The Signalman and The Red Room are well known examples of nineteenth ghost stories

In The Signalman the narrator is the visitor and he is telling the story from his point of view. He is the central character of the story; it makes you feel a bit scared and makes it very spooky; it makes you feel as if you were actually there. Both characters are essential to the plot of the story because they create a spooky atmosphere. The reader knows the visitor has come to visit this place as a ghost and sees through the signalman how he died. Through the signalman the visitor will see how he died. We learned a lot about the signalman because the whole story revolves around him, making him the most important character. In the Red Room the old people are described in some detail to give us the effect that the red room is very haunted and cursed. The visitor learns that people are scared of the red room; we know this because a man keeps saying, "It's your own choosing, said the man with the withered arm". This tells us the man and the people around him are very frightened of this room and won't go even outside it. "You alone". This is telling us they think something really bad is going to happen to them if they go with the visitor.

The Signalman has a very steady approach to tension and logical structure and pace- there is one event after the next, all of which are connected. The signalman tells the reader of his fears, his increasing anxiety, the frequency of the ghost's appearance and, the visitor's inability to do anything. Then huge amounts of tension, at the end, mount up as the visitor looks down below. The way that all the tension builds up, at the end, so dramatically it gives a very effective spooky atmosphere. "I put this arm before my eyes not see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use". The ghost is described to look like someone the visitor knows "Like me?" "I don't know. I never saw the face". The signalman shows us he is very anxious, "turned his face toward the little bell when it did NOT ring," this tells us the signalman is very anxious because he did not hear the bell and he was probably wondering how come the other man did and he did not hear it. In contrast, in The Red Room, as the visitor sets off on his journey the pace intensifies because he is really eager to find out what's in the red room- the room, which everyone tells him not to go to. The shape of the plot is rather like a crescendo, tension mounts but its pace had increased, during his time in the red room. The last section has a totally different pace. The pace and tension is much slower in the last paragraph as the visitor knows what's in the red room and therefore not eager to find what is in the red room because they already know. He already knows what's in the room because he has already been to it. The visitor has already described that room. At the end the visitor learns not to believe what people tell him about the room because it's not really that haunted," there is fear in the room of hers - black fear, and there will be- so long as this house of sin endures." This tells us there is nothing bad about the room it's just filled with fear of the person who died.

The Signalman and The Red Room both have unusual ending. At the end of The Signalman it was actually the visitor's own death, you could not tell that it would end like this. It was not typical-meaning you could not guess the ending. This makes you want to read the whole story. Even The Red Room's ending is not typical; by having not typical ending this makes the reader more interested in the story and makes them want to read on. It is important when thinking about the visitor's fate to think about the signalman because it's described through the signalman. While thinking about the visitor's fate, through the signalman, we can see how he really died. My favourite story, of the two, is the red room; I really liked the way people kept warning the visitor not to go to the red room, "it's your own choosing", said the man with the withered arm, when the coughing had ceased for a while."" You go alone." It was really funny how people kept warning the visitor not to go to that room because it was haunted and in the end when the visitor went to the room there was nothing there! The room was filled with nothing but people's fear. I have learned fear makes you frightened for no reason whatsoever. Like in The Red Room all the people where scared of the room because of what they have been told about the room but when the visitor actually goes to The Red Room the room it is just normal and filled with fear of people!

Aysha Khawaja 1.03.04