The Lamp in the Window: A Victorian Ghost Story by Tom Mead is a novella from PS Publishing that absolutely does what it says on the tin. It is a ghost story in the Victorian tradition, set around Christmas time, complete with a framing narrative and nesting stories within stories. Mead perfectly captures the voice and vibe of a Victorian ghost story, using the structure to good effect to make the story more personal, and leaning into to some of the inherent queerness that seems to linger beneath the surface of many traditional stories. Mead even embraces the abrupt ending present in many traditional tales, with The Turn of the Screw by Henry James being the example that jumps immediately to mind. Even as novellas go, it’s a relatively brief one, though no less effective for that. There may be some spoilers ahead, so be warned.
As mentioned above, the nested structure is used to good effect here, with a father haunted by his past telling a ghost story to his young son. Unlike many classical Victorian ghost stories where the connection is tenuous, something that happened to someone the framing narrator knows, but not necessarily intimately, this ghost story takes the narrator, Kershaw, back to his student days. One of his professors, Spence, used to host an annual gathering for Kershaw and three other students, Sullivan, Walsh, and Everett, on Christmas Eve, ending the evening by telling them ghost stories. A further layer is added to the narrative as Mead then relates the stories the professor told the boys, but rather than simple one-off horrors, these tales too relate back to the larger overarching narrative.
The queerness in Victorian tales like The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which was largely edited out and obscured, is made into a plot point here. Everett becomes convinced that Spence is gay and that Sullivan is as well. He suspects a secret relationship between the two, leading to Sullivan receiving special treatment, and creating tension between the four boys, which leads to the incident that ultimately incites the story’s central haunting.
The elements of structure, voice, and the nested stories all work well together. There is some genuinely unsettling imagery within the ghost stories that Spence tells the boy, from the ashen child creeping out of the fireplace, and Old Spindlejack with his head and limbs twisted the wrong way around. It’s a quick read, but a satisfying one, the sort of thing you might want to settle into on a wintry evening while sitting in front of a roaring fire. As with all of PS Publishing’s novellas, there’s a lovely signed, limited hardback edition available. The cover art by Yorgos Cotronis is spot on as well, making for a gorgeous physical object as well as a satisfying ghost story.
