“The Lamp” - A Ghost Story by Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot? Yes. Miss Jane Marple? Yes. Tommy and Tuppence Beresford? Yes. General mystery stories? Yes. 

Ghost stories? No. Except the answer is really yes.

 

I’ve read a lot of novels and stories by Agatha Christie. The novels wither her trademark and famous detectives. Her thrillers. Her general mysteries without a trademark detective. But I didn’t know she also wrote ghost stories.

 

The Lamp is a ghost story by Agatha Christie.

 

It’s not long, only about 13 pages. It was first published in 1933 in a collection called The Hound of Death. The book was available only in one way – by collecting coupons from the magazine “The Passing Show.” And there it sat, until 1971, when it was published in the United States in a collection called The Golden Ball and Other Stories. In 2013, it was published as a standalone ebook by William Morrow Paperbacks.

 

I was expecting a mystery. Instead, I got a ghost.

 

Agatha Christie in the 1930s

The story is not set in any particular time. It could be anytime between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. The only real clue is that the family is attended by servants, including maids, so that might push it back toward the ninetheenth.

 

A woman is looking for a house for herself, her young son, and her father. She finds one she really likes, but she questions the estate agent closely about why the house has been empty for 19 years. He finally admits that there is a story about a ghost, a boy who was left with servants while his father traveled to London. Unfortunately, the father died there, and it’s said that the little boy wanders through the place, crying.

 

The woman does not believe in ghosts. She buys the house, and the family moves in. And all seems to go well until her son and her father begin to hear noises. And see things. Things will not end the way she expects. For that matter, things will not end like the reader expects.

 

The title comes from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The woman’s elderly father quotes this passage:

 

What Lamp has Destiny to guide

Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?

“A Blind Understanding,” Heaven replied.

 

The story seems odd for a work by Agatha Christie. It also seems a little creepy. You’re not going to see Hercule Poirot using his little gray cells or Miss Marple knitting away listening quietly. Instead, you get the innocent if discerning understanding of childhood and the wisdom of age and how those in between can easily miss what’s really going on.

 

Yes, it’s an Agatha Christie ghost story.

 

Some Tuesday Readings

 

“Vivien’s Song,” poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Three Poems for Robinson Jeffers – Lucas Smith at The Sprawl of Quality.

 

Two Moccasins Tied Together – poem by Emily Patterson at Every Day Poems.

 

Fire in July – poem by Rosa Gilbert at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Some Monday Readings - July 27, 2026

 

Make do – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher. 

One Tool to Rule Them All – Brad Littlejohn at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Two Ways of Looking at a Sparrow – Alexander Fayne.

 

Britain: Tome policing – Bijan Omrani at The Critic Magazine.

 

The Year I Taught in Prison – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The Creatives Behind the Festival of Britain: Jacquetta Hawkes – A London Inheritance.

 

Don’t have blocks of time to write? Pockets work great! – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

Sounds of the Forest – Timber Festival.

 

I Read All These Books and Boy Are My Lips Tired – Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

 

Christianity and the Three Cultures – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Photograph: Jacquetta Hawkes (1910-1996) and J.B. Priestly (1894-1984) in 1960.

The fuller's soap

After Malachi 3:1-4

 

He’s coming, both

as a fire and as 

a cleansing, a washing

like the fuller’s soap

used to clean and

cleanse linen, taking

the soiled garment

and making it white

as snow, cleansed

of all impurities,

making us acceptable

and righteous to the Lord,

making us an acceptable

dwelling place of the Lord.

 

Photograph by Sincerely Media via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

Some Sunday Readings

 

Six Ways to Shepherd Kids Through Loss – Kirsten Black at Gospel-Centered Discipleship.

 

It’s Hard to Grow Up – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog. 

The Words We Need to Speak – Glenn McCarty at Story Warren.

Saturday Good Reads – July 25, 2026

When I had American history in both high school and college, I can vaguely remember reading or classroom discussion about only two ministers – Jonathan Edwards, who was always cited for his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and not much else, and John Wesley, who started Methodism in England and was instrumental in the First Great Awakening in America. But there were other well-known pastors, and they played a significant role in the American Revolution. 

Darryl Dash is a pastor in Toronto, author of a few books, and a columnist for The Gospel Coalition Canada. He was on vacation last week, and he and family visited a small church. They more stumbled into it than visited and had to be directed to the right room. And he discovered the beauty of a remarkably ordinary church.

