The Beckoning Fair One

For many years my favorite ghost story has been The Haunting of Hill House, and still is. Shirley Jackson's classic really has not been matched in its subtle craftmanship and psychological depth. Therefore, I was very surprised to find a ghost story just as fine as Jackson's in The Beckoning Fair One, and possibly even a literary "parent" to Jackson's deftly crafted ghost story. The Beckoning Fair One is a ghost story but also the story of a possession, as the "ghost" in the story, if we can call it that, remains to the end a nameless horror that is concerned with seducing the protagonist to his death. The entity seems to take over Oleron's thoughts at one point in the story, doing the protagonist's thinking for him, and all the while Oleron thinks he is exercising his own will. I think the author suggests something very interesting here about resisting and surviving this form of psychological attack--that the mind is not really the residence of the self. That the thoughts belong to the thinker, but the thinker must be well aware of who he is and who he is not before he can tell the difference between his thoughts and someone elses. Oleron, the protagonist, is not able to make this distinction, and therefore surrenders all to this entity even as he is aware at one level of what is happening. The entity's capacity to deceive him and entrap him hinges on Oleron's superficial knowledge of his own self, and of his own soul. This book is only 89 pages long, and I think that makes it a novella rather than a novel. I am surprised that this work and its author are so little known. I have been an avid reader of supernatural fiction for many years, and I have never before come across any works by Oliver Onions. If you are interested in reading well-written, finely crafted works, this is the ghost story for you. But I have to warn you...I am also a big fan of Edith Wharton's ghost stories.

"The Beckoning Fair One" has become regarded as a classic 'ghost' story, and very deservedly so. Too many supernatural/ghost/horror stories end up focussing myopically on the details of the horror, which however well delineated still leans toward the boring. To be truly engaging and satisfying a story--even a horror story--needs to be about people. The very horror itself must relate to the human condition in an intelligible way. Oliver Onions knew that, and makes his famous story work precisely because of what it reveals about the dark potentials in seemingly upright people. Occasionally Onions gets rather too verbose, making some readers rather impatient to get on with it. But I believe that Onions knew exactly what he was doing, and everything in the story serves a distinct and definite purpose. I can say about "The Beckoning Fair One" what I can say about only a few other horror tales I've ever read: that a point came in the story where the hair on the back of my neck literally stood on end, and chills rippled down my back. The fact that he built the mood and then brought in the scare so artfully that I never saw it coming, earns Onions a special place on my list of favorite 'ghostly' authors.

I came across this title in David G. Hartwell's 'The Dark Descent' and thought it one of the best stories in that collection. It is the tale of a writer who becomes obsessed with the female ghost haunting the house he rents. He gradually loses contact with the world outside, including a woman who is his friend. The horror is subtle, slowly getting under your skin and building to a shocking climax. This book contains only this story, but for me the purchase was worth it.