# Outside the Door explained — Ghost Stories

> Chapter companion for Ghost Stories by E. F. Benson.

## What happens

Mrs. Aldwych shares her theory that intense human emotion can impress itself upon inanimate objects, causing haunted phenomena. She illustrates this with her own experience of hearing ghostly footsteps and a groping hand in her house, later confirmed by Mrs. Denison's account of a 1610 murder. The narrator reflects on the nature of fear and the unknown.

## Themes in this chapter

### Fear and Terror

Mrs. Aldwych describes waking in a state of 'shuddering and unaccountable terror' that escalates as she hears ghostly footsteps, illustrating the primal fear of the unknown.

### Supernatural and Occult

The chapter explores the supernatural through the haunting of the house, the ghostly sounds, and Mrs. Aldwych's theory of emotional imprints causing paranormal phenomena.

### Psychology of Dreams and Perception

Mrs. Aldwych discusses how mind affects matter, including the perception of ghostly events by 'sensitives,' and the role of subconscious fear in her experience.

## Character check-ins

### Unknown Narrator

The listener to Mrs. Aldwych's story, who prompts her for a firsthand ghost story and engages with her theory.

### Mrs. Aldwych

The storyteller who recounts her personal haunting experience and her theory of emotional imprints on material objects.

## Key lines

> We are only just beginning to conjecture how inextricable is the interweaving between mind, soul, life, call it what you will—and the purely material part of the created world.

We are only starting to understand how deeply the mind and spirit are connected to the physical world.

_Mrs. Aldwych introduces her theory of mind-matter interaction._

> The atmosphere has somehow been charged with the scene, and the scene in whole or part repeats itself, though under what laws we do not know, just as a phonograph will repeat, when properly handled, what has been said into it.

The environment has been imprinted with the event, and it replays like a recording, though the mechanism is unknown.

_Mrs. Aldwych explains her theory of haunted houses as emotional recordings._

> I heard a sound just outside my room on the stairs that lead, as I have said, to the second story, a sound which was perfectly commonplace and unmistakable. Feet feeling their way in the dark were coming downstairs to my passage.

I heard footsteps and a hand groping along the banisters, coming down the stairs toward my room.

_Mrs. Aldwych describes the ghostly sounds she experienced._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/ghost_stories_se/chapters/outside-the-door
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/ghost_stories_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/ghost_stories_se/chapters