“The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” was written by Rudyard Kipling and first appeared in Quartette (Christmas Number, 1885). Kipling (1865-1936) was one of the dominant British popular writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” is a classic story of supernatural revenge, the kind that is deservedly anthologized again and again.

Jack Pansay is an Anglo-Indian and a bit of a cad. He has a brief affair with Agnes Wessington, the wife of a British officer in Bombay. The affair runs its course, as such things do, and after a season Jack’s “fire of straw burned itself out to a pitiful end,”¹ and he is ready to move on. He lets her know this in a cruel fashion: “from my own lips, in August, 1882, she learned that I was sick of her presence, tired of her company, and weary of the sound of her voice.”² But Agnes will not accept his rejection: “‘Jack, darling!’ was her one eternal cuckoo cry, ‘I’m sure it’s all a mistake–a hideous mistake; and we’ll be good friends again some day. Please forgive me, Jack dear.’”³ Jack continues to reject her, and he meets and courts Kitty Mannering. Agnes grows thin and wan and continues to follow Jack, and she does not accept his insults and rejection. Eventually Agnes dies, and Jack and Kitty become engaged and enjoy two delightful weeks together. Then Jack begins hearing Agnes’ voice calling to him, and begins seeing her rickshaw, drawn by four jhampanies wearing her magpie livery. Jack undergoes a cure at the hands of a doctor, but Jack still sees the rickshaw, with Agnes in it. Jack babbles to Kitty about his relationship with Agnes, and she breaks off their engagement, returns his letters and ring, and tells him she wishes never to see him again. Still the rickshaw follows Jack, still he hears Agnes’ call of “Jack, darling!,” until he asks Agnes’ ghost what it means and what she wants. Jack and Agnes’ ghost begin keeping company again, of sorts, although only he can see her and everyone else in Simla thinks Jack mad. Jack conducts long conversations with Agnes in the open. He comes to see that he is dying and that he is being punished for his treatment of her. He admits that he deserves this, although he wonders why he, of all the blackguards in the world, is being punished in this world and not in the next. The story ends with him waiting for his death.

“The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” falls into that category of fiction which Patrick Brantlinger called the “Imperial Gothic,” which “combines the seemingly progressive, often Darwinian ideology of imperialism with a seemingly antithetical interest in the occult.”⁴ “The revival of ‘Orientalism’ in the 1870s was accompanied by a wide-ranging...concern with the occult...Anglo-Indian fiction [often deals with] inexplicable curses, demonic possession, and ghostly visitations.”⁵

Though early Kipling, “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” is still very good. Kipling presents the world of Anglo-India with detailed assurance. Even if it is the world of the rich English rather than that of the rest of the population of India the story is still true to life. Kipling’s narrative style underplays the situation in some respects, but this lack of histrionics emphasizes rather than diminishes the supernatural feel of the story. There are some moments of impressionistic near-insanity from Jack, as the reader sees him waver in the face of the rickshaw’s presence. “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” is an entertaining story told with Kipling’s usual skill. That should be all the recommendation anyone needs to read it.

Print: Otto Penzler, ed., The Big Book of Ghost Stories. New York: Vintage Books, 2012.

¹ Rudyard Kipling, “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw,” in The Phantom ‘Rickshaw: and Other Tales (New York: J.W. Lovell, 1890), 14.

² Kipling, “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw,” 14.

³ Kipling, “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw,” 15.

⁴ Patrick Brantlinger, “Imperial Gothic: Atavism and the Occult in the British Adventure Novel, 1880-1914,” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 28, no. 2 (Summer, 1985): 243.

⁵ Lewis Wurgaft, The Imperial Imagination: Magic and Myth in Kipling’s India (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), 57.