Other editions of book The Red Room

Edition perfect as a gift. "There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were candles in china candle-sticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was laid - an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper - and I lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning well I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table to form a kind of barricade before me. On this lay my revolver, ready to hand."

“I can assure you,” said I, “that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.” And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.“It is your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance.“Eight-and-twenty years,” said I, “I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.”The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open. “Ay,” she broke in; “and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There’s a many things to see, when one’s still but eight-and-twenty.” She swayed her head slowly from side to side. “A many things to see and sorrow for.”I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the queer old mirror at the end of the room. “Well,” I said, “if I see anything to-night, I shall be so much the wiser. For I come to the business with an open mind.”“It’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm once more.

The Red Room” is an 1894 short story that some consider to be Wells’ best work. In it, Wells takes break from his characteristic sci-fi plot and delves into the Gothic horror story – a genre that was very popular in his day. If you are looking for a scary story to tell in the dark, with all the Gothic bells and whistles, "The Red Room" is for you. However, "The Red Room" is much less about ghosts than about human psychology. As the story’

Ever since a harmless prank incurred terrible consequences, the Red Room in Lorraine Castle has been considered haunted by supernatural forces. And, tonight, the most dangerous night of all, a man will challenge the local superstitions to prove that this room, where others have died, holds no ghost. Could it be all a myth surrounded by unrelated coincidences? Or is this place, in fact, under the control of a force more powerful and dangerous than anything a human can stand?

An unnamed protagonist chooses to spend the night in an allegedly haunted room in Lorraine Castle. He intends to disprove the legends surrounding it. Despite vague warnings from the three infirm custodians who reside in the castle, the narrator ascends to "the Red Room" to begin his night's vigil.Initially confident, the narrator becomes increasingly uneasy in the room. He attempts to conquer his fear by lighting candles, but keeping the candles lit in the draughty room becomes an ongoing battle. Each time a candle is snuffed out, the narrator's fear increases. He begins to imagine that the drafts are guided by a malevolent intelligence. As the narrator's fear reaches a crescendo, he stumbles onto a large piece of furniture (possibly the bed), and ricochets off the walls, in a blind panic; hitting his head and eventually falling unconscious. The caretakers, who find him in the morning, feel vindicated when the narrator agrees that the room is haunted. They are eager to hear a description of the phantom, but he surprises them by explaining that there is no ghost residing in the room. The room is haunted by fear itself.

The Red Room is a short story by H. G. Wells. The story deals with the internal human conflict between rationality and the irrational fear of the unknown. Herbert George "H. G." Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction", as are Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of "Journalist." Most of his later novels were not science fiction. Some described lower-middle class life (Kipps; The History of Mr Polly), leading him to be touted as a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. Wells's first non-fiction bestseller was Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought (1901). When originally serialised in a magazine it was subtitled, "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicitly futuristic work. It offered the immediate political message of the privileged sections of society continuing to bar capable men from other classes from advancement until war would force a need to employ those most able, rather than the traditional upper classes, as leaders. Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea").