This is a review of the short story The Watcher, written by Sheridan Le Fanu and published in his collection Green Tea and Other Weird Stories. Read my review of The Haunted House in Westminster, Green Tea, and An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in an Old House in Aungier-Street here, here, and here. Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer who wrote ghost stories in the 19th century. His most famous work is Carmilla, a vampire story that predates Dracula.
The Watcher takes place in Dublin in the 1790’s and features Sir James Barton, a retired navy captain. Barton settles in Dublin and begins collecting the accoutrements of a respectable life after years spent in the navy, even getting engaged to a woman half his age. The Captain is an atheist given to fits of melancholy and self-contemplation.
One night, walking down an empty stretch of street, Barton is trailed by ghostly footsteps. Soon he sees the source of those footsteps, a shrunken little man who seems to know him and sends him nasty letters. Eventually Barton falls into despair, because he thinks he’s being haunted by a demon. His social peers – it is implicit that Barton has no actual friends – think he’s suffering a nervous breakdown. They are correct. Barton becomes a recluse, hiding in a compound locked away from the outside world, and even that’s not enough to save him…
The Watcher is a portrait of guilt. It is also a study of the psychological effects of stalking, because someone or something is stalking Barton. Others see the shrunken little man, so he is real. Whether his tormentor is human or demonic doesn’t matter, because Barton comes to believe his tormentor is a demonic entity out to punish him for his sins.
Why? Well, the narrator mentions a disagreement involving a sailor’s daughter. The young woman dies, perhaps because of her father’s mistreatment, and an angry (jilted?) Barton has the sailor flogged mercilessly until he deserts and dies of his injuries. Unless the man doesn’t die. We do not know.
We do not even know if Barton did anything wrong. What’s important is that he believes he’s done something wrong. The fact that Barton is an atheist could mean he’s unprotected from evil spirits, but Le Fanu also wrote a story (Green Tea, here) where a Reverend Jennings is tormented by a ghostly monkey. If I was to play Devil’s advocate, I’d say that the demonic monkey could not harm Jennings physically, whereas Barton’s stalker was a more physical threat. It might also have something to do with the fact that Jennings does nothing to deserve what happens to him.
Le Fanu’s stories are more about the haunted than the hauntings. Focus past the wordiness, and you will be floored by the psychological realism, especially when it comes to issues like mental illness. Recommended for lovers of Victorian horror stories who like a bit of substance to their ghosts.
Abandoned Places 
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