Murphy keeps popping in to say hello, which is throwing me behind on this project. I said it would run through the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas, so at least that is going for me.

Tonight’s story is “:Smee: by A. M. Burrage (1889-1956).

Burrage was a prolific writer during the first haof of the Twentieth Century. His novels tended to be blends of romance and adventure. I’ve never read one, but I would like to give it a try. The other main area of his output was ghost stories. Ash-Tree Press published four volumes of them. My understanding is that they are quite pricey on the secondary market.

“Smee” is one of Burrage’s best known stories. The ISFDB lists somewhere around 40 different publications. I quite couting when I hit 30 since there were two different listings for the same story.

I originally read the story forty years ago in a thick anthology entitled Ghosts edited by Marvin Kaye. I reread it for the first time sincde then in Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings edited by Tanya Kirk. It’s part of the British Library series. The story was scarier than I remembered it being.

The story follows that long-running tradition of setting a story inside a story. In this case, the framing sequence is a group of people spending Christmas together at a British manor house. On Christmas Eve, they decide to play hide-and-seek. One guest says he’ll wait in the parlo while they play, but he won’t be playing.

When asked his reason to not participate, he tells the folloowing story.

A number of unspecified years before, he had been a guest at a different manor house at Christmas. They group decides to play a variation of hide-and-seek called Smee, which is short of “it’s me”. Everyone draws a piece of paper. The one who has the word “Smee” written on their paper is “it”.

The lights are turned out. Smee goes and hides. After a few minutes, the rest of the group goes hunting. the lights are never turned on so the identity fo Smee is not revealed.

When two people encounter each other, one with say “Smee”. If the other person responds in like manner, they continue searching. If the second person doesn’t respond, then that person is Smee. The person who found them joins them. When the next person finds them, they both stay silent. This process continues until everyone is sitting silent. The last person to join the group becomes Smee in the next round.

Only in this particular manor house ten years earlier, when it was owned by a different family, a young woman opened a door in the dark during a game of Smee. She thought she was opening a bedroom door. Instead it was a steep servant’s stair. She fell to the bottom and broke her neck on the way down.

Strange things happen during the game. There are twelve people playing, but at the end of the first round there are thriteen people visible int he light of one person’s flashlight.

There are other strange events. Each a little creepier  than the last.

“Smee” is a chilling story. If Burrage had only written this one ghost story, his reputation would be safe. He wrote a number of  others and is regarded as one of the preeminent ghost story writers of his generation.