Single White Male
The predominant perspective from which the stories of Benson are told is first-person. And most of those narrators are single white males. It should be noted that this is a description which also happens to fit Benson himself. Much has been speculated upon the degree to which Benson’s “spooky stories” are autobiographical. Not in the traditional literal sense that he is describing strange phenomenon with a reportorial eye. Instead, scholars, readers and fans argue that perhaps the stories are autobiographical in theme; that perhaps just beneath the surface of the linear storyline can be traced a psychological autobiographical written from deep below the conscious mind.
Death...and How to Subvert It
One of most famous stories written by Benson is about a man with a premonition of his own death and how such insight can help one avoid or at least postpone the inevitable. Another famous story personifies cancer into the transformative consequences of horrifying legions of caterpillars. Vampires and ghosts are regular visitors and—reflecting his own autobiographical interests—a plot turns on an unwise decision to desecrate a mummy. Death looms everywhere in the short stories of Benson, but so, too, do the various ways in which death might be subverted.
The Outsider Looking In
Many of those single white male characters (more often than not remaining unnamed) also share other common characteristics. A surprising number of them tell stories that occur in domiciles not their own. The location may be a villa, a ski resort, the home of a friend or just a hotel, but the essential unifying element is that they are locations that do not belong to the narrator or which he calls home. While at these temporary lodgings, these narrators write of strange happenings or macabre histories that are not related to their presence. They just happen to be in the right place at the right—or wrong, depending on perspective—time. Further distancing these narrators is the fact that not only are the strange occurrences not dependent—or usually even related—to their presence, but once weird things do start happening, the narrator does not become a hero or even a victim. They usually remain merely distant spectators, relation the madness but effectively unchanged by them.
The Supernatural Realm
Unlike many other writers of ghost stories of the period, Benson never sought to provide a rational explanation for the macabre supernatural events and occurrences in his stories. His stories present a rational world in which the irrational occurs. Some of his stories even situate the conflict directly so as to clearly delineate the two realms. When rational investigation is applied to understanding the supernatural, those who indulge in the melodrama of fakery to hoodwink others are taken to task. This is true in one standout story even when the fakery is not necessary because the person doing the hoodwinking is genuinely gifted with psychic powers, but does not trust the public to accept prosaic and mundane demonstration of that power.
