The Red Room takes place over one night in an old, dark castle on a cold evening. This is, again, a tried and tested formula; castles often equal ghosts or ghostly happenings. This creates the impression that the whole castle is haunted, rather than just the one room. The castle is a much spookier setting than that of The Call and is constantly described with shadows, ‘and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled into the darkness overhead.’ There is much more description of surroundings in the castle which creates a mysterious atmosphere. Candles cast eerie shadows and moonlight, ‘picked out everything in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination.’ The Red Room itself is described as a, ‘large sombre room, with its shadowy window bays.’
The main character of The Red Room, the young man, is portrayed as keen, confident and rather pompous, who does not believe in ghosts, as he says, ‘I can assure you, said I, that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me’. As the story progresses, the young man begins to lose some of his self-assurance as the atmosphere of the castle begins to play on his nerves. As the tension builds in the room, the young man tries to keep a grip on his rising fear and hysteria. The old people, ‘grotesque custodians’, believe very much that the room is haunted but have never been brave enough to find out for themselves. They seem quite scary themselves, and the young man feels uncomfortable in their presence due to their ‘gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness.’ The Red Room has many descriptions of the old people to add to the atmosphere. They are not given names but each time they are mentioned, they are described differently, emphasising their extreme age and disability. ‘The man with the withered arm, the old woman and a second old man, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first.’ ‘They were all close together, dark against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their ancient faces.’ ‘They seemed to belong to another age, an older age, an age when things spiritual were different from this of ours.’ ‘Their very existence was spectral.’ ‘Three old and distorted people’.
The characters in The Call, Meg and Geoff, are quite different. Although the characters are not very developed they seem like a fairly normal, young, married couple, ‘Meg and Geoff Charlesworth. Just married. No kids.’ We do not see Meg’s true personality for very long in the story as the ghost calls her and puts her into some sort of trance. ‘She didn’t respond. She seemed frozen, just listening.’ Geoff is calm throughout, even when his wife, Meg, is put in a trance by the ghost. He believes the duty manager, Tom Brett, who is quickly described as ‘brisk and cheerful’, that there couldn’t possibly be a ghost. Although Harry Lancaster is described in some detail, he does not really make an appearance due to his poor health. The ghost could be described as one of the main characters as the story involves her telling her tale in a phone call to Meg. The ghost seems not so much scary as cold and hopeless and desperate for company.
The repetition of phrases like ‘It is your own choosing’ which the man with the withered arm says in The Red Room, creates tension. The description of the dark shadows also adds extra tension, ‘but its shadow fell with marvellous distinctness upon the white panelling and gave me the impression of some one crouching to waylay me. I stood rigid for half a minute perhaps.’ The man’s little candle is useless against the many shadows that fill the room, ‘my candle was a little tongue of light in it’s vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of light.’ The tension builds up to the very end when the candles suddenly start to go, out one by one.’ The colourful and expressive language piles on the feelings of uncertainty and nervousness. Personification is used effectively to create mounting terror in the young man, ‘an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles’, ‘darkness closed upon me in a stifling embrace’.
In The Call, the story is developed step by step, even the ghost tells its story, bit by bit, until the reader knows her name, where she lived and exactly how she died. The atmosphere in the office changes when ‘the distant bells of the parish church’ announced midnight. Repetition, as in the lines, ‘crackly, very crackly. Nothing but crackles coming and going’ suggests something is going to happen. The use of the ghost’s voice in each successive phone call has an hypnotic effect on Meg, almost draining the life from her, ‘Meg looked like a corpse herself. White as a sheet. Dull dead eyes, full of pain. Ugly, almost.’ The call is constantly described as ‘cold’ and a good description of it would be ‘it was another chunk of lonely hell, being spat out automatically.’ When the ghost first rings it’s described in the story as, ‘It wasn’t a wild voice, you could hope to clam down. It wasn’t a cunning hysterical voice, trying to upset you. It wasn’t the voice of a hoaxer, that to the trained Samaritan ear always has that little wobble in it, that might break down into a giggle at any minute.’ While reading that, I was thinking “well what is it then?” The next sentence is ‘it was a voice as cold, as real, as hopeless as a tombstone.’ Using ‘tombstone suggests death, ghosts and creepiness. When Geoff is at the lock, ‘the River Ousam beckoned, flat, black, deep and still’. Another reference to “the call”, not just from the ghost, but also from the river. The river calls again even later in the story, ‘in an evil way, it called to Geoff’.
In The Call everything is fully explained, in so much as a ghost story can be explained and finally resolved. The ending ties up all the loose ends; Meg and Geoff recover and carry on as Samaritans. Harry Lancaster dies but seems to have sorted out the problem of the ghost somehow for she does not phone the following Christmas Eve. I liked the fact that the mystery was solved in The Call and I also liked it because of its use of modern language which made it easier to enjoy and understand. I thought The Red Room was quite gripping and exciting, especially during the last scene in the room. The fact that the mystery of the castle was not fully explained at the end of the tale adds to its interest. It is not a ‘tangible ghost’ at the end of this story but an extreme emotion of fear.
Both stories generated excitement in their own ways. Receiving a phone call from a ghost was quite a good idea. Ending a ghost story, as in The Red Room, so dramatically and without a ghost was a very clever idea.
