“The Phantom Riders” (1896)

This story by Ernest R. Suffling is not bad but leans very hard into its effects, which are not that interesting or effective. It’s in that style of horror which assumes just mentioning or describing ghostly sightings is enough. Maybe so for another age, or in other circumstances. I can see this working as a story told aloud after dark, when the mood is gullible, for example. It feels to me like an Anglo-Saxon type of story at its heart, with virtuous values. One man, who is a slothful local guy, takes for granted that a woman in the neighborhood is his to have when he’s ready to marry. But another man comes along and falls in love with her. She feels the same about him and they are engaged to marry within three weeks. The date set for the announcement is Christmas Eve. That’s about all it has to do with Christmas, incidentally. The local guy won’t hear of this union and murders his rival off-stage. Then it’s on to the ghost effects, which are quite explicit. The ghost of one and then the other appear at the Christmas Eve gathering for the announcement. Separately, they appear and go behind a curtain in an alcove. Everyone at the gathering is petrified. The next day the body of one is found and later the body of the other. The one is murder, the other an accidental death. The following year this same bunch (more or less) travels on Christmas Eve to the site where the first body was found, where they witness the murder reenacted by ghostly figures. This scares the hell out of them too. And the year after that, so two years on, an intrepid band of sleuths views the reenactment and gives chase to the ghost of the murderer to witness his fate (the accidental death) and also to learn where he hid some documents he stole from the victim. It finishes as a ridiculously rational story, losing most of what punch it had by trying to explain too many things. The documents are irretrievably ruined after two years in the elements—I kind of like the bleak note there, and in other places in this story. But mostly it feels like “comfort horror,” perhaps best related in campfire or similar situations. At Christmastime, sure, why not, sounds good for the ghost story hour after dark before putting the kids to bed, etc. I like the story pretty well on that level. Also, the ghost effects are pretty good—predictable and obvious, yes, but they can work.

Yuletide Frights, ed. William P. Simmons

Chillers for Christmas, ed. Richard Dalby (out of print)
Read story online (scroll down).