Crow Press, $6.99
Horror, 2015 (Reissue)
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a man of many accomplishments: acclaimed writer, political heavyweight, inventor of famous sayings such as “the pen is mightier than the sword”, and subject of marital drama that would make a Bridgerton blush. Today, he’s best known for lending his name to the recently-ceased Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, an annual challenge to craft the most wretched opening sentence imaginable.
And oh, he penned one of the earliest Victorian ghost stories, with a title so laborious it feels like it should come with a fainting couch: The Haunted and the Haunters, or, The House and the Brain.
The plot, such as it is, concerns an unnamed protagonist who hears about a haunted house and, like any self-respecting Victorian gentleman with too much leisure time and a thirst for occult shenanigans, decides to spend the night. The owner, sensing an opportunity to outsource his ghost problem, offers our man a cash prize to banish the spook.
Yet, Mr Protagonist isn’t in it for the money. Oh no, he’s here for the vibes.
Now, a brief word on Mr Bulwer-Lytton’s finances: at one point, his mother cut him off for marrying a woman she didn’t like. So, our man turned to writing for cash, and frankly, you can tell. This story reads like something dashed off between unpaid bar tabs and overdue rent notices. It has all the pacing of a man late for his own duel and all the emotional engagement of a Victorian postal directory.
Sure, there are flickers of Bulwer-Lytton’s trademark wit and baroque sentence construction, but mostly it’s an exercise in watching a character describe being terrified in the same tone one might use to recite a shopping list: “I saw a ghost. I was greatly alarmed. I rang for my manservant. He brought brandy. It was adequate.”
What makes this relic worth a glance, though, is its fossilized tropes. Creaking floorboards? Check. Mysterious tapping sounds? Check. Unexplainable cold drafts? You bet your Gothic wallpaper. It’s basically a Victorian-era Blumhouse production, a proto-haunted-house flick written before cinema was a thing.
Today, this story lands firmly in the historically interesting, mildly tedious category. It’s public domain, it’s short, and it helped lay the groundwork for a genre that would eventually produce The Even Further Haunting of Hill House and Insidious 9: The Search for More Jump Scares. If you’re a horror historian or just want to snicker at overwrought prose and stiff upper lips trembling in the face of the supernatural, give it a whirl.
Otherwise, it’s an amusing curiosity, a quaint ghost story written by a man more famous for his bad opening sentences than his ability to maintain narrative tension.
