Robert Aickman and the art of the artifice ghost story with Brontë Schiltz

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Comma Press define the artifice story as a ‘type of short story [that] doesn't derive its power from a “surprise” revelation, or from the slow development of a central image, but from the unlikely insertion of a seemingly incompatible ingredient right at the start.’ This format, which diverges from the more traditional epical story (which culminates in a moment ofrevelation) and lyrical story (which centres on a repeated image) is typical of Robert Aickman’s formula. Aickman’s ‘strange stories’, as he termed them, written between 1951 and his death in 1981, situate their protagonists in recognisable post-industrial landscapes populated by civil servants, travelling salesmen and ‘huge hydroelectric installations’. But into these familiar(usually British) settings, he introduced an often-indefinable element of strangeness: a hotel in which refusal of food results in extreme distress; lichen that grows on human skin. In so doing, he troubled the very idea of normality, drawing attention to the intentional construction of every aspect of our everyday lives – and the inequity reinforced or produced therein.This talk introduces Aickman’s unconventional ghostly tales, in which ghosts only rarely appear in their traditional guise, yet which frequently explore themes of haunting and spectrality. It then explores what we can learn from them – either as creatives or critics –about the construction of artifice ghost stories, through which writers expose the unnatural and even monstrous nature of the quotidian, from the unequal division of labour in marriage to the necessity of stifling passion to meet the practical demands of capitalism.