Episode 2: The Room in The Tower by E F Benson

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Tony Walker

Science Fiction, Fiction, Drama

4.9 • 835 Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Edward Frederic Benson was born in 1867 at Wellington College in Berkshire, England and died in 1940 in London of throat cancer aged 73. Benson’s father was E W Benson who was Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest office in the Anglican Church and the Anglican version of the Pope! His father had been bishop of Truro in Cornwall and Benson sets some of his horror stories in Cornwall.Benson’s elder brother wrote the words for that famous English patriotic song: Land of Hope and Glory. He went to the private Marlborough School and then studied at King’s College in Cambridge. After he graduated in 1892, he went to Athens where he worked for the British School of Archaeology and then in Egypt also engaged in the promotion of archaeology. His elder sister Maggie was an Egyptologist.He was also a good figure skater, and represented England.In 1883, he published his first novel which was very successful. He was most famous for his Mapp and Lucia satirical novels. As well as his Mapp and Lucia novels and his ghost stories, Benson wrote biographies, including of Charlotte Bronte.Benson was upper class and wealthy and also a confirmed bachelor, meaning he was gay, though not publicly in those days. In his diary he noted he fell in love with Vincent Yorke, a famous cricketer, who apparently did not return his affections. He shared a villa in Capri, Italy for while with another John Ellingham Brooks a pianist who moved to Capri apparently fearing prosecution for being gay.His lifestyle of leisure; of country house parties and taking shooting lodges in the Scottish Highlands forms the background for many of his stories.Benson is a good writer of ghost stories and this one, The Room in the Tower, is particularly unnerving. The scene is set by the story of a recurring nightmare, followed by an apparently innocuous invitation to a weekend at a country house, where element after element matches his nightmare, down to repeated phrases. The tower, where he is set to sleep, is apparently haunted by a vampire; Mrs Stone.The story has an air of real experience about it and I wonder whether Benson himself had a recurring nightmare, or poached the idea from the real experience of a friend. I was told a similar story by a young woman I met and this dream, and Benson’s story The Room in The Tower were the inspiration for my own story: He WaitsMusic is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute) Download Charles Dickens The Signalman Free Mp3 https://bit.ly/dickenssignalman (Subscribe to our list and keep in touch with the podcast. Learn of new episodes and bonus Content. )Support our work PLUS you get a free story right now!(The Story Link is in the Thank You Email)Show Your Support With A Coffee!https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Buy the thirsty podcaster a coffee...)Final Request: The SurveyI want to know what you want. If you have three minutes, I'd be grateful to know what you think of The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast.https://my.captivate.fm/Click%20here%20to%20go%20to%20the%20Survey (Click here to go to the Survey)Support the showVisit us here: www.ghostpod.orgBuy me a coffee if you're glad I do this: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalkerIf you really want to help me, become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/barcudMusic by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The room The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson, read by Tony Walker.
0:29.8	It is probable that everybody who is at all a constant dreamer has had at least one experience
0:35.6	of an event, or a sequence of circumstances which have come to his mind in sleep being subsequently realized in the material world.
0:43.3	But in my opinion, so far from this being a strange thing, it would be far odder if this fulfillment did not occasionally happen,
0:50.3	since our dreams are, as a rule, concerned with people whom we know,
0:55.0	and places with which you are familiar, such as might very naturally occur in the awake and
1:00.0	daylight world.
1:01.0	True, these dreams are often broken into by some absurd and fantastic incident, which puts
1:06.0	them out of court in regard to their subsequent fulfilment.
1:09.0	But on the mere calculation of chances, it does not
1:11.8	appear in the least unlikely that a dream imagined by anyone who dreams constantly should
1:16.2	occasionally come true.
1:18.8	Not long ago, for instance, I experienced such a fulfillment of a dream, which seems to me
1:23.9	in no way remarkable, and to have had no kind of psychical significance. The manner
1:29.7	of it was as follows. A certain friend of mine, living abroad, is amiable enough to write to me
1:35.6	about once a fortnight. Thus, when fourteen days of thereabouts have elapsed since I last heard
1:40.3	from him, my mind probably either consciously or subconsciously is expecting of a letter from him.
1:45.8	One night last week I dreamed that as I was going upstairs to dress for dinner, I heard as I often
1:51.0	heard, the sound of the postman's knock on my front door, and diverted my direction downstairs instead.
1:57.4	There, among other correspondence, was a letter from him. Thereafter, the fantastic entered, for on opening it I found inside the ace of diamonds,
2:05.6	and scribbled across it in his well-known handwriting.
2:08.6	I am sending you this for safe custody.
	...

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