Julia O’Connell

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

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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Yes, if he were genuinely a supernatural being, the animals are usually the first to notice!

My brain also went down the cursed immortal wanderers route!

I don’t think I’ve read any of Emily Brontë’s poetry before, but I really liked this one!
She really sets a mood in such a short poem, and I like the imagery of “his basilisk charm.”

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What is it about this stranger that makes his eyes shine in a way that “None but a spirit's look may beam”?
To me, this brought to mind “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and other tales of cursed wanderers.

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Day 6 of #AScareADay is the poem “And now the house dog stretched once more” by Emily Brontë.

Such an innocuous title. And, really, an innocuous scene of a stranger taking a meal with a shepherd and his family. Yet an uncanny gleam in the man’s eye frightens all present—except for the dog.

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You are very welcome! Thank you for writing such wonderful books!

Review of America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger Than Fiction - The Gothic Library Can Gothic literary tropes help us better understand real life? Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes certainly think so! These two queens of ghostlore who brought us A Haunted History of Invisible Wom...

New blog post! Check out my thoughts on why AMERICA’S MOST GOTHIC by @leannareneehieber.bsky.social and Andrea Janes should be your next Halloween read:

www.thegothiclibrary.com/review-of-am...

I like the wording of “uninvaded sleep.” Who would dare invade a kraken’s sleep?

There’s something Cthulhu-like about this big monster sleeping beneath the waves. Or I guess Cthulhu is Kraken-like—except he gets to dream.

I’ve never thought of “millennial growth” sponges before…

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Day 5 of #AScareADay is the poem “The Kraken” by Lord Tennyson.

Somehow, I don’t think I’ve read this one before. It’s kind of sad😢

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Even worse than being conscious for his own funeral and burial is that several of the narrator’s friends recognize him on the dissecting table, and do nothing!

Do we think the galvanic experiment is what restored him? Or would he have woken up at the slice of the knife regardless?

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I was particularly struck by this line in today’s story:

“The world was then darkened, but I still could hear, and feel, and suffer.”

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Day 4 of #AScareADay is “The Buried Alive” by John Galt (1821)

This made me think of a chapter I recently read in AMERICA’S MOST GOTHIC by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes, which explores the cases of 19th-c spiritualists who went into deep trances and their family feared burying them alive

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As for the ending, Nathaniel got what he deserved and I’m glad things worked out much better for Clara.

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The story seems to satirize some of the expectations of women, that a barely-verbal automaton was viewed as the perfect lover. I like the little moral the local students take away of appreciating imperfections and individuality in their paramours.

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My main takeaway is that Nathaniel was blessed with some amazing friends. They broke into a burning building to save his possessions. And they sat down to try to tell him: that girl you’re obsessed doesn’t seem quite human…

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I was surprised when the epistolary style at the beginning of the story suddenly changes to a self-conscious narrator who addresses the “indulgent reader” and muses on the various effective ways to start a story. But I think he undermines the effectiveness by stopping to explain it…

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Day 3 of #AScareADay and I nearly fell behind already. But it’s a bit after midnight and I have finished reading “The Sand-man” by ETA Hoffman.

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The opening of this story even makes a moral lesson out of this situation: : “sacrilege, however clandestinely committed, generally meets with severe retribution!”

This moral seems to be forgotten by the end of the story, though…

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I find scary nuns in modern horror movies to be a bit silly, but this story situates them in historical context of ecclesiastical buildings left to go to ruin after the Reformation and then turned into homes for the wealthy

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I did find the ending a bit underwhelming.
“neither bride nor bridegroom was ever again troubled by the ghostly nun.”

Does this mean the whole procession of nuns every seven years stopped? It’s such a happily ever after for a story with such an ominous beginning

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Day 2 of #AScareADay is “The Elopement” by Johan Karl August Musaus (1801).

This story is clearly a precursor to the Bleeding Nun scene in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. Though with a much happier ending, all tied up with a bow.

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The ‘Scare a Day’ Challenge – October 2025 It’s almost October, which means it’s almost time for the #AScareADay challenge! One poem or scary short-story a day for a whole month. You can read along with us using the links below.…

Just a reminder, you can find the full #AScareADay list here - romancingthegothic.com/2025/09/21/t...

That line also really made me think of wedding vows.

Through thick and through thin… in sickness and in health…

Last thought: As I begin my Yom Kippur fast, I feel for the poor beasties who dare not go into the forest to find their food while the hag and the devil are about. I, too, am retreating to my lair to lurk...

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17th c poets weren't always big on clarifying commas and semicolons. So did some editor add these in to try to influence the interpretation of these lines?

If she's astride the Devil, though, is he also the "Spirit that guides"?

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At the first line, I assumed the hag was "astride" a broom. But then she wouldn't need a spur, would she?

It seems instead that she is astride the Devil... Different punctuation in the 1st stanza would make this even clearer, which makes me wonder--is the punctuation here original?

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