"I feel my capacity to experience a terror greater than any thing yet conceived by the human mind," or, The almost universal love of the Terrible!

{Photo by rocketlass.}

Because the Library of America's new two-volume set, American Fantastic Tales, is more than 1,200 pages long--and I do have a day job--I expect I'll be doling out its many pleasures to you a bit at a time over the course of the month.

Today, pressed by a variety of deadlines that are not entirely un-ghoulish in character, I have only this to share, from Fitz-James O'Brien's story "What Was It?" (1859), which I mentioned in Sunday's post:

Insensibly we yielded to the occult force {of opium} that swayed us, and indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time upon the proneness of the human mind to mysticism and the almost universal love of the Terrible, when Hammond suddenly said to me:

"What do you consider to be the greatest element of Terror?"

The question, I own, puzzled me. That many things were terrible, I knew. Stumbling over a corpse in the dark; beholding, as I once did, a woman floating down a deep and rapid river, with wildly-lifted arms and awful, upturned face, uttering, as she sank, shrieks that rent one's heart, while we, the spectators, stood frozen at a window which overhung the river at a height of sixty feet, unable to make the slightest effort to save her, but dumbly watching her supreme agony and her disappearance. A shattered wreck, with no life visible, encountered floating listlessly on the ocean, is a terrible object, for it suggests huge terror, the proportions of which are vailed. But it now struck me for the first time that there must be one great and ruling embodiment of fear, a King of Terrors, to which all others must succumb. What might it be? To what train of circumstances would it owe its existence?

I love the way in which O'Brien ups the ante in his second example, clause by clause, and how effective the image of the doomed woman is despite the scene's lack of a supernatural component. Meawhile, the list in toto makes me wish that someone had asked this question of Sei Shonagon--would she not surely have come up with a blood-curdling list of Terrifying Things?

2BR, 1B; steps to shops, restaurants; ghost incl. free of charge

{Photo of the view from our bedroom window by rocketlass.}

Houses of any antiquity in New England are so inevitably possessed with spirits that the matter seems hardly worth alluding to. Our ghost used to heave deep sighs in a particular corner of the parlour, and sometimes rustled paper, as if he were turning over a sermon in the long upper entry--where nevertheless he was invisible, in spite of the bright moonshine that fell through the eastern window.

That's Nathaniel Hawthorne, from "The Old Manse," the inspiration for his first collection of odd and creepy stories, Mosses from an Old Manse (1846).

That passage has been on my mind lately, as rocketlass and I have been house-hunting, her particular desire for a garden having outweighed my general desire to avoid change of any sort. And as we've been wandering through hundred-year-old bungalows and farmhouse-style wood frame houses, I've been vaguely wondering about ghosts. All those families living there over all those years. . . . A selling realtor is required by law to disclose quite a bit of information about the property being sold, if it's bad--radon, mold, liens--but the law is, appropriately, silent on the topic of ghosts. So what is a realtor's duty?

Fitz-James O'Brien's short story "What Was It?" (1859), which is included in the new Library of America collection American Fantastic Tales, opens with a rental agent in just that position. And while she feels no compunction about laughing off reports of hauntings in a building she rents on 26th Street in Manhattan, it's to no avail:

The neighborhood caught up the story, and the house remained untenanted for three years. Several parties negotiated for it; but somehow, always before the bargain was closed, they heard the unpleasant rumors, and declined to treat any further.

If, after all, there's one thing you can count on the neighborhood gossips to pass on, it's surely news of hauntings--especially ones as impressive as the ones afflicting the building inn question:

Doors were opened without any visible agency. The remnants of furniture scattered through the various rooms were, during the night, piled one up on the other by unknown hands. Invisible feet passed up and down the stairs in broad daylight, accompanied by the rustle of unseen silk dresses and the gliding of viewless hands along the massive balusters.

Ultimately the problem is solved by the recruiting of a "plucky and philosophical set of boarders," whose appreciation of opium and cheap rent overcomes any trepidation they might have felt about ghosts; terror, nonetheless, ensues.

In our own house-hunt, the question came up the other night as rocketlass was climbing into a particularly spooky-looking attic--the stairs having been lopped off partway for closet space (and maximum creepiness). As she disappeared into the darkness, I asked the selling realtor if there were any ghosts up there.

The woman laughed and said no, but that she had sold a haunted house once. It was a lovely house on a street near ours that turned over with unusual frequency, and as she was setting up for an open house one sunny afternoon, she was startled to see an old man sitting in a rocking chair in the living room. He ignored her when she asked if he was there for the open house--then the sound of the doorbell made her briefly turn away, and he was gone when she looked back at the chair.

According to her, she did feel it was her obligation--in ethics, if not in law--to disclose the fact of the ghost to the couple that made an offer on the house; they disregarded her and bought the house despite, only to put it on the market themselves within a couple of years. My realtor and I were suitably impressed: either she was very, very quick on her feet--and a good storyteller to boot--or this really was something she'd experienced, however many ways one might find to explain it away. Doubt ghosts as I may, it would take quite a house for me to make an offer after hearing of a haunting; at a minimum, I would have to hire the Scooby gang to investigate beforehand.

When I put the question of the duty to disclose hauntings to our realtor, he replied that he definitely would feel obligated . . . the minute someone brought him a positive, verifiable, scientific test. Until then . . . well, for all he knows, you might have brought that ghost with you from your old place. 'Tis good to have a hard-headed rationalist as your realtor.

All of which leaves me glad to be able to say that our house, after nearly ten years of our living here, has given no signs of being haunted by anything more sinister than our three cats. In fact, now that I think of it . . . if you're a ghost who's looking for a comfortable, convenient new home, right next to the cemetery, we are currently accepting offers . . .