burn out. Instead of being a true haunting, the narrator is most likely affected by post-traumatic stress disorder.

In "The Ghost in the Garden Room," written by Gaskell, the narrator is haunted by a judge, who may or may not be the dead Benjamin, the son of poor farmer parents who cheated them out of all their money. Benjamin is an aristocratic villian (another element of sensation fiction), and also causes the heightened suspense detail toward the end of the tale. Readers cannot be sure if he is truly dead, especially because a letter sent to his parents may have been misdirected. If Benjamin is dead, then a haunting in the garden room may be very possible, but it is highly unlikely.

Dickens authored "The Ghost in Master B.'s Room," which is, in my opinion, the most interesting of the three tales. It tells of a true psychological haunting; the man who owns the haunted house is staying in the master bedroom which once belonged to a man whose full name is unknown. He only goes by the initial "B." In a particularly late-Victorian/early Modern style of writing, Dickens' narrator explicates his stream of consciousness, a literary element rarely seen before this time. The anonymity surrounding the former occupant of the room drives the narrator to an obsession about who the man may have been. The narrator claims he is haunted by the ghosts of his childhood; perhaps it is truly only regret or a mid-life crisis he is having. This story contains what may be considered the only true haunting - it is completely psychologically-based, and the narrator acknowledges this.

Overall I was expecting something more along the lines of a true ghost story, but the hauntings based on psychological conditions is interesting as well.