Short Story corner continues. I wasn’t going to do one today but every time I peeked at this story I couldn’t help but start reading it, so I caved and went for it. Like the previous, this was published in 1908. It serves as a fascinating little twist on the old school Victorian ghost story.
At it’s core ‘The Screaming Skull’ is a ghost story narrated by a man who is adamant he is not in a ghost story. The entire thing is told in a near stream of consciousness monologue, all narrated to an implied old friend of our narrator. “When I don’t understand a thing, I call it a phenomenon, and I don’t take it for granted that it’s going to kill me (13).” our grizzled sea captain tells us. As the story moves on, it becomes clear that he really, really should.
And that’s what pushes us into the territory of the ‘weird’, I think. A man tormented by the screaming skull of his dead friend’s murdered wife is a ghost story when played straight. When narrated by a man who refuses to admit there is a ghost, even when the friend had his throat torn out by the skull, even when he watches the skull bite a guy, pushes it into the territory of the weird. There is something psychological here, the staunch unwillingness of a skeptic to accept what is before his eyes and ears if it is not in line with said skepticism.
Crawford also makes some stellar use of the first person narrator. I know the prevailing opinion of the day is that we are supposed to hate first-person as a marker of low class, tacky, inexpert fiction, but stories like this really show how it can be masterfully used to create a disconnect between the literal events of the story and the protagonist’s perceptions/reactions to those events. First person is amazing for a portrait of a person with something deeply wrong with them. I love working in first person for this exact reason, it lets you step out of your own mindset and into someone else’s. Once got in an argument in a writing class with a 50 year old man in a hentai shirt who said only narcissists work in first person over things like this, but that is another story entirely, and this story functions as solid proof to me that first person is a wonderful tool to your writer’s toolbox.
In conclusion: I really enjoyed this story, and it made me more interested in tracking down more of Crawford’s work. I think it shows us how ‘the weird’ uses point of view, dramatic irony, character work, and creating a disconnect between narrator and audience to play with genre, destabilize audience expectations, and really create something New. It’s a wonderful little ghost story in its own fight, and absolutely worth rereading often, I think.
Signing off,
Marlowe
Marlowe Writes 