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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 4, whole no. 12, Fall 1945
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victims or spectators. This was a cardinal point in Jame's rule for the writing of weird fiction: "...the ghost should be malevolent and odious: amiable or helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story." (8) He warns, "...don't let us be mild and drab. Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, 'the stony grin of unearthly malice', pursuing forms in darkness, and 'long-drawn, distant screams', are all in place, and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully husbanded..." (9) His mention of blood indicates a still more important aspect of his ghosts and demons: their power and practice of attacking and killing those luckless mortals who arouse their wrath. His are no ineffectual phantoms limited to frightening by their mere presence; they can pass at will from the spiritual to the physical and rend their victims with the ferocity of a jungle carnivore. Over half the stories end in a tragedy, and although two-thirds of the victims deserve their fates to some extent, the supernatural beings make no moral distinctions and fall and good and bad alike when roused. In thirteen cases the ghosts or demons appear because they have been (intentionally or unintentionally) disturbed in their resting places or roused by the handling or opening of something with which they are associated; in eleven cases they act in revenge for wrongs done to them; and in seven instances they are merely observed while haunted some scene connected with their past activities. It is not quite true, as Lovecraft says, that the demons are usually touched before they are seen, for this situation occurs in only four stories; but that is enough to indicate the preeminently tactual character of these fearsome creatures. At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearsome thinness, almost like a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered like the body, with long coarse hairs, and hideously taloned... There were black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin--what can I call it?--shallow, like a beast's; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst o destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them-- intelligence beyond that of a beast; below that of a man. Thus is described the demon that appears to Mr. Denniston in James' first story, "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book". Most of the characteristics of this entity are repeated again and again in subsequent monsters, so one can easily pick out certain favorite traits that intrigued James so much that he used them almost unconsciously. Chief among these are thinness and hairiness. Inasmuch as his ghosts are usually activated corpses that have decayed and dessicated practically down to their skeletons, there is customarily a mention of their frightful leanness, which is often covered by the grayish linen of a shroud or other tattered garments. In "Lost Hearts" the murdered children are thin and hungry-looking in their ragged, shroud-like clothing; in "The Mezzotint" the black-garmented executed pacher's legs are "horribly thin"; the ghost of the sixteenth century wizard in "Number 13" is "a tall thin man" with "a gaunt leg" and his arm "was clad in ragged, yellowish linen, and the bare skin, where it could be seen, had long gray hair upon it"; the long-drowned corpse that fetches away the teacher in "A School Story" is "beastly thin"; the vengeful ghost of "A Warning to -- 8 --
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victims or spectators. This was a cardinal point in Jame's rule for the writing of weird fiction: "...the ghost should be malevolent and odious: amiable or helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story." (8) He warns, "...don't let us be mild and drab. Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, 'the stony grin of unearthly malice', pursuing forms in darkness, and 'long-drawn, distant screams', are all in place, and so is a modicum of blood, shed with deliberation and carefully husbanded..." (9) His mention of blood indicates a still more important aspect of his ghosts and demons: their power and practice of attacking and killing those luckless mortals who arouse their wrath. His are no ineffectual phantoms limited to frightening by their mere presence; they can pass at will from the spiritual to the physical and rend their victims with the ferocity of a jungle carnivore. Over half the stories end in a tragedy, and although two-thirds of the victims deserve their fates to some extent, the supernatural beings make no moral distinctions and fall and good and bad alike when roused. In thirteen cases the ghosts or demons appear because they have been (intentionally or unintentionally) disturbed in their resting places or roused by the handling or opening of something with which they are associated; in eleven cases they act in revenge for wrongs done to them; and in seven instances they are merely observed while haunted some scene connected with their past activities. It is not quite true, as Lovecraft says, that the demons are usually touched before they are seen, for this situation occurs in only four stories; but that is enough to indicate the preeminently tactual character of these fearsome creatures. At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearsome thinness, almost like a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered like the body, with long coarse hairs, and hideously taloned... There were black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin--what can I call it?--shallow, like a beast's; teeth showed behind the black lips; there was no nose; the eyes of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst o destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying features in the whole vision. There was intelligence of a kind in them-- intelligence beyond that of a beast; below that of a man. Thus is described the demon that appears to Mr. Denniston in James' first story, "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book". Most of the characteristics of this entity are repeated again and again in subsequent monsters, so one can easily pick out certain favorite traits that intrigued James so much that he used them almost unconsciously. Chief among these are thinness and hairiness. Inasmuch as his ghosts are usually activated corpses that have decayed and dessicated practically down to their skeletons, there is customarily a mention of their frightful leanness, which is often covered by the grayish linen of a shroud or other tattered garments. In "Lost Hearts" the murdered children are thin and hungry-looking in their ragged, shroud-like clothing; in "The Mezzotint" the black-garmented executed pacher's legs are "horribly thin"; the ghost of the sixteenth century wizard in "Number 13" is "a tall thin man" with "a gaunt leg" and his arm "was clad in ragged, yellowish linen, and the bare skin, where it could be seen, had long gray hair upon it"; the long-drowned corpse that fetches away the teacher in "A School Story" is "beastly thin"; the vengeful ghost of "A Warning to -- 8 --
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