The Telegram by Violet Hunt

The Telegram by Violet Hunt
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A woman. A man who has loved her too long and too faithfully. A dinner, long overdue. And a telegram that arrives the morning after.

Violet Hunt's ghost story turns on a single, impossible question. The horror here is quiet, domestic, Victorian — and it arrives not with a scream but with a cabman's complaint and a nurse's matter-of-fact stare.

"The Telegram" was first published in Violet Hunt's collection Unkist, Unkind in 1897. It was later reprinted in the anthology Nights with Ghosts, edited by the author herself.

Violet Hunt (1862–1942) was a novelist, short story writer, and a central figure in the Edwardian and Georgian literary worlds. A close friend of Henry James and the long-term companion of Ford Madox Ford, she published over twenty books and remained a significant, if undervalued, voice in the supernatural fiction tradition.