"The Shadow in the Corner" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The first time I discovered this story I was about fifteen years’ old and I’m not going to lie, I had never even heard of Mary Elizabeth Braddon before. I had no idea when she lived, but I guessed by her name she might either be old by now or she was living in the 19th century and therefore, not alive anymore. I didn’t really bother to do any research on the author from when I discovered the story because of the way in which I discovered the story. It was a very rainy day at school and so, I took a usual trip to the library and there were other people there. Someone had read the Braddon story and placed it back on the shelf in the entirely incorrect place - near nonfiction. I picked it up to move it only to notice that the cover was a bit odd. I flipped the book, which was very thin, around to notice the blurb. I read the blurb only to scrunch up my face and wonder what it was all about. I took the book out later that day, read the whole thing during lunch and returned it to the library before the day was out. It was a short read. That’s why it was pretty much impossible for me to research the author before reading the text - it was during lunch and we were stuck indoors because of the rain. After I read it, however, I really did forget about it for some time until I encountered it in an anthology that same summer. That’s when I started to pay more attention to what the story was actually about.

It was about a woman who goes to work at a house that requires a maid, the backstory of the ‘shadow’ concerns a man who had hanged himself in the attic room some time before and his ghost haunts the attic by hanging by the neck and swinging from the ceiling. The woman must sleep in the attic room since there is no space anywhere else in the house and so, she does and complains of a ghost. The owner of the house states how stupid that idea is and stays in there himself. He lies and says there was nothing there when there clearly was. They swap back their rooms and she stays in there for what may be the most confusing night ever to be written into a short ghost story about suicide and murder. The ending, I thought, was extraordinary. It was somewhat like a lot of endings I’ve seen but there was a dark denial about it that haunts you long after the story is over. Braddon’s writing is immaculate at leaving you with this almost turbulent and violent atmosphere even when you’ve finished reading the story.

I re-read the story many times over the years and because it is short, I could get away with reading it in the space of about half an hour or so. It seems to me like this story plays out very much like a film and so, when I was sixteen I tried to write a film script for it. I had storyboarded the entire thing and I wanted to stay as true to the story and source material as possible. There were a few minor embellishments including how the owner ended up in that house in the first place and the aftermath is a little bit longer than what was initially explained in the story. But hardly any of it, if any of it, was imagined. I wanted to stick to the source material in a way that made you feel like you were a part of the atmosphere.

I did write it. But unfortunately the script came to absolutely no avail whatsoever and I ended up trashing the project a little before I had finished proof-reading it. Talking myself out of my own writing is one of my best traits and yes, I might regret not actually having it to hand anymore but the process was a lot of fun whilst it lasted. It probably wouldn’t have been that good anyway. But at least we still have the story.