Introduction

‘If I go to Hell to-morrow, I’ll pay you a visit to let you know what ’tis like.’

— Marjorie Bowen, ‘The Bishop of Hell’

Ghosts have to be the oldest props of horror. They aren’t always the most popular supernatural creatures, but they never completely go away. I think one reason ghosts keep hanging around is because they are personal. By virtue of being alive, every person has the potential to be a spectre, and by virtue of haunting, every spectre was a person. This terrifying paradox forces us to confront the mysteries of the afterlife. Ghosts similarly play with our concept of time. There is something fascinating (and deeply unsettling) about traces of the past continuing to haunt the present, whether at a historical battlefield or in a home. Hauntings force us to face unresolvable existential questions that we would rather ignore. Telling ghost stories becomes a way to explore and attempt to exert control over these anxieties.

Because of these intimate connections to our humanity, ghosts are tremendously adaptable metaphors. Ghosts are memories, traces of loved ones that keep spaces open for mourning. Conversely, ghosts can signal repression and secrets, those things we don’t want to remember or share with others. A ghost can be a sign of unfinished business or of an unsolved mystery. Moreover, hauntings are often connected to families and domestic spaces. Unfortunately, homes and families are not always safe and nurturing, and the walls of a house can hide hideous abuse, violence, and neglect. In the hands of British and American women writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ghost stories became a way to make this hidden abuse visible. The fictional women who are living or ghostly protagonists in these stories face real-life fears. They are dominated by distant fathers, trapped in terrible marriages, pursued by greedy and nefarious individuals, ruined socially, traumatized, and afforded few choices. Sometimes, in these stories, the husband and wife are mutually damaged by societal expectations. Far from con­jugal happiness, their relationship becomes an open wound that reminds them of unfulfilled desires, impossible ambitions, and loss.

Marjorie Bowen was one of these writers. She was born Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell in Hampshire, England, in 1885. After the death of Bowen’s father when she was a young child, her mother faced financial difficulties and frequently moved the family. As she grew older, Bowen was drawn to writing, and she used her talent to become the family breadwinner, publishing her first novel in 1906. Through two marriages and while raising three sons, she never stopped writing, and, like other women writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, she supported her family with her work. By the time of her death in 1952, she had a prolific publication record of over 150 books under several pen names, one of which was Marjorie Bowen. She began her career writing historical romances, but her output spanned numerous genres, and included, of course, the supernatural.

While reading Bowen’s The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories, you will see her deft use of the ghost to suggest varied themes, such as the passage of time, grief and memory, secrets, unsolved mysteries, and vengeance. Even though most of the tales were initially published in the 1920s and the 1930s, their settings are usually much older. Several of the stories take place in the 1600s or 1700s, or, if the setting is more recent, the characters are haunted by events from much earlier. In ‘Florence Flannery,’ the characters are haunted by a past trauma that occurred in the 1500s, even though they are living in the 1800s. Not surprising for an author who loved history, Bowen highlights time in her work, thereby forcing us to reckon with the effects of the past on the present. Additionally, her ghosts are tied to homes and families. Although most of her narrators are men, there are many women throughout these pages who face violence, and a few fight back, before and after death. ‘The Avenging of Ann Leete,’ for example, focuses on the mystery of a young woman’s death and the grief of her lover through multiple forms of haunting, both literal and figurative. Two of her more traditional haunted house tales are ‘The Crown Derby Plate’ and ‘The Grey Chamber.’ The former is a British Christmas ghost story with chills. The latter is a German Gothic ghost story with a large mansion, a dungeon, and secret passages, but it continues Bowen’s theme of violence in a distant past.

Perhaps most striking, Bowen has her characters face the existential terrors of death and what may follow it. In ‘Kecksies,’ there is much confusion over who is dead and how permanent death may be, and it doesn’t help that alcohol is involved. Hector Greatrix, the speaker of the epigraph to this introduction, is a fallen clergyman in ‘The Bishop of Hell.’ Greatrix swears he is an unbeliever, but he still fears the unknown of the afterlife. With a flourish of bravado, he promises his friend that he will return to tell him what it’s like. You’ll have to read the story to find out if he keeps that promise.

Classic ghost story enthusiasts will appreciate Bowen’s versatile uses of hauntings. She’s as comfortable creating a harmless ghost who refuses to leave his house, as she is creating a vengeful spirit who stalks her murderer. She skillfully constructs settings that are lonely, atmospheric, and weird, and she doesn’t shy away from the ambiguities that surround death and the afterlife. If you love ghost stories and haven’t yet read Bowen’s work, you’re in for a treat. I recommend reading them at night, perhaps during a storm. Make sure you ignore the sounds of the house settling around you. Those creaks and pops couldn’t possibly be footsteps.

Melanie R. Anderson

October 2020

 

Melanie R. Anderson is the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Award winning co-author of Monster, She Wrote (Quirk Books, 2019) and the co-host of The Know Fear Cast and Monster, She Wrote podcasts. She is an assistant professor of English at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Her academic publication Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison (2013) was a winner of the 2014 South Central MLA Book Prize. She holds a Ph.D. in American literature.