“The Bus-Conductor” 1906
In a way, Benson’s most famous story. It is a story of premonition of a death foretold and was memorably adapted into an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1961. The episode is legendary for its famous line “Room for one more” which is paraphrased from Benson’s original “Just room for one inside.”
“The Other Bed” 1908
A story about a man who checks into a seedy hotel and is brought a bottle of whiskey despite making no request. A night visitor is a man who whose throat has been cut. When he awakens the following day, he learns that the previous occupant of the room had been a drunk who slit his own throat during a spell of the DT’s.
“How Fear Departed the Long Gallery” 1911
The ancestral home of the Peverils is noted for its friendly ghosts with the notable exception of those which haunt the Long Gallery. A pair of twins murdered while still babies have the power to create fear and dread, but only appear when such negatives emotions manifest beforehand. When a visitor expresses concern for the children, however, her compassion stimulates a redemptive process in which fear departs that part of the home for good.
“The Room in the Tower” 1912
The story of a recurring nightmare which appears to be coming true. A young man’s nightmare of visiting the home of a friend is juxtaposed with the reality of visiting a friend’s home which seems more like a bright dream come true. Until, that is, a portrait of a woman who appears in the nightmare is discovered and the vampiric specter of the woman visits the young in the middle of the night.
“The Caterpillars” 1912
Inside a villa in Italy, a man arrives for a stay, but suffers from insomnia. When he goes downstairs to get a book to help make him sleepy, he spies an open bedroom door. On the bed are enormous caterpillars with pincers all writhing in a disgusting display. And then, suddenly, the caterpillars fall to the floor and begin making their way toward him.
“The China Bowl” 1916
When a man purchases a home from a newly widowed man, he soon is haunted by nightmarish images of a dark figure chasing after him. Before too long, he swears he sees the man’s supposedly dead wife sipping from the title object.
“The Outcast” 1922
A woman dies at sea, but her body is rejected by the spirits of the oceans. It seems that the body was also inhabited the spirit of a woman who committed suicide which is apparently is verboten under the sea.
“Mr. Tilly’s Séance” 1922
After Mr. Tilly dies a gruesome death, he goes to witness the séance conducted by a medium who now occupies the chair of an actual medium and one of the founders of the London’s Theosophical Society, Madame Blavatsky. Blavatsky actually is a medium, but her melodramatic use of theatrics to intensify the effects drives Mr. Tilly away in repulsion.
“The Horror Horn” 1922
Another story of a man on holiday; this time the location is a winter resort at which blizzard conditions make skiing impossible. The man hears a story from another housebound visitor about place nearby known as Horror Horn. This weird location is inhabited by ungodly hairy creatures resembling men, but clearly less than human who are known to enact unspeakable terrors upon any actual human beings unlucky to cross paths with them. Such a man will prove to be the disappointed skier.
“Mrs. Amworth” 1923
A vampire story drawing strong, almost allegorical parallels with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The title character is a widow recently returned to an English village from India. While everyone else welcomes her home with open arms, Francis Urcombe detects something distinctly unwelcome. A young boy is develops a severe case of anemia accompanied by strange bites marks on his neck. Mrs. Amworth essentially retells Stoker’s novel with Amwoth as Dracula, Urcombe as her Van Helsing and the young boy standing in for the novel’s ill-fated Lucy.
“The Face” 1924
Hester Ward has long fantasized about a romantic abduction at the hands of Sir Roger Wyburn, a rakish rouge of low quality. When the fantasy suddenly comes true, it remains explicable. Why Roger has chosen Hester remains equally mysterious and Hester becomes a victim of an encroaching past.
“The Witch-Ball” 1929
Three friends spot a curious thing in a curious store known as a witch-ball. The wife one of the men admires the blue ball for its aesthetic quality, but the husband’s undeveloped psychic talents begin to manifest. He and his friend peer into the witch-ball one day and are astonished to see the image of a woman making up her up from beneath the earth. Then it gets worse: she makes her way out of the imprisonment of the ball and into their home.
“Monkeys” 1933
A gigantic prehistoric simian creature becomes the agent of retribution for a man who has made the enormous mistake of desecrating a mummy.
