conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about AKA, Jim, Hocum with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Ghosts In The House'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first three paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Ghosts In The House
  Arthur Benson suffered from extraordinary dreams all his life, extraordinary both in their content and the clarity with which he recalled them, and described some in his diary. He dreamed of an execution: 'A man with an axe cut pretty deep into [Lord Morton's] neck. I saw into the cut, it was like a currant tart.' Then he had this vision some years later:
  It is surprising that the E.F. Benson revival of the past thirty years has not sparked interest in the work of his brothers. All three were best sellers and all three wrote equally interesting ghost stories (though perhaps not equally entertaining). I hope this selection from Arthur Benson and Robert Hugh Benson will help restore them to their rightful place in the history of the English ghost story.
  It was about ten of the clock on a November morning in the little village of Blea-on-the-Sands. The hamlet was made up of some thirty houses, which clustered together on a low rising ground. The place was very poor, but some old merchant of bygone days had built in a pious mood a large church, which was now too great for the needs of the place; the nave had been unroofed in a heavy gale, and there was no money to repair it, so that it had fallen to decay, and the tower was joined to the choir by roofless walls. This was a sore trial to the old priest, Father Thomas, who had grown grey there; but he had no art in gathering money, which he asked for in a shamefaced way; and the vicarage was a poor one, hardly enough for the old man's needs. So the church lay desolate.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: three more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Then the old man looked at him for a moment, and said, 'I have waited long... and have received no comfort till now;' and then he said, 'Wilt thou promise?'
  Then the old man stretched out his hand and said, 'Art thou ready? for the time is come; and thou art called now;' and he touched Gilbert on the breast.
  Gilbert looked into the old man's eyes, and seemed to see there an unfathomable sadness, such as he had never seen; but at the touch a pain so fierce and agonising passed through him, that he sank upon the ground and covered his face with his hands.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I chose, not deliberately but instinctively, the old romantic form for the setting of these tales, a semi-mediaeval atmosphere such as belongs to the literary epic; some of the stories are pure fantasy; but they all aim more or less directly at illustrating the stern necessity of moral choice; the difficulty is to get children to believe, at the brilliant outset of life, that it will not do to follow the delights of impulse...
  The romance, then, of these stories is coloured by what may be thought to be a conventional and commonplace morality enough; but it is real for all that; and life as it proceeds has a blessed way of revealing the urgency and the unseen features of the combat. It is just because virtue seems dry and humdrum that the struggle is so difficult. It is so hard to turn aside from what seems so dangerously beautiful, to what seems so plain and homely. But it is what we mostly have to do...
  In a splendid closing paragraph, for which I make no apology for quoting in full, Arthur Benson gives us a charming and optimistic philosophy that is also very moving. Whatever demons the Bensons may have had, they also possessed a touching and sincere faith.
  If one believed that life were all, that there was no experience beyond the dark grave and the mouldering clay, it would be a miserable task enough to creep cautiously through life, just holding on to its tangible advantages and cautiously enjoying its delights. But I do most utterly believe that there is a truth beyond that satisfies our sharpest cravings and our wildest dreams, and that if we have loved what is high and good, even for a halting minute, it will come to bless us consciously and abundantly before we have done with experience. Many of our dreams are heavy-hearted enough; we are hampered by the old faults, and by the body that not only cannot answer the demands of the spirit, but bars the way with its own urgent claims and desires. But whatever hope we can frame or conceive of peace and truth and nobleness and light shall be wholly and purely fulfilled; and even if we are separated by a season, as we must be separated, from those whom we love and journey with, there is a union ahead of us when we shall remember gratefully the old dim days, and the path which we trod in hope and fear together; when all the trouble we have wrought to ourselves and others will vanish into the shadow of a faded dream, in the sweetness and glory of some great city of God, full of fire and music and all the radiant visions of uplifted hearts, which visited us so faintly and yet so beckoningly in the old frail days.
  The late Richard Dalby came up with R.H. Benson's 'Haunted Houses', and grateful thanks are due to him for tracking it down and supplying a copy. And grateful thanks as well to David Brawn at HarperCollins, for his friendly and enthusiastic revival of the Chillers series – and my editing career!