The Portal - The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

Producenter: Tove Jonstoij och Keith Foster

IBIGE:
The Portal – The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

JULIA:
Oscar Wild was a world famous Irish writer and play writer. The Canterville
Ghost is one of his most well-known novels. It’s a story about a ghost, but it’s
not really scary. Horror can actually be quite fun, when you play with all its
ingredients: like rattling chains, squeaking doors, mysterious steps, and all that
stuff.

IBIGE:
But seriously, what frightens you the most? Our reporter Ebba went to town to
ask people.

“-It’s to be like under water, you can’t come up, but you can see, but you can’t
come up, and you drown. It’s horrible, I think.
- I don’t really know, but I’m really afraid of the darkness.
- I think it’s to be stuck, like, to get trapped.

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- What frightens me the most? Wasps, I hate wasps. Wasps terrify me. Even if
I’m just in a room with one wasp fly, I have to get out of the room. Spiders, I
don’t care about, mice, snakes, but wasps, they’re horrible.
- If you were locked in a cupboard when it’s dark, with lots of rats running
around, I think that would be pretty frightening.
- I hate cockroaches. They are terrible, they’re scary.
- What frightens you the most?
- Other people’s fears: homophobia; people that are afraid of lesbians or gays;
fears of immigrants and refugees; people’s fears of women if they are men.
Fears make people unhappy, hysterical, intolerant, vicious!”

IBIGE:
What would you do if you bought a castle that happened to be haunted by an
old ghost? And what would the ghost do if you weren’t even afraid of him?
That is what happens to the poor ghost of Canterville chase.

JULIA:
The American family Otis is just about to buy a lovely castle in the British
countryside. The seller, lord Canterville, tries to warn them.

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WILDE 1:
“Everybody knew there was a ghost in the house. Lord Canterville himself told
Mr Otis all about it. “We don’t like to live in the house ourselves” he said, “too
many of my family have seen the ghost. My wife’s grandmother, the Duchess of
Bolton, is one of them. And one night, while she was dressing for dinner, two
skeleton hands were put on her shoulders. She’s been ill for years, because of
that, and my wife never got any sleep there because of all the noises at night.”

“Lord Canterville”, answered Mr Otis, “I will buy both the house and the ghost. I
come from a modern country, and we can buy nearly everything in America, but
not ghosts, so if there really is a ghost in the house, we can send it home to
America, and people will pay to go and see it.”

“Perhaps there are no ghosts in your country, but our ghost has been in the
house for 300 years, and it always appears before the death of one of the
family”

“Well, so does the family doctor, Lord Canterville. But there are no ghosts, sir, in
any country, not even in famous old British families.”

“Very well”, said Lord Canterville, “if you’re happy to have a ghost in the house,
that’s all right. But please remember that I did tell you about it”

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IBIGE:
We’ll see what happens to the Otis family later on. Now we’re going to
Rödabergskolan in Stockholm. Our reporter Emilia met Johanna, Emily and Sally
who LOVE horror movies. And she also went into the class room of the ninth
graders of class 9 AB, who were improvising. The subject: horror!

“Our scene is a girl in a warehouse chased by a psycho killer:

-Oh, I’m trapped. I don’t know what to do.
- Very well, because I’m going to catch you.”

INTERVIEW:
It seems like it should be against our nature to seek out things that frighten us.
Still many people enjoy watching horror movies. Why? What is the thrill in
being scared?
“-It’s on the whole, like, the atmosphere. You’re really scared, but you know
that it’s not true. So, you’re sort of frightened, but still safe.
- Yeah, it’s just so cosy…
- And like for example, your mum comes home, and you hear the door and
everybody FREAKS OUT!! That’s... it’s just so fun, it’s like a memory that you
get, that you’re just going to keep forever.”

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“Sally is on her way up to Manhattan to see her boyfriend. It’s a two hour drive
and she realises she needs to go to the bathroom. Conveniently, she sees a
house. She stops and knocks on the door:
- Hello, is there anybody in there? I really need to use the bathroom. Please!
No one comes, so she knocks again, harder.
- Hello!
The door slowly opens. She sees a man.
- Oh, my God!
He’s really freaking her out. He takes up a chain saw.
- Please don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!
Sally moves both her legs and on the ground she takes up a golden gun. She
shoots the man. The man dies. And she, before she leaves the house, she uses
the bathroom.”/

The interview continues…

“-Have you ever been scared by a book?
- No
- Yes
- No, I do! I think I can.
- Usually when you’re reading a book you’re only scaring yourself, that’s the
only thing. You’re imagining yourself that you’re in this position. But I think that
it’s really not the same thing as a movie. A movie is like TEN TIMES worse,

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because, you know, you have the atmosphere, and all that, and the music - you
get so much more freaked out.”

”Heh, heh, heh, heh, - I brought you here for one reason, to see you guys suffer
– heh, heh, heh - You must kill Ruth with this gun, I have in my hand, OR, I will
torture you till insanity by telling you what happens in tonight’s episode of
Criminal minds”

Interview continues…
“-Why do you think it’s so close from being scared to becoming funny?
- I don’t know. I actually don’t know why it’s so close to actually being funny. It
just is.
- Yeah.

“-Hey sexy, what are you doing here?

