The Lamp: A Short Story

by Agatha Christie

Previously published in the print anthology The Golden Ball and Other Stories.

Thirty years ago, a house was inhabited by a man and his young son. One day the man traveled to London, was recognized as a criminal, and shot himself. What ever happened to the boy?

Genres: Mystery, Agatha Christie, Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Audiobook, Crime

30 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.

Associated Names:
Agata Christie
Agata Kristi
Агата Кристи (Russian)
Агата Крісті (Ukrainian)
Αγκάθα Κρίστι (Greek)
アガサ クリスティ (Japanese)
阿嘉莎·克莉絲蒂 (Chinese)

Reviews

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short story about a woman (Mrs. Raddish) who moves into a house that is said to be haunted, with her little boy Geoffrey, and her elderly father. Her son sometimes sees a sad little boy in the house, her father hears a child crying in the night. Mrs. Raddish hears and sees nothing of this. It is said a little boy died in this house…

Enjoyable, haunting short read.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A widow moves into a haunted house with her father and young son.
The price is right and Mrs. Lancaster doesn't believe in ghosts, so why not?



Her father isn't so sure.
The story is that a little boy died of starvation waiting for his father who was arrested when he went to town to come back for him. And when he hears a child's footsteps following his grandson, he knows the stories are true.
This one is kind of a bummer because the grandson dies. But in the end, it is insinuated that he helps the little ghost boy's spirit cross over. So, also kind of not a bummer?



It goes well with the rest of Agatha's supernatural stories if you're reading a collection, but I wouldn't go out of my way for this one otherwise.


Originally published in 1933 in The Hound of Death and Other Stories.
Read as part of the short story collections The Last Seance: Tales of the Supernatural & The Golden Ball and Other Stories.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A widow is looking for a home to rent. When she is offered a very nice spacious home at a low rent, she immediately inquires what is wrong with the house. Apparently, it comes with a ghost....

I absolutely LOVE haunted house tales, so this story is my favorite in these collections of shorts tales so far. It's subtle....and creepy!

As far as I can tell, this story was first published in The Hound of Death, a collection of short stories (1933). It was not published in the United States until 1971 when it was included in The Golden Ball and Other Stories.

I could not find an audio book version of The Hound of Death story collection, so I listened to this story as part of an audio book of The Golden Ball and Other Stories. I was delighted to discover that the book I checked out from the library (HarperAudio) actually used the narration from an earlier audio book of The Hound of Death read by Christopher Lee. Christopher Lee is a magician at reading classic ghost stories (there is a collection of MR James tales read by him on YouTube -- amazing!).

This story was adapted into a radio play by BBC4 in 1984. It took me awhile to dredge this radio adaptation up online. Most sites had it listed (even BBC 4's site), but with no audio available. I finally found it! Internet Archive has it (of course), along with several other episodes of Haunted from BBC4. Just search the story/author on Internet Archive under audio, you will find it. The Lamp is episode 15 from July 7, 1984. The radio adaptation is full-cast with sound effects. The story is padded a bit for effect and has a few changes, but sticks to the story line pretty well. Very well done! It was totally worth the time I spent searching for it online!

I am surprised this story was never adapted for television. One of those horror anthology shows would have been perfect -- Suspense, Night Gallery, Twilight Zone, or even Amazing Stories. Fabulous ghost story! I wish BBC or even PBS would do another Agatha Christie Hour type show and do a lot of these short stories that were never adapted for television before.

I am SO glad that I finally am reading everything Christie wrote....I have wanted to ever since I was 9 years old and read my first Hercule Poirot novel. But some of the books were hard to find all those years ago and life got in the way.....now I have some time (kids raised!) and the internet to back me up! Growing up in a small town with no book shop and only a very small public library made it so hard to read anything by Christie that wasn't a main stream best seller. Many of these short stories and lesser known novels are brand new to me -- I LOVE THIS! :) This bibliophile is in heaven!

I do have a much better understanding of why it was so difficult for me as a girl to find some of Christie's works. Some were published under one title in the UK and another in the US. Others were only published in the UK, or only in the US. And these short stories.....right now to read all of the stories from The Hound of Death and The Listerdale Mystery I am jumping between 3 audio books to get them all, as they were never published in the US. Thank God for the internet! It is misused a lot -- but there is so much GOOD to be found on the 'net as well! Digital library books are the BOMB! Back in the 80s when I was trying my best to find all of Christie's books, I was just unable to do so. I have about 50 old paperbacks from my efforts....but I now know I never would have been able to find them all! I can now though -- all's well that ends well!

