The Housekeeper's Ghost
OR a combination of eeriness, suspense, terror, and excitement I have heard little in the form of radio plays to equal "The Homecoming" heard recently from 4YA. The play lasts just fifteen minutes and has only four actors, It concerns a couple who have taken a lonely house in the country ("lonely" to an Englishman means two miles from the village, not 20, as we New Zealanders might suppose), and are awaiting the
arrival of a new housekeepef. When she does turn up, ‘she behaves in a manner. which arouses suspicion, but it is not until near the end of the play that the listener discovers several things about her. Namely,
}she was housekeeper for the former owner of the house, whom she murdered; she has been in a mental asylum ever since; and anyhow she is dead, and what the couple actually encounter is presumably her ghost. Particularly eldritch is the effect of her last line: "I’ve come home; and I’m never going to leave this house again." The reader will understand why I recommend this fragment as being as good, in its own way, as Night Must Fall, when I add that the part of the housekeeper’s ghost was taken by Sybil Thorndike.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19450525.2.17.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 309, 25 May 1945, Page 8
Word count
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208The Housekeeper's Ghost New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 309, 25 May 1945, Page 8
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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