Character guide

Unknown Narrator

major

Also known as I, me, mine, yours

This narrator moves through several tales as the observing 'I' — the guest who asks for the falling-stone story, the listener who notices how the circle around the hearth goes suddenly still. He is candid about his own nerves, admitting he can hide under the bedclothes when skeletons grow hackneyed, yet he is the one who presses for the firsthand account. His susceptibility makes him the reader's proxy: through his eyes, ordinary evenings acquire the hush and dark corners that the early stories depend on.

Frank Halton

major

Also known as Adam, Franklyn, Francis Adam

Frank Halton surfaces across several stories as the man who can jest about ghosts and then, without a pause, hold a circle silent with a firsthand account. He is at ease in company — laughing, deflecting, matching wits — yet his authority comes from the sense that he has actually seen something he cannot fully swear to. That gap between social ease and private dread is what makes him the natural teller of tales that begin as entertainment and end as something else.

Dick Peveril

major

Also known as Dick, Alingham, Dick Alingham

Handsome Dick Peveril wins Church-Peveril by a crime he never answers for in life, and dies within a year of enjoying it, his confession unfinished and his spirit unabsolved. From the night of his death, the long gallery harbours two little white-robed figures whose appearance has killed servants, sceptics, and the brilliantly clever Mrs. Canning alike. He is the origin-point of the book's most chilling legend — the ancestral sin that makes the house itself a character, and the reason no visitor is warned in vain.

Madge Dalrymple

major

Also known as Madge, Daisy

Madge Dalrymple belongs to the social world of country-house gatherings where croquet is played for the sake of saying it was played, and ghost stories are traded as after-dinner currency. She is sensitive to atmosphere — the moment the childish gaiety of an evening is withdrawn, she registers it — and her romantic attachments place her at the centre of stories where affection and the supernatural press against each other. Her presence keeps the eerie events tethered to ordinary feeling, so that the horror lands on someone the reader cares about.

Young Frank Pencarris

major

Also known as Frank Pencarris

Young Frank Pencarris stands at the threshold between boyish curiosity and adult dread, the age at which nightmares are still vague enough to be truly frightening. He moves through the stories as a focal consciousness — the one who sees, who feels the room's mood turn, who cannot yet dismiss what he has witnessed. His youth matters to the early arc because it keeps the supernatural personal: what happens to him happens to someone still forming, and the reader feels the cost.

Mr. Tilly

major

Also known as Dear Mr. Tilly, wounded Mr. Tilly

Mr. Tilly is the invalid at the heart of a household's anxious attention — 'dear Mr. Tilly,' 'wounded Mr. Tilly' — a man whose injury makes him both pitied and strangely powerful. Around him, the living arrange themselves into a séance, and what comes through is not comfort but something that will not stay in its proper place. His vulnerability and his centrality together make him the story's pressure point: the person everyone wants to protect, and the person through whom the uncanny finds its way in.

Charles Linkworth

major

Also known as Dr. Teesdale, Linkworth, Teesdale

A condemned man whose confession blurs the line between guilt and ghost, leaving listeners unsure whether they've heard a deathbed penitent or something far stranger.

Sir James Horton

supporting

Also known as Horton

A baronet drawn into eerie occurrences, his rational bearing tested by events that resist every sensible explanation he can muster.

Hugh Graham

supporting

Also known as Hugh, Hugh Grainger

A man who keeps stumbling into strange events, his ordinary life repeatedly interrupted by occurrences that seem to follow him rather than happen to him.

Darcy

supporting

Also known as Mr. Darcy, O Darcy

A friend whose secondhand account of a young artist's death anchors the tale, lending the villagers' whispers a shape and a witness.

Mrs. Amworth

major

A vivacious widow who revitalizes a sleepy village with her energy and charm, yet draws one neighbor's unblinking scrutiny for reasons she never quite explains.

Margaret Alton

supporting

Also known as Margaret

A woman caught between romantic currents and supernatural undertows, her presence sharpening the stakes whenever the ordinary world starts to fray.

