Forgotten Favorites: The Lamplighter by Anthony O'Neill; Dark and Bloody Supernatural Thriller About The Terrors Found in Dreams

Forgotten Favorites: The Lamplighter by Anthony O'Neill; Dark and Bloody Supernatural Thriller About The Terrors Found in Dreams

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Dreams can be great things to have. They reflect stress that a person has throughout the day and create breaks and possible solutions. They connect the Dreamer to various archetypes and symbols in the Collective Consciousness. They reflect our strongest desires and ambitions and possibly foretell the future. However, they also reflect our worst fears and sometimes can seem worse than reality. What if those nightmares came true and not only affected the Dreamer but the world around them?




That is the premise behind Anthony O'Neill's fascinating but little known novel, The Lamplighter. Evelyn Todd, a young woman in 19th century Edinburgh had a vibrant imagination that helped her through a troubled childhood at a home for destitute girls. As a girl, she is fascinated by a lamplighter outside the girl’s home. She creates stories and draws pictures about the adventures of a traveling lamplighter which she calls “Leerie,” (a slang term for Lamplighter). When her stories begin to frighten the other girls, the home's director orders her to stop talking about them. He no sooner gives her the order, then a mysterious man arrives claiming to be Evelyn's father and takes her to his home. She tells him about her Leerie stories and a few days later, her father introduces her to a man who resembles her drawings and claims to be Leerie.




Twenty years later, as the narrator tells us, “the streets of Edinburgh were filled with blood.” A professor is murdered and his body is scattered along the road. Inspector Groves, a conceited police inspector, links the murder to a similar one to a lighthouse keeper and other murders that follow. Meanwhile Thomas McKnight, a professor of logic and metaphysics, and his friend, Joseph Canavan, a gravedigger, are also investigating the murder since the deceased professor was a colleague and professional rival of McKnight's. McKnight, Canavan, and Groves are led to the now-adult Evelyn who works for a bookseller and whose nights are filled with dreams of detailed serial murders and her old imaginary friend (or is it enemy?) ,Leerie. Also many people, including Canavan and Evelyn, report sightings of a sinister demonic figure in the shadows.




The book is filled with suspense and horror-filled moments that rather than provide lame attempts at creating jump scares, instead enhance the plot and the surreal quality of the murders and Evelyn's dreams which either foretell the murders or are active participants. The chapters detailing the murders and the demonic figure are scary the way that H.P. Lovecraft's writing is scary. The creature doesn't have a specific shape and is seen in and out of the shadows like a figure of nightmares that changes shape and wouldn't have a specific form in the material world.




O'Neill puts interesting characters into this dark daymare of a novel. The most fascinating is Evelyn herself. She is secretive and cynical when Groves, Canavan, McKnight question her. (When Groves repeats his claims that her descriptions of the dreams as “vague”, she responds, “Yes, you told me that before.”) While the men particularly McKnight, think she's mentally ill or at least suffering from guilt from an overactive imagination that places her at the scene of the crime, Evelyn appears to have some dark secrets that she hides with her cryptic comments and scars that she hides behind gloves and scarves. In one tense chapter through hypnosis Evelyn explains her past in a story that is both creepy and heartbreaking. She recounts abuse and torture from guardians and her rage against them which might manifest in sinister creatures formed from her mind.




McKnight, Groves, and Canavan appear to be less defined. Groves is more interested in his memoirs and getting his name heard and considers solving the case as nothing more than adding a decisive finish to his illustrious career. McKnight is a very logical left-brained sort of man who questions her account constantly. Canavan is a more emotional sort who wants to rescue Evelyn seeing her as a damsel in distress. They are almost stereotypes but it makes sense when it is hinted that Evelyn's nightmare creatures not only come true, but she is also able to create protections and safeguards against them. Could those safeguards include creating people who open up repressed memories that manifest themselves as a demon that attacks her abusers on her behalf? This possibility is purposely left open-ended but is very meta and clever the more the Reader thinks about it.




The Lamplighter's protagonists have a hard time telling fantasy from reality and the more that Evelyn's nightmares take shape, the more frightening they become. This leads to a spellbinding and captivating conclusion that leaves the Reader with questions about the division between Reality and Imagination. This is the type of book that is both a standard horror story and a metaphysical journey. It is a dream come true, but not always the best dreams.