Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 15h

In some ways, I find this story much scarier than many of the more decisive hauntings we have read about. What do you do when you can’t trust your own memory or those around you?

Although no one asks the one person who might know the real answer: Hiram.

3/ #AScareADay

1 3

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 15h

Is there a quaint little room or a china cabinet? There are no real stakes to the question, except that visitors to the Keys house who have experienced both versions begin to doubt their own sanity—or have their character impugned by disbelieving partners.

2/ #AScareADay

3

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 15h

Day 12 of #AScareADay is “A Little Room” by Madeline Wynee, yet another unfamiliar author.

It’s a brilliantly frustrating story about a disappearing room and a pair of spinster sisters who cause generations of couples to doubt each other and themselves.

1/

2 1 2

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 1d

There are a lot of literary allusions in this story, most of which I was unfamiliar with, which occasionally made it difficult to follow. But I did enjoy this quoted line from the poet Heine:
"I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins."
I guess I have more reading to do.

4/ #AScareADay

1 2

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 1d

Bizarrely, it is the two who were least responsible for Felipa's pain that are most tormented--though I guess the others were just killed outright. But the moral of the story seems to be: if you try to revive someone who has died, they might not thank you for it!

3/ #AScareADay

1 2

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 1d

Also unique is the fact that the house moves locations. The same two men keep unexpectedly coming across it, then witnessing the death of a new companion.
I had been unfamiliar with SF's history of relocating houses, but found this interesting article: www.sfgate.com/local/articl...

2/ #AScareADay

San Francisco's bizarre history of (literally) moving houses

Don't like your 'hood? Just grab a couple horses and move your house to a new one.

www.sfgate.com

1 2 4

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 1d

Day 11 of #AScareADay is "An Itinerant House' by Emma Frances Dawson, another new author to me.

This tale has the classic trope of a room that kills its inhabitants, but--quite unusual--we start with the sad moment from which the room's curse originates.

1/

1 4

Reposted by Julia O’Connell

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 2d

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera

In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion.

As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.

390 5.8K 20K

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 2d

Ultimately, the speaker rejects the Dark Angel’s company and vows to go “Lonely, unto the Lone … Divine, to the Divinity.”

Must resisting evil be such a lonely process?

4/ #AScareADay

1 3

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 2d

I think we should bring back words like “Beleaguerest, bewilderest.”

I also love this verse:

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

3/ #AScareADay

1 4

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 2d

The speaker of the poem is tormented by a figure that both tempts and repulses.

Vampire-like, the Dark Angel represents a “Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,/Eternally uncomforted.”

Yet, the speaker cannot enjoy life while the angel transmutes all beauty to “evil ecstasy.”

2/ #AScareADay

1 3

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 2d

Day 10 of #AScareADay is the 1893 poem “Dark Angel” by Lionel Johnson.

allpoetry.com/poem/8526407...

I had never read this poet before!

1/

The Dark Angel by Lionel Pigot Johnson at Allpoetry

Comments & analysis: DARK Angel, with thine aching lust / To rid the world of penitence:

allpoetry.com

1 1 4

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 3d

I don’t think it was me, but now I want to add it to my TBR too! Let me know when you figure out what it is. Haha

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 3d

The true curse of the Secret Chamber is not just what it contains, but the fact that it is secret. The haunted lords cannot tell what plagues them.

Lindores wants to open the chamber for all to see in daylight, but it refuses to reveal itself. The ending is left vaguely hopeful...

3/ #AScareADay

3

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 3d

But the secret chamber of Gowrie Castle holds no ordinary ghost. It holds what I would call a manifestation of the inclination toward evil.

Unfortunately, many of the lords of the castle are too weak-willed to resist the spirit's wicked whispers. Can young Lindores break the curse?

2/ #AScareADay

1 3

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 3d

Day 9 of #AScareADay is "The Secret Chamber" by Margaret Oliphant.

There are three tropes in one here: a hidden chamber, a haunting, and a family curse!

Those who know only of the existence of the secret chamber, but not what it contains, romanticize it. "A ghost is a sign of importance."

1/

1 4

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 4d

Ooh, interesting!

1

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 4d

Of course, we never get to see Mrs. De Wynt's reaction to learning that a young man has died in the house she found for her friend. Does she believe in the haunting now? Does she feel responsible for his death? Will she be wary of renting cheap houses in the future?

4/ #AScareADay

4

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 4d

I absolutely loved Mrs. De Wynt's over-the-top writing style, especially when she waxes poetic about what a good friend she is. She anthropomorphizes the house in a particularly interesting way: " I feel a sort of godmother to it, and responsible for its good behaviour."

3/ #AScareADay

1 4

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 4d

Of course, one young man has to go stay in the haunted bedroom to prove his manliness to his lady love. This scenario reminded me of Edith Nesbit's "The Pavilion."

But what on earth does he mean by "Seven white ghostisses Sifting on seven white postisses"?

2/ #AScareADay

1 4

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 4d

Day 8 of #AScareADay is "The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing but the Truth" by Rhoda Broughton--another new to me author!

The story is epistolary, told in letters between Mrs. De Wynt and Mrs. Montresor. It's got the classic trope of one bedroom that leaves inhabitants dead or mad.

1/

2 1 6

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 5d

It is interesting to juxtapose a performance of Hamlet with the apparition of Mrs MacArthur’s mother. The ghost in Hamlet is a murdered man come back to reveal the betrayal to his son.
But Mrs A’s mother doesn’t seem to be a sentient spirit with any purpose, just briefly visiting fam

4/ #AScareADay

3

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 5d

I wonder what the relationship is between the narrator and Mrs MacArthur. We know nothing about the narrator except a vague sense that she is a young lady who identifies closely with Mrs A’s younger self and seems more affected by the failed love story than the ghost.

3/ #AScareADay

2 3

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 5d

Mrs MacArthur’s father got the full visual apparition of his wife’s ghost and seemed to understand it’s importance, but young Mrs MacArthur and her maid only heard a faint rapping at the window—not unlike in Poe’s “The Raven.”

2/ #AScareADay

1 4

Julia O’Connell @juliajoyce.bsky.social · 5d

Day 7 of #AScareADay was “The Last House in C____ Street” by Dinah Mulock (1856).
I wasn’t familiar with either this story or this author before, but I enjoyed it. It is subtle, sad, and sweet. A classic ghost story of the deceased appearing to far off loved ones at the moment of death.

1/

1 5