Can Such Things Be? · Chapter
The Other Lodgers explained
Colonel Levering recounts a harrowing night at the Breathitt House in Atlanta, a dilapidated former hotel and hospital.
What happens
Colonel Levering recounts a harrowing night at the Breathitt House in Atlanta, a dilapidated former hotel and hospital. After falling asleep in a room, he awakens to find it filled with the corpses of former patients. The night-clerk, who appears to be a ghost, and a mysterious caretaker reveal the building's grim history, leaving Levering terrified.
Themes in this chapter
Death and the Supernatural
The chapter centers on the protagonist's encounter with a room full of corpses and a ghostly night-clerk, blending death with supernatural horror.
Isolation and Terror
The protagonist's solitary experience in the dead-room and his inability to move or cry out highlight the terror of isolation.
Characters to notice
- Col. J. C. McArdle
The narrator and protagonist who experiences the supernatural events at the Breathitt House.
Key passages
“This is not a hotel. It used to be; afterward it was a hospital. Now it is unoccupied, awaiting a tenant. The room that you mention was the dead-room—there were always plenty of dead.”
The building was once a hotel, then a hospital, and is now vacant; the room in question was used to store corpses.
The caretaker explains the building's history and the room's purpose.
“The fellow that you call the night-clerk used to be that, but later he booked the patients as they were brought in. I don’t understand his being here. He has been dead a few weeks.”
The man the protagonist thought was the night-clerk had actually worked as a hospital registrar and has been dead for weeks.
The caretaker reveals the night-clerk's true identity as a ghost.