Lady Rorke

supporting

Lady Rorke moves among the country-house guests whose fireside storytelling frames several of these hauntings, part of the society that treats the supernatural as after-dinner entertainment. Her world is one of leisure and composure, where the real terror lies not in skeletons but in the vague, childish dread that no apparatus can explain. She helps establish the social texture against which Benson's quieter horrors unfold.

Roderick Cardew

major

Also known as Roderick

Roderick Cardew is the narrator's oldest friend, gravely ill with heart disease and reluctant to leave his Chelsea rooms until the lure of marshland and big skies wins him over. He speaks of seeing the marsh 'once more' with a resignation that unsettles his host, joking that death is a train everyone catches. His doomed composure and the strange familiarity he cannot place in a stranger's face set the haunting in motion.

Louis Fielder

supporting

Also known as poor Louis, Fielder

Louis Fielder haunts the margins of Benson's ghostly company as a man whose end has already become a cautionary memory among friends. The pity in the phrase 'poor Louis' suggests a life marked by misfortune or obsession, and a death that others cannot quite put behind them. His fate gives the surrounding stories their weight, reminding listeners that the supernatural is not merely a fireside amusement.

Jim Stanley

supporting

Also known as Jim

Jim Stanley belongs to the circle of friends and travelers whose ordinary pursuits—croquet, conversation, country visits—are interrupted by things that resist explanation. He is the sort of level-headed presence whose testimony lends weight to the inexplicable, caught between skepticism and the evidence of his own senses. His encounters anchor the reader in a world where the supernatural intrudes on perfectly reasonable lives.

Sandy

supporting

Also known as Abdul Ali, Abdul, the dead Abdul

Abdul Ali is a figure from Luxor's past whose grave, visited by travelers who linger after the tourists have fled, becomes the focus of supernatural attention. Around him gather the fanatic few who believe the real Egypt wakes only when the hotel empties and the heat settles over the Theban plain. His death and burial raise questions of justice and restless spirits that the living cannot easily dismiss.

Machmout

supporting

Also known as Egypt Machmout, the hypnotised Machmout, little Machmout

Machmout is a boy of Luxor drawn into the experiments of travelers curious about the boundaries of mind and memory. Under hypnosis he becomes something other than himself, a vessel for forces that the rational observers cannot fully control or explain. His small figure at the center of uncanny events gives the tale its peculiar power, mixing colonial-era curiosity with genuine dread.

John Aylsford

minor

A character who experiences a haunting.

Mr. Urcombe

supporting

Also known as Urcombe

Urcombe moves through drawing-room circles where ghost stories are traded like currency, and he has heard too many of them to be impressed by the usual apparatus of blood and bone. What unsettles him is not the tangible but the vague — the nightmare without shape, the fear that cannot be named. His hunger for that lost sensation makes him the perfect listener, and the perfect lens through which a tale of real, formless dread can be told.

Charles Alington

supporting

Also known as Sir Charles Alington

Charles Alington is the happiest man the narrator has ever met, a rich eccentric who fears nothing, hopes for nothing, and wants only to know. The moment a mystery becomes practical science — as wireless did after Marconi — he drops it cold, which makes the supernatural his permanent playground. His insatiable inquisitiveness and cheerful indifference to moral judgment make him both an ideal companion for strange investigations and a man whose curiosity may lead him somewhere he cannot explain away.

Jack Stone

minor

Also known as Jack Lorimer

A character involved in eerie events.

Professor Ingram

minor

Also known as Ingram

An academic who investigates paranormal events.

Lady Madingley

minor

A noblewoman who appears in a ghost story.

Archie Rorke

supporting

Also known as Sir Archibald Rorke

Archie Rorke belongs to the intimate company gathered around the fire, one of those who was present at the Christmas gathering a year before and who now listens as Everard Chandler prepares to recount what happened. His silence during the identification of those present is telling — he is part of the shared history that gives the coming story its authority. As a listener who does not interrupt, he helps create the charged, expectant atmosphere in which a real ghost story can take hold.

