James Skip Borlae is perobablay not a name familiar to many of you. I recall under what circumstances I bought The Shrieking Skull and Other Victorian Chritmas Ghost Stories. I bought a year ago, or maybe two. I didn’t get a chance to read any of the stories before Christmas in whatevder year I bought it.

So I decided to read on this year for Twelve Days of Christmas Ghost Stories. I read two stories that didn’t have a ghost in them, although they were set on Christams Eve and were horror stories without supernatural elements.

Then I read “The Specter Horseman”. (I haven’t read the title story yet. Maybe I should  ahve started with that one.)

I enjoyed the story, but I was disappointed int he ghost element.

Set during the English Civil War, it’st he story of an elderly minor nobler who is a Royalist. He falls for a beautiful young girl and convinces her poverty-stricken father to let him marry her. Or as the story puts it, sell her to him.

She can’t stand him.

He’s away at the wars for months and returns just before Christmas, at which time he invites all the important nobles to his manor for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, he sees his wife embracing a young cavalier. Jealous, he calls out  trhe cavalier at dinner after the women have left, tricking him into recealing himself to be a roundhead. The nobleman kills him and goes to his wife’s chamber to tell her that her lover is dead by his hand.

He finds her asleeep and muttering the name of the cavalier. In a fit of rage which he instantly regrets, ke kills his wife. Upon returning to the banquet hall, one of the visiting nobles tells him the cavalier is the only brother of his wife, who snuck in with the nobles to see her.

The naoblman rides away to find a witch and ask her to make him forget the events of the past year. She can’t do that, but she summons the devil. Instead of granting his wish, the devil curses him to ride to his castle every Christmas Eve and see what he has done.

Like I said, not much of a ghost story. It was an effective historical horror story, though. Borlase was defnitely a Victorina in his writing style. The writing is dense and not light bedtime reading. Still, his writing is good and I’ve read a lot worse in school.