“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 - April 27, 2026

The Hunger for the Real – Christine Rosen at Commentary. 

Who is Blake Whiting? – Andrew Lawler at The American Scholar on the most productive historian in publishing.

 

The Secret of Shakespeare’s London House – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Review: The Wandering Army: The Campaigns That Transformed the British Way of War by Huw J. Davies – Ben Powers at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Agatha Christie & the metaphysics of murder – Theodore Dalrymple at The New Criterion.

 

The right-wing case for social media – Alex Yates at The Critic Magazine.

 

Create a System for Consistency – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The American Way is Under Fire – The Editors at The Free Press.

Photograph: Agatha Christie at work.

Some Thursday Readings

The kindest of ghosts: A new history of childhood reading is a treasure – Simon Evans at The Critic Magazine. 

Jeffrey Archer: My 10 Favourite Agatha Christie Books – at CrimeReads.

 

University Cancels Panel Because Author is a ‘Zionist’ – Joe Nocera at The Free Press.

 

John Thomas Smith’s Rural Cottages – Spitalfields Life.

 

J.D. Salinger and the Wounds of War – Via Soho at CrimeReads.

 

Discovering a Classic: The Mass of Brother Michel – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

September Sketches – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

When Did You Stop Writing? – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

 

An Artist in the Ghost Army – Mikall Venso at Missouri History Society.

 

Of Course It Still Matters! Why Story Literature Today – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review talks with Henry Oliver.

 

Photograph: Agatha Christie.

Redcar Collector, a short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free on Amazon Kindle today.

 

Saturday Good Reads

Earlier this week, we finished watching The ABC Murders on Prime Video, starring John Malkovich as Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot. It was a dark version of the original story, with an origin for Poirot that wasn’t in the author’s books. But it was an excellent production. 

I must have been 10 or 11 when I started reading mystery stories by Agatha Christie. She wrote some 66 mystery novels and 14 short story collections, and even three collections of poetry. But it’s her novels for which she’s best remembered. Today, the Christie mysteries are classified in the genre of “cozy mystery.” Lucy Foley at CrimeReads argues for a different classification, that the stories told by the grande dame of mystery are anything but cozy. She makes a good case.

There’s a lot of talk about socialism these days, and a lot of talk about green new deals and whether it’s less about green and more about socialism. Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder looks at what is being criticized – capitalism – and asks whether capitalism is really based on greed, or whether it comes from something else. At Christianity Today, Eric Miller reviews a new book about theology and capitalism that takes on what the author calls “finance-dominated” capitalism.

In the Department of "Best Laid Plans Oft Go Awry," Jan Askonas at The New Atlantis has a longish discussion of what happened when algorithms replaced people in curating news and social media. And the short answer is - a fostering of tyranny.

More Good Reads

Art and Photography

How Van Gogh's Sunflowers have inspired generations of British artists – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

In London, a Sculptural Offering to Gods Old and New – Justin Hopper at Image Journal.

Poetry

A Song to the Mansions of Heaven – Nicholas Samaras at Image Journal.

George Moses Horton – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Cuckold – Joe Spring.

All the Hollowed Shells – James Matthew Wilson at The Imaginative Conservative.

Life and Culture

The Machine Stops – Oliver Sacks at The New Yorker.

Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction – Mairead Small Staid at The Paris Review.

American Stuff

Andrew Jackson: Our First Populist President – Jeff Taylor at The American Conservative.

Defining America – Mark Malvasi at Imaginative Conservative.

Faith

On the Road with Thomas Merton – Fred Bahnson at Emergence Magazine.

Embracing the Dignity of Human Life – Zak Schmoll at Entering the Public Square.

How to Handle Temptation at Work – David Winters at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

British Stuff

Meet My Friend Selina – Tim Challies.

Writing 

9 Reasons to Quite Writing – Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent.

Tumbling Tumbleweeds: Sons of the Pioneers with Roy Rogers

(from the 1944 movie Hollywood Canteen)

Painting: Oil Woman Reading, oil on panel by Jan Lievens (ca. 1628-1633).