Parkes

minor

A servant who witnesses eerie events.

Anthony Carling

minor

Also known as Anthony

A man who experiences a haunting.

Ida Soulsby

minor

Also known as Miss Ida, Miss Soulsby

A young woman who appears in a supernatural story.

Mrs. Gabriel

minor

A woman involved in eerie occurrences.

Mr. Dooliss

minor

A man involved in paranormal events.

The Doctor

minor

A medical professional who appears in supernatural contexts.

Harry Combe-Martin

minor

Also known as Harry

A character who experiences eerie events.

Mrs. Franklyn

minor

Also known as Franklyn

A woman who appears in a ghost story.

Julia Stone

minor

Also known as Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Julia Stone

A woman who experiences eerie phenomena.

Jack Singleton

minor

Also known as Singleton

A character who encounters ghostly phenomena.

Achmet

minor

A character who appears in a supernatural story.

Aunt Hester

minor

An elderly relative who experiences eerie events.

Ellen Trenair

minor

Also known as Ellen

A woman who appears in a ghost story.

Sir Henry Payle

minor

Also known as Sir Henry

A baronet who encounters supernatural phenomena.

My Servant

minor

A servant who witnesses ghostly events.

Warder Draycott

minor

Also known as Draycott

A prison warder involved in a supernatural event.

Mrs. Acres

minor

Also known as Acres

A woman involved in domestic supernatural events.

Mrs. Forrest

minor

A character who appears in a story of eerie happenings.

Mrs. Cumberbatch

minor

A woman who appears in a story of supernatural dread.

Mr. Jack

minor

Also known as Jack

A mysterious figure in a supernatural tale.

John Clinton

minor

Also known as John

A character who experiences ghostly visitations.

Mrs. Aldwych

minor

A woman involved in supernatural occurrences.

Sandie Ross

minor

Also known as Sandie

A character who encounters ghostly phenomena.

Everard

minor

A character involved in ghostly events.

Jim Merwick

minor

Also known as Merwick

A character who encounters ghostly phenomena.

Charles Hope

minor

Also known as Charles

A man who experiences supernatural events.

Weston

minor

A character who appears in a ghost story.

Mrs. Canning

minor

A woman who experiences supernatural dread.

Arthur Inglis

minor

Also known as Inglis

A character who encounters ghostly phenomena.

Godfrey Symes

minor

Also known as Symes

A man involved in ghostly occurrences.

Dr. Assheton

minor

Also known as Assheton

A doctor who encounters the supernatural.

Sybil Rorke

minor

Also known as Sybil

A young woman involved in supernatural events.

Blanche Peveril

minor

Also known as Blanche

A female character in a ghostly tale.

Davos

minor

A character who appears in a supernatural story.

Francis Urcombe

minor

Also known as Urcombe

A man involved in paranormal investigations.

Guy Elphinstone

minor

Also known as Guy

A man who experiences supernatural events.

Horace Acres

minor

A character involved in eerie occurrences.

Mrs. Stanley

minor

Also known as Stanley

A woman who appears in a ghost story.

Major Pearsall

minor

Also known as Major

A military man who encounters the supernatural.

Catrine Gordon

minor

Also known as Catrine

A young woman involved in a ghostly tale.

Mr. Dawkins

minor

Also known as Dawkins

A man involved in paranormal occurrences.

Dr. Ross

minor

A doctor who appears in a supernatural context.

A Stranger

minor

An unidentified person who appears in eerie circumstances.

Mabel

minor

A young woman involved in a ghostly tale.

Machaon

minor

A mythological figure referenced in a supernatural story.

Abibel

minor

A character who appears in a ghost story.

The Peverils

minor

A family involved in recurring supernatural events.

Philip

minor

A character who experiences eerie phenomena.

Mrs. Inglis

minor

A woman who appears in a ghost story.

Flo

minor

A young woman involved in supernatural events.

Mrs. Peveril

minor

Also known as Peveril

A member of the Peveril family in a ghostly tale.

Mrs. Carford

minor

A woman who experiences supernatural dread.