Ghost Stories · Chapter
Caterpillars explained
The narrator recounts his stay at the Villa Cascana in Italy, where he immediately senses something wrong.
What happens
The narrator recounts his stay at the Villa Cascana in Italy, where he immediately senses something wrong. He experiences a terrifying vision of caterpillars covering a bed in an unoccupied room, which later manifests as a real caterpillar that he throws into a fountain but survives. The caterpillar crawls toward him and is crushed by Arthur Inglis. That night, the narrator dreams of a swarm of caterpillars invading the landing and entering Inglis's room. Months later, he learns that Inglis died of cancer, which had originated in the same unoccupied room where a previous guest had died of the disease.
Themes in this chapter
Fear and Terror
The narrator experiences intense horror from the caterpillar visions and the sense of impending danger.
Supernatural and Occult
The narrator's premonitions and the dream-like manifestations of caterpillars are linked to occult phenomena.
Death and the Afterlife
The story culminates in Arthur Inglis's death from cancer, which is connected to the supernatural events at the villa.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The narrator stays at Villa Cascana, experiences premonitions, dreams of caterpillars, and later learns of Inglis's death.
- Arthur Inglis
An artist staying at the villa; he crushes the caterpillar and later dies of cancer.
- Jim Stanley
The host of the villa, whose wife later informs the narrator of Inglis's death.
- Mrs. Stanley
Jim Stanley's wife; she tells the narrator about Inglis's cancer and the previous cancer case in the unoccupied room.
Key passages
“I took the box and threw it, caterpillar and all, out of the window. There was a gravel path just outside, and beyond it, a fountain playing into a basin. The box fell on to the middle of this.”
The narrator tossed the box containing the caterpillar out the window, landing it in the fountain.
The narrator attempts to dispose of the caterpillar but it survives.
“And crawling up its leg was the caterpillar. Strange and scarcely credible as it seemed, it must have survived the falling-to-bits of its prison, and made its way to shore, and there it was, out of arm’s reach, weaving and waving this way and that as it evolved its cocoon.”
The caterpillar had survived the disintegration of the box and was now climbing the statue in the fountain.
The caterpillar's resilience adds to the horror.
“The whole of the landing of the first floor below was invisible under the swarm of caterpillars that crawled there.”
The landing was completely covered by a mass of crawling caterpillars.
The narrator's nightmare vision of a caterpillar swarm.
“He has got cancer. They don’t even advise an operation, for there is no hope of a cure: he is riddled with it, the doctors say.”
Arthur Inglis is terminally ill with cancer and cannot be treated.
The revelation of Inglis's fatal illness.