Both The Signalman and The Darkness Out There have unexpected endings. Compare the way tension is built up in both stories so that the reader is surprised by how the stories end.

When they first meet the old woman she looks very innocent and incapable of doing anything wrong, but as they get to know her during the course of there visit they find the truth about her and her deceased sister. This is were the story starts to turn into a horror story. Even while the old woman tells of how she watched a nazi die in his crashed plane she still tells it as if she had no choice and that she didn't do anything wrong. This ending is quite shocking in the way that at the begging of the story it was almost like a child's story. The scene was set as a sunny day, the grass was green etc. but then it turns into a story about lies and manslaughter.

In The Signalman the writer starts off with a very strange scenario in which the narrators opening words are

"Halloa! Below there!"

This is strange because we have no description of the surroundings or any atmosphere we just start off with a phrase. Then the writer starts describing the signalman before he even sets the scene this leaves a lot open to the imagination at this point in the story. The way the narrator first describes the signalman makes you think there is something wrong with him, Why would he look around him when the only place the voice could have being coming from was above him out of the cutting?

The writer cleverly build up tension by making you think tat the signalman is a ghost. Because this is what the narrator says and it is all the information we have so we must therefore also come to the same conclusion.

It is only after the first few paragraphs that we are told about the environment

"His post was in as solitary and dismal place as I ever saw"

Because of this sentence we begin to know a little about the signalman, he is a lonely man by his surroundings. We then get a very detailed account of his surrounding using words like Dungeon to describe the cutting in which the signalman's box is.

The writer adds tension by making the narrator wait until the next evening until he begins talk to the signalman again, also because of the fact that he asked to meet him during the evening instead of during the day. As the narrator meets the signalman more and more he begins to find out about what is troubling him. He is seeing ghosts. This now makes the story a horror.

When the narrator comes to visit the signalman on the last time he finds out that he is dead. Even more strange the man saw his own death.