I'm reviewing each short story separately and as a part of the collections they appeared in later because most were published in magazines long before being gathered into books. And I'm researching little bits and pieces as I go to find out which were adapted for radio or television, and anything else that strikes my fancy along the way. Fun times!

On to the next! :)

[Steven Walle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good short story by Agatha Christie.
It is about a small family which consists of a Grandfather, a Moher and a small sickly son, who move into a haunted house.

I recommend it to all.

Enjoy and Be Blessed
Steven

[عزام الشثري · Rating 3 out of 5]

الأم لانكستر
التي لا تؤمن بالجنّ

تنقل عائلتها إلى منزل مهجور
متجاهلةً قصّة طفل مات فيه من الجوع

لكن ابنها الصغير مفتون بصديقه الجديد الحزين
الذي يعيش في العلية بمفرده

أمّا والدها العجوز فيسمع بكاء طفل في الليل

وهي لا تسمع أو ترى شيئًا

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qxztt

Description: A sickly young boy settles into a new address, but his ghostly playmate has other ideas. Stars Judy Cornwell and Timothy Bateson.

"How many servants do you have?"
"One. Only the one."

[Abeer Albossany · Rating 3 out of 5]

A horror story. It was seriously freaking scary although perhaps my word shouldn't be taken as an evaluation for horror since anything can scary. However, the story was also left open which can be interpret as that the kid was dead or cured. Either way, I really did enjoyed this one.

[Ami · Rating 3 out of 5]

~3.5stars

[Susy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Denisse · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Quick and interesting. Christie never fails, she is quite talented, the best at turning a simple story and idea into something truly enchanting. Good short story if you're in the mood for a creepy read. The ending, damn I loved it!

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4:
A sickly young boy settles into a new address, but his ghostly playmate has other ideas. Stars Judy Cornwell and Timothy Bateson.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qxztt

[Jack Heath · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars. Those stars are for the wonderful writing. This truly is a supernatural story about a haunted house. Many of the great Christie's non-mysteries have supernatural leanings, but some just flit around the edge of the pond. Here she dives right in. Not as much to my liking. I like them better when the reader is left to make his or her own judgment - what just happened? Here we find that money is tight for Mrs. Lancaster and her family of three, herself, her father Mr. Winburn, and her precocious son Geoffrey. At possibly 5 years old, he's an active one! She finds an older house for rent at a very affordable rate; the monthly is so low that she asks why and finds that it could be haunted. Apparently a Mr. Williams and his son who was about the same age as Geoffrey may have lived there 30 years ago. He was arrested and the child starved to death waiting for his father to come home. Again the father plays an important role; this time it's Winburn; he thinks he hears a second set of footsteps when Geoffrey is moving around. It soon becomes serious and his grandson gets extremely ill. Did I say, not to my liking? (De2025)

[Watchdogg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Lamp: A Short Story by Agatha Christie
The story was first published in book form in the Oldhams Press edition of The Hound of Death in 1933, available only by collecting coupons from a magazine entitled The Passing Show.

Thumbnail -
“The Lamp” is a chilling short story by Agatha Christie, first published in 1933. It revolves around Mrs. Lancaster, who moves her family into a house that is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a child waiting for his father. Despite her disbelief in ghosts, strange occurrences begin to unfold, particularly affecting her young son who becomes fascinated by his new, unseen friend in the attic.

A child ghost haunts the house where his father left him and never returned. The title is taken from a poem, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and is quoted by the grandfather in the story:
"What lamp has Destiny to guide
Her little children stumbling in the Dark?
A Blind Understanding, Heaven replied.”

My thoughts -
Another of AC's supernatural stories. Quite well done and stands up well against other vintage ghost stories. A little tame to be classified as horror. Thoroughly enjoyed it, so 4 stars 'from the other side'.

[Forked Radish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Raddish!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Audiobook
About 20 minutes

[Kuba Łagowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fajne, krótkie, paranormalne opowiadanie. Słuchowisko też dobrze przygotowane

[Joop · Rating 3 out of 5]

En weer een mooie korte AC. Dit keer met een droevig einde of toch niet.

[Serena · Rating 2 out of 5]

My Rating System:
* couldn't finish, ** wouldn't recommend, *** would recommend, **** would read again, ***** have read again.

