Brief Update: I’m still going to review 12 ghost stories, but I don’t think I’ll finish within the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas. I may include storeis that aren’t Christmas specific. I’m not sure if the tradition if telling ghost stories at Christmas means that the stories themselves must be set at christmas.

Today’s story is by one of the master of the traditional ghost story, H. Russell Wakefield.

I read it in Sunless Solstice, another of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series.

I can’t recommend this series enough. I’ve got a handful of volumes in print and more in electronic format. They’re chock full of all kinds of good stuff.

But I digress.

Wakefield’s stories, at least the ones I’ve read, don’t deal with freindly ghosts. Wakefield’s ghost are not nice, and you hope you never meet one. In the case of “The Third Shadow”, we have a vengeful ghost.

The story concerns two men who are mountaineers. They have the wealth and position in British society to indulge their hobby of moutnain climbing. One of the men, not the narrator, marreis a woman who is not a good match. She is bossy and domineering. Her husaband traiest o get her interested in his hobby.

She’s not cut out for it.

They are alone on a slope with she falls to death in a crevasse when a snow bridge she is on collapses. The rope holding her, worn and a bit frayed, snaps. Her body is never recovered.

Was it an accident? Did the husband set her up to fall? He claims it was an accident.

H. Russell Wakefield

As a result he loses his nerve. His firend, the narrator, tries to get him back into the sport. They ascend what should be an easy slope. The friedn takes the lead. He feels strange tugs on the rope. When he looks back he sees three shadows, not two.

The tale is formatted as one man telling a story about his past to another man. A common trope among British writers of the early Twenteith century was to tell a story in first-person where that person sets up a tale told by a second person, who turns out to be the main narrator.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this would be a distraction from the main story. Wakefield uses the framing device masterfully. The conversation between the narrator and the person he is telling the story to add to the tale, not distract from it.

Wakefield was one of the masters of the traditional ghost story. In my opinion he deserves the same respect as M. R. James, E. F. Benson. and A. M. burrage.