Essay Questions

What is the significance of “The Dust-Cloud” in literary history?

“The Dust-Cloud” is a story about driving an automobile who accidentally runs over a child before crashing into a gate. About a month later, the stories begin circulating. They all start with an old man who claims to have seen a car speeding into the exact location of the accident, but without making any sound. Next up to the plate was the exact opposite: the sound of a car speeding past him, but no car to see and then nothing but a heart-rending scream. Originally published in 1906, “The Dust-Cloud” is certainly one of the first stories about a haunted car crash site if it is not necessarily the very first in what would become a particularly ripe sub-genre within the horror field.

“The Bus-Conductor” remains the most influential story Benson ever published. Just how pervasive is the story in modern pop culture?

“The Bus-Conductor” features a very simple and accessible plot. A man has a disturbing vision of a bus conductor inexplicably driving a hearse whose one single statement is later repeated for real by an actual bus conductor. So shaken is the man by this strange coincidence that he turns away in fear, thus avoiding being killed when the bus is immediately involved in a fatal accident. The story in its original form was adapted as one of the stories that make up the classic British horror anthology film Dead of Night. Seventeen years later, the story was updated and refashioned into a classic episode of the original Twilight Zone series. In the film, the bus conductor says “Just room for one inside sir” but it is the Twilight Zone version that is most often quoted: “Room for one more, honey.” Oingo Boingo’s song “Dead Man’s Party” was inspired by Benson’s story and features yet another iteration of the sinister quote: “there's room for maybe just one more.” So popular was the song that an urban legend arose suggesting that a true story may have been the inspiration and so pervasive was this belief that it inspired its own page debunking the legend on Snopes.

What technology only just relatively recent adopted by the masses does Benson exploit to make it believable that a convict proven to have died might have survived his hanging in spectral form?

“The Confession of Charles Linkworth” is a story about a convict who appears to have survived a hanging despite a post-mortem confirmation. There is no doubt at all that the convict known as Charles Linkworth was the man who was hanged in the gallows. The broken neck on the corpse is proof enough that he did not survive the hanging. So how is it, then, that Dr. Teesdale is convinced beyond any doubt that he has spoken with Charles Linkworth after the hanging was carried out? Just as he was among the first writers to recognize the potential for automobiles in ghost stories, Benson recognized that one of the ways to get around the obvious limitations on a story about a clearly dead man making contact with the living from beyond the grave was to exploit science that still mystified many people as verging almost on magic: communicating with people over vast differences without even raising one’s voice while speaking on the telephone. Linkworth does finally confess his crimes, but like anyone who is separated from his doctor, his soul must use the telephone to establish communication.