H G Wells

The Red Room H G Wells

The Red Room is a short horror story written by H. G. Wells and published in 1894. It follows a confident young sceptic-the unnamed narrator of the story-as he attempts to spend the night in an infamously haunted room in a castle. Owing to the black and red décor of the room the narrator finds it necessary to light several candles to see his way around, but a draft keeps extinguishing the candles faster than he can keep them lit. Eventually, the candles go out, he loses his sense of direction and trips over the furniture. He freaks out, falls down, and knocks himself out. In the morning, the narrator concludes that the room is haunted by no ghost, but by fear itself. The ambiguity of the narrators ending is the story's enduring legacy-is the room haunted by a supernatural force of pure fear, or did the narrator simply spook himself in the dark?