The Screaming Skull keeps cutting in

Captain Braddock has a fire, a bottle and a version of events. His friend can put another stick on the fire, have a little more to drink and listen to the tide. When something screams, the host has an explanation ready. He dismisses the danger as a noise. F. Marion Crawford builds the evening around that easy passage from looking after a guest to deciding how the guest should hear.

Most of The Screaming Skull arrives in Braddock's half of a conversation. His old shipmate's questions surface in the captain's replies. When the guest suggests disposing of the skull and calls it a name, Braddock asks him to stop. He has waved away the scream as harmless and now worries that a word might hurt the skull's feelings. The freedom to change the terms stays with the man pouring the drinks.

Evidence with a house rule

Braddock's trouble begins with an earlier dinner. Luke Pratt insults his wife's cooking, and Braddock answers with ugly anecdotes about ingenious killings. He admits that the doctor's expertise made him try harder to impress. After Mrs. Pratt dies suddenly, he fears that Luke borrowed an idea. It matters that he supplied the story to win a little attention at the table. He has to imagine someone taking him seriously.

A tinned ladle in a bedroom cupboard has lead stuck to it. Braddock can imagine ordinary reasons for it, such as casting a fishing weight. He throws the ladle into the sea anyway. He wants to spare his dead cousin's reputation and keep a maid from connecting the object to the dinner conversation. Once he disposes of it, his listener can consider the evidence only in the form Braddock chooses to give it.

Crawford gives him a real skill to draw on. Braddock uses a chronometer to time a recurring bedroom noise to seventeen minutes past three. He compares it to the rattle of a loose pencil in a ship's drawer, the sort of small, out-of-place sound that wakes a sailor accustomed to heavy weather. He also admits that he might have felt the disturbance so vividly that he heard it. He can be exact about the time and still be guessing what happened.

Read both labels

His most revealing attempt to settle a meaning takes the form of a label. The old hatbox still bears the milliner's label addressed to Mrs. Pratt. Braddock writes his own line beside it, identifying the skull as the late doctor's property. The address records an ordinary delivery. The new label makes a claim about who owned the skull, a different question from whose skull it is. An illustrator could put most of the conflict on that one cardboard lid.

The talk takes its time. Braddock stops for an old shipmate's name or a detail about the gardener, then returns to the skull. That rhythm makes the visit feel lived in, although readers wanting a quick apparition may find the digressions tiring. Mrs. Pratt remains at a distance too. The captain remembers her chair and a particular rise in her scream. He has room to imagine the circumstances of her death in much greater detail than he gives to her life.

Our review of The Upper Berth follows a passenger trying to get practical control of a frightening cabin. The Tell-Tale Heart offers a different speaker whose precision asks more of a listener than it can deliver. Braddock has personal stakes in keeping hold of his account. His cousin's reputation, the house he inherited and his own guilt all sit close to the fire. Every interruption gives him another chance to explain, which makes the quiet moments uneasy too.

Questions from the crypt

Sources & further reading

• F. Marion Crawford, The Screaming Skull in Wandering Ghosts, March 1911 Macmillan edition, complete English text
• Project Gutenberg catalog for Wandering Ghosts, contents and public domain status

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