L. P. Hartley was a British writer of ghost stories as well as mainstream novels during the middle of the previous century. “Someone in the Lift” isn’t jsut a ghost story, it’s a very effective horror story.

It takes place at Christmas in a hotel. The Maldons, father, mother, and son Peter are staying at the hotel due to an unexplaiined domestic crisis. Young Peter sees someone in the lift when it comes down to the ground floor. The lift in this case is an old-fashioned elevator with two glass paneled doors, it should be noted.

The strange thing about this figure is that only Peter can see it, and only when he is with his morther, never when he is with his father.

A few days before Christmas, the lift breaks.

This presents a problem. Peter’s father was planning on coming down in the lift dressed as Father Christmas. The workmen who are trying to repair the lift tell Peter it will be repaired by Christmas Eve.,

It supposedly has been reparired. Byut has it?

We find out who the figure in the lift is and why only Peter can see him.

I’m not going to give away the ending. It’s rather grisley.

Version 1.0.0

“Someone in the Lift” is one of Hartley’s better known ghost stories. It is curenlty available in multiple volumes. I read it in Ghosts of Christmas Past a few days ago, but it is also available in Chill Tidings, which is Volume 19 of the British Library’s series Tales of the Weird, an excellent series of t hemed anthologies of weird stories.

I’ll be featuring more stories from this anthology during this series. It has an impressive table of contents.

If you aren’t familiar with the British Library Tales of the Weird series, check it out. There are a number of anthologies, usually themed, with some great reading.