Episode 23: Between the Lights by E F Benson

Classic Ghost Stories

Tony Walker

Fiction, Drama, Science Fiction

4.9 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I’m fond of E F Benson’s writing and once again like the Room in the Tower this has a dreamlike quality. The horror is produced from some kind of vision that the narrator, Everard, has. He has a vision of antiquity, and a horrible antiquity at that, of little Picts! (My ancestors!!!)It’s a funny story in that it purports to be a Christmas Story and certainly the first part has all the elements: the snow outside, the cosy country house, the fire.Then we go back to a year before and I’m unclear why, because we have Country House at Christmas: Vision: Then October in the Scottish Highlands lost in the mist. There is just a presentiment of horror and in that it is almost Lovecraftian, albeit more subtly. I think this story would be more correctly characterised as a weird tale rather than a ghost story. Certainly there is no ghost as such.The horror is unexplained other than to say he was horrified by the bestiality of the inhabitants even though they don’t harm him. He should live round here.There are folk horror themes in that it references horrid rural people with their vile lives that scare good urban chaps like Everard. The Scottish gillie Sandy (what else!) shows a primitive fear of the little folk.He also has a way of layering clauses within clauses in his writing which makes it hard to read out loud!Proust does that too. I won’t be reading him.So, not my favourite though it is a Christmas Story to be read just before Christmas.Onward!Check out the Website. It’s growing. http://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (http://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast)There’s always the matter of support. You can buy a Classic Ghost Stories Podcast T-shirt now via the website. How ‘bout that?And there’s Kofi https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker)And Patreon https://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)I’m off on a boat to Amsterdam tomorrow. You bet your bottom dollar I’ll be looking out for ghosts among the Christmas lights!Tonyhttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody dies, stand there.
0:10.4	Isn't that so?
0:14.4	You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?
0:17.1	How do the date come back, mother?
0:20.0	What's the secret?
0:21.1	Between the lights by E.F. Benson.
0:26.0	The day had been one of unceasing fall of snow from sunrise until the gradual withdrawal of the vague white light outside indicated that the sun had set again.
0:37.3	But as usual, at this hospitable and delightful house
0:40.5	of Everard Chandler, where I often spent Christmas, and was spending it now, there had been no
0:46.2	lack of entertainment, and the hours had passed with the rapidity that had surprised us.
0:51.8	A short billiard tournament had filled up the time between breakfast and lunch
0:55.4	with badminton and the morning papers for those who were temporarily not engaged,
1:00.5	while afterwards the interval till tea time had been occupied by the majority of the party
1:05.5	in a huge game of hide and seek all over the house,
1:09.6	barring the billiard roomroom, which was sanctuary for any
1:12.7	who desired peace. But few had done that. The enchantment of Christmas, I must suppose,
1:19.1	had, like some spell, made children of us again, and it was with pulsied terror and trembling
1:25.5	misgivings that we had tiptoed up and down the dim passages,
1:29.3	from any corner of which some wild screaming form might dart out on us.
1:34.3	Then, wearied with exercise and emotion, we had assembled again for tea in the hall,
1:40.3	a room of shadows and panels, on which the light from the wide-open fireplace,
1:46.0	where there burned a divine mixture of peat and logs, flickered, and grew bright again on the walls.
	...

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