 

Netflix has been hemorrhaging subscribers, and it’s affecting the value of their stock. Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker thinks something else is going on – the most popular strategy in the tech world has stopped working. And it may be good for all of us.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

The Thousand Injuries: The Not Qwhite Voter and Politics of Recognition – William Matthew McCarter at Front Porch Republic.

 

Like Grass – Sarah Silflow at Front Porch Republic.

 

British Stuff

 

The migrant crime cover up – Rob Bates at The Critic Magazine.

 

America 250

 

13 Places Where American History Began – Kate Orlando at Only in Your State.

 

George Washington, The Fall of Charleston & The Battle of the Waxhaws – Keli Holt at Just Enough History.

 

How Courage and Compromise Secured American Liberty – Robert M.S. McDonald at Real Clear History.

 

Faith

 

Every Christian Has the Same Story – Michael Kelley at Forward Progress.

 

Tolkien invented a word to describe the Gospel’s turning point – Biblitodo News.

 

Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World – Tim Challies.

 

Poetry

 

The Reveal of the Rocks – poem by Kyle Fisk at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“To Helen,” poem by Edgar Allan Poe – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient & Modern.

 

“Thy Beauty’s Field,” Sonnet 2 by William Shakespeare – K.S Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

 

“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Beloved, Thou Hast Brought Me Many Flowers,” poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Does it matter if you don’t like the characters? – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Why Am I So Negative About Traditional Book Publishing? – Dean Wesley Smith.

 

We Are Thankful – Sovereign Grace

 Painting: Reading Girl, oil on canvas by Alexei Harlamoff (1840-1925). 

A refiner's fire

After Malachi 3:1-4 

The one foretold

is coming,

coming like a fire,

a purifier’s fire,

a refiner’s fire

sifting like a refiner

of silver and gold,

purifying and whittling

away of impurities.

The purified will bring

offerings, offerings

pleasing to the Lord

as they did in days

of old.

The fire of righteousness

purifies and cleanses,

making the offerings

making us, pleasing

and acceptable to the Lord.

 

Photograph by Yasin Hemmati via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

“Eschatology,” poem by Jose Tolentino Mendonca – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

How to Wait for Cultural Reckoning – Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition.

 

“Away With Our Sorrow and Fear,” hymn by Charles Wesley – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Poetry Helps You Open Your Heart to God – Catherine Lawton at Glimpses of Glory in the Unfolding Story. 

 

The Skill That Unlocks Other Skills – Seth Lewis.

 

An Ear for the Outsider, Part 2 – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

Some Thursday Readings – July 23, 2026

 

The Spider Taketh Hold with Her Hands, and is in Kings’ Palaces – Kilby Austin at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

“Idyll,” poem by Siegfried Sassoon and “There Is a Garden in her Face,” poem by Thomas Campion – – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Mother’s Bible – poem by Megan Willome. 

 

“When I consider how my light is spent,” sonnet by John Milton – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Talking about ‘The Nameless Isle’ – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street. 

 

A Picture That Paints a Thousand Words – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Dumpling Pond: Legend, Folklore, and Local Memory in Greenwich, Connecticut – Lisa Figlioli at Journal of the American Revolution. 

 

The Bell and the Blackbird – poem by David Whyte.

 

George Cruikshank’s Summer in London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Eighteen Months, a Dark Teesside short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free on Amazon today. I have a short review here. 

 

Illustration: At the Royal Academy (1835) by George Cruikshank.

Looking Back at a Crazy Job

I’ve spent a few weeks reflecting on my incredibly short, and incredibly long, eight months with St. Louis Public Schools. What began with the strangest job interview I ever had, the weirdest first day on the job, and the ongoing chaos of every single day ended with a very quiet farewell.  

In previous jobs in corporate communications, I’d experienced periods of media blitzes and controversies. But I’d never experienced a job in which every day was a media blitz, every day was a controversy, and I had to work and publicly communicate in a highly political environment where it was difficult to know who was telling the truth, whose information was accurate, and who was trying to help or merely trying to gain an edge on an opponent. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph: St. Louis Public Schools headquarters building by St. Louis Public Schools.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

6 Enjoyable Ways to Read Classic Novels –or Pretty Much Anything – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Goodness Will Come Back for You – Lara d’Entremont at A Mother Held.

 

Of Steamrollers and Hummingbirds – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Swan Upping on the Thames – Spitalfields Life.