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another supernatural tale from Ms. Christie, which are not my favorite. A woman moves into a house with shocking low rent because it is supposedly haunted by a young boy. Her son hears and sees him in the attic and wants to play with him. Later than night, he has a terrible fever and dies and the woman hears the sound of 2 sets of footsteps haunting the house.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very sweet and sad story. It is a story of a family who buy a potentially haunted house, and, a young child looking for a friend or companion. I liked the fact that Agatha Christie pricked up on the aspect that there are certain things in life children are aware of that adults are not.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This, in my opinion, is one of the inferior efforts of the Dame. Even amongst her supernatural works, this one pales in comparison to 'The Hound' or 'The House of Dreams'.
But of course, it’s eminently readable.

[itchy · Rating 3 out of 5]

eponymous sentence:
p10: "...Sometimes, when we are quite old, a faint gleam comes back to us, but the Lamp burns brightest in childhood...."

Little boys and ghosts...

Read as part of the collection The Hound of Death and Other Stories.

[Dimitra Muni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scary !! awesome.

[Barbara Nutting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read 2020

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the usual type of mystery from agatha christie.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Agatha Christie writes a really good ghost story as well as crime.

Great little read.

[Charly Troff (JustaReadingMama) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite. I personally prefer her mysteries to her supernatural.

[MorganJac · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not one of her best, but I still enjoyed it

[Delanie Dooms · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'What lamp has Destiny to guide
Her little Children in the dark?'
'A blind understanding,' Heaven replied."

This is a greatly little horror story. It follows, from what I can tell, the Victorian tradition of the kindly ghost. Charlotte Riddell is one example of a ghost story writer in the sub-genre (born in 1832, died in 1906). In our modern day, it reminds me strikingly of The Orphanage. If you've seen the movie, you know why.

In the spoiler below I detail a somewhat optimistic approach to the themes of this story. It would be remiss of me to say, however, that the story is not creepy: it is. I especially find the use of setting to be quite scrumptious. The house, the rain, and Christie's descriptions of both, are all top-notch; she is rarely not up to the occasion, and she strikes home again with this one. Anyway, here it is:



The ending emotional beats of both The Orphanage and this short story are similar. We learn that Geoffrey, far from being in good health, is constitutionally sick. When he becomes ill in the story, we learn that if it hadn't been this illness, it would be another that would eventually end up carrying him off before adulthood. This is a lucky situation, however, because the ghost child is in need of an escort to the afterlife (as evidenced by both the dream and the words Geoff says in delirium). Whether or not Geoffrey would wish to die if not for the illness is not discussed; truthfully, his thoughts are not really discussed at all, aside from his wish to help the ghost. He wishing to die might, then, be assumed; or it could be assumed that he wished to live, and only upon realizing that his illness was not getting better did he finally accept the conclusion that his "blind understanding" might have provided. I say that final bit because he could've figured out that death was the only way to achieve his altruistic goal, but far from wishing to not help the ghost, he instead laments that he cannot all the way up unto death. There are darker tracts of land to dig up here, but I think my interpretation is a valid one; I shall leave that discussion to someone else. The Orphanage ends on a happy note, wherein the female protagonist will take care of the orphans, I suppose, forever; in contrast, Geoff goes to child-heaven. I fear as though the latter is a far better deal. To sum up, the themes of the story portray death as being possibly good - as all afterlife myths must admit, if not in the process of dying, at least in the conclusion, barring the notion of Hells and Purgatories - although in an idiosyncratic, contextual way. It pulls the heartstrings while also itself acknowledging it's creepiness, with Mrs. Lancaster being horrified by the double footsteps.
Another theme within this story is that of open-mindedness. Mrs. Lancaster does not have an open mind to the supernatural. She is barred access to such phenomena until she realizes this, and even then, she can only experience the ghosts fully by the very end, when her child dies. This theme is fantasy, of course, but it does have a hint of truth: don't so readily think of something as foolish before investigating.

In finale, I would like to point anyone who wishes to read this story not to a book, but to an audiobook. Christopher Lee read the story fantastically, his voices and annunciation were perfect for the occasion. Here is a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdT7x...

[Drew Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a Christie’s ghost story, a genre she would regularly return to when writing short stories (and even a radio play). This premise is simple, Mrs Lancaster, a widow, along with her aged father and young son, move into a house on a Cathedral terrace. The house has stood empty for years, no one will rent it because it is said to be haunted. This doesn’t deter Mrs Lancaster with the house being so affordable.

How Christie works this story is fascinating. This isn’t a ghost story of banging doors and groaning in the night. Instead, she looks at how the house affects its new residents, especially the old man and the young boy. The ending, the exotism of the ghost, is very dark and unexpected. This isn’t Cosy Christie, beloved by many.

Unfortunately, Christie’s poor descriptive style lets down this story. She could have used so much more of the physical environment of the house, allowing the old house to become almost a fourth character here, instead of merely being a briefly described setting.