Madam Crowl's Ghost & Other Stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The girl’s aunt and another woman share the task of looking after old Madam Crowl, whose mind is beginning to fail and she sometimes has periods of a kind of insanity. The sight of the old house does nothing to cheer her up…Ī great white-and-black house it is, wi’ great black beams across and right up it, and gables lookin’ out, as white as a sheet, to the moon, and the shadows o’ the trees, two or three up and down in front, you could count the leaves on them, and all the little diamond-shaped winda-panes, glimmering on the great hall winda, and great shutters, in the old fashion, hinged on the wall outside, boulted across all the rest o’ the windas in front… “Because,” says he, “and don’t you for your life tell no one, only watch her and see-she’s possessed by the devil, and more an half a ghost.” “Ho, then,” says one of them, “you’ll not be long there!”Īnd I looked at him as much as to say “Why not?” for I had spoken out when I told them where I was goin’, as if ’twas something clever I hed to say. My aunt was the housekeeper there…Īlready anxious and homesick, the girl’s fears are increased by the teasing of two fellow passengers on the coach, on hearing where she was headed… I’m an ald woman now, and I was but thirteen, my last birthday, the night I came to Applewale House. I have no idea how authentic it is, but I love it – there’s a kind of softness and lilt to the words and phrasing that seems made for relating ghostly tales by the light of the fire.

Russell concluded that while Le Fanu 'may write with the skill of an adult, the thought is without subtlety'.Taken from the collection Green Tea and Other Weird Stories, this is one of several stories Le Fanu wrote in a Northumbrian dialect. Russell wrote that although Le Fanu's storytelling skills were impressive, 'the end of every story left me with a feeling of disappointment'. Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories contains the following tales: A much less extensive collection of Le Fanu stories was published under the same title by Dover Books in 1993.

It was published by Arkham House in an edition of 2,026 copies. It was released in 1945 and was the author's first book to be published in the United States. Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by Irish author J.

Madam Crowl's Ghost & Other Stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu