The Pulitzer Prize winning author Edith Wharton may be better known for her novels depicting upper class Americans, especially New Yorkers, but she also wrote some ghost stories. Those stories have been published in The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. What then, for her, qualified as a ghost story? In her own words a ghost story
"...must depend for its effect solely on what one wight call its thermometrical quality, if it sends a cold shiver down one's spine, it has done its job and done it well, and many a tale that makes others turn cold leaves me at my normal temperature. The doctor who said there were no diseases but only patients would porbably agree that there are no ghosts, but only tellers of ghost stories, since what provides a shudder for one leaves another peacefully tepid. Therefore one ought...simply tell one's ghostly adventures in the most unadorned language, and "leave the rest to Nature..." [ Preface, p. 4]
In the story I read today, Miss Mary Pask, Edith Wharton manages just that. The narrator of the story has been painting in Brittany, when suddenly he remembers that a friend of his, Mrs. Bridgeworth, has a sister living nearby. As Mrs. Bridgeworth has told him that her sister, Miss Mary Pask, is often lonely, the narrator feels he ought to go and visit her. The journey to the remont location where Miss Pask lives is full of fog and darkness and builds a proper ghost story atmosphere. Finally he is at the door of Mary Pask's little house. Her help answers the door and says that Miss Pask would, of course, see the narrator. Only when he stands alone in the dark waiting for Miss Pask does he remember that already almost a year ago he learned from Mrs Bridgeworth that Miss Pask had died. And just then, there is Mary Pask standing on a landing above him! She comes down and starts a conversation with the somewhat terrified narrator.
"'It's so wonderfully good of you - I suppose Grace asked you to come?' She laughed again - her conversation had always been punctuated by rambling laughter. 'It's an event - quite an event! I've had so few visitors since my death, you see.'
Another bucketful of cold water run over me; but I looked at her resolutely, and again the innocence of her face disarmed me.
I cleared my throat and spoke - with a huge panting effort, as if I had been heaving up a gravestone. 'You live here alone?' I brought out.
'Ah, I'm glad to hear your voice - I still remember voices, though I hear so few,' she murmured dreamily. 'Yes - I live here alone. The old woman you saw goes away at night. She won't stay after dark...she says she can't. Isn't it funny? But it doesn't matter; I like the darkness.' She leaned to me with one of her irrelevant smiles. 'The dead,' she said, 'naturally get used to it.'" [p. 138]
I'll leave the plot description there. Miss Mary Pask is such a great story you have to read it yourself! :) Wharton manages to build a nicely creepy, but not too scary, atmosphere, and just when you think this is your average ghost story there is the perfect twist in the end!
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