My baby shot me down.
- Is she dead?
- Yes, she’s dead.
That would be the end, thank you!

JULIA:
Death is really a basic horror feature and the history of the old Canterville
chase is full of it. There have been murders and there are blood stains on the
carpet. The Otis family buys the house, despite all warnings. Now they are

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moving in. The housekeeper, Mrs Umney, meets them and shows them
around.

WILDE 2:
“They followed her into the library, a long dark room with high windows at one
end. Here, tea was ready for them, so they took off their coats and sat down.
Suddenly, Mrs. Otis saw a dark red stain on the floor, near the fireplace. “Is that
a stain there on the floor?” she asked. “Yes, Mrs Otis”, said Mrs Umney quietly,
“it’s a blood stain.” “Oh, that’s terrible!” cried Mrs Otis, “I can’t have blood
stains on my floor. It must go!” The old woman smiled and again answered in a
quiet voice. “It is the blood of Lady Eleanore de Canterville”, she said, “her
husband, Sir Simon de Canterville, murdered her in 1575, while she was
standing, just there. The blood stain is famous. Visitors come here specially to
see it. People have tried to clean it, but it will not go away.”

“Of course it will!” cried Washington Otis, Mrs Otis’s elder son. “Pinkerton’s
famous stain cleaner will clean it up in a second.” And before the housekeeper
could stop him, he was cleaning the floor with a small black stick. A minute
later, the blood stain was gone. “There you are”, he said smiling at the others,
“Pinkerton can clean anything”. But at these words the storm outside suddenly
began. A terrible flash of lightning lit up the room and a second later came a
late crash of thunder”

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IBIGE:
Pinkerton’s famous stain cleaner, what an insult! The author of this story, Oscar
Wilde, he wasn’t a horror writer. Actually he was world famous for his very
special sense of humour. Keith knows more:

KEITH FOSTER:
Oscar Wilde wasn’t funny. Oscar Wilde was something else. He was witty.
That’s like being funny and clever at the same time.
Not funny like…hahahahaha!
Witty is more… hmhmhm!
Like this one he said:

“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am

saying.”
Or when he went to America and came to the customs office, and he was asked
if he had anything to declare.
“I have nothing to declare except my genius”
If you’re being witty you can make a point as well as making people laugh.
These are NOT witty people: Ben Stiller, Markoolio, Robert Gustafsson, the
Jackass team. They can be very very funny, but they’re not witty.
One place people are often witty is on their gravestones, because they’ve had a
lot of time to plan what they are going to say there. The Irish comedian Spike
Milligan had written on his gravestone..

“I told you I was ill.”

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How about this one:
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.

Yes, you can plan what’s on your gravestone all your life, but the hard thing is
being witty on the spur of the moment. At the right time, with no chance to
prepare, like:
at a party, if someone complains about your hair, or something.

Some people have the gift of the witty or quickly like that. One of them was the
British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill. At a party a woman criticised him
for being drunk. He reacted, just like that, by saying. “I may be drunk, but you
are ugly. And in the morning I’ll be sober.”

You know, witty can be a little nasty too.

But we still laugh!

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JULIA:
Well, is there a ghost or not in Canterville chase? One late night Mr. Otis is
woken by strange sounds.

WILDE 3:
“He got out of bed and listened carefully. A strange noise went on and he also
heard the sound of footsteps. Then he put on his shoes, took a small bottle from
his cupboard and opened the door of his room. There, in the moonlight, was an
old man with eyes as red as fire. His grey hair was long and dirty, his clothes
were old and full of holes, and there were heavy metal chains around his arms
and legs. “My dear man”, said Mr. Otis, “you really must put some oil on those
noisy chains. I’ve brought you a bottle of Tammany Sun Oil, which is very good.
Everybody in America uses it. I’ll leave it here for you and I’ll be happy to give
you some more when you need it.”

For a second or two the Canterville ghost stood still. He was so angry. Then he
knocked the bottle of oil on to the floor and hurried away. A strange green light
came from his body, and he gave a long and terrible cry that rang through the
house.

“For 300 years”, he said to himself, “I have been the best and the most famous
ghost in the country. Everybody, EVERYBODY, has been afraid of me! There was
the Duchess Dowager did not know that I put skeleton hands on her shoulders,

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and she nearly died of terror. Then, there was that wonderful night in 1752,
when Lord Agostos shot himself in the library, because he saw a skeleton in the
armchair by the fire. And there was the beautiful lady Stutfield, who never
spoke again after my cold fingers held her long white neck while she sat at
dinner. After all this”, he said, “these terrible, modern Americans, come to the
house and give me Tammany Sun Oil for my chains! They’ll be sorry for this, oh
yes, they will!””

IBIGE:
Actor Stephen Rappaport read from The Canterville Ghost , retold by John
Ecsott, published by Oxford university press. Emilia Mellberg met Johanna
Jannson-Wahlgren, Emily Sandersjöö and Sally Bagheri and class 9 AB in
Rödabergsskolan, Stockolm. You also heard Ebba Stenbeck and Keith Foster.

JULIA:
I’m Julia Foster…

IBIGE:
and I’m Ibige Dahlberg Kang. Visit our web site for more info: ur.se and look for
The Portal.

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