Sir Simon's first encounter with Mr. Otis

Sir Simon de Canterville’s first encounter with Hiram B. Otis is the decisive reversal that establishes the story’s comic pattern of haunting: the chained ghost appears in terrifying form, but the American minister treats his chains as a practical maintenance problem. Rather than flee, Otis offers him a bottle of lubricant; the apparition’s indignation is followed almost immediately by a pillow hurled by the Otis twins, forcing him to vanish through the walls.

The Night’s Unremarkable Beginning

The encounter comes after an evening deliberately emptied of supernatural expectation. The day has been warm and sunny, and the family has gone out driving before returning at nine for a light supper. Their conversation ranges over ordinary social and practical topics, including actresses, American foods, Boston, railway baggage checks, and regional accents. No one mentions ghosts or Sir Simon de Canterville. At eleven the family retires, and by half-past eleven the lights are out.

Some time later, Hiram B. Otis wakes to a metallic clanking in the corridor outside his room. The noise seems to approach, accompanied by distinct footsteps. He rises, strikes a match, checks the time, and finds it exactly one o’clock. The narration stresses his composure: his pulse is not feverish. He puts on his slippers, takes a small oblong phial from his dressing case, and opens the door.

The Apparition and the Practical Remedy

In the wan moonlight, Otis sees an old man with red, coal-like eyes and long grey hair hanging in matted coils. His antique garments are soiled and ragged; heavy manacles and rusty gyves hang from his wrists and ankles. The image presents the apparatus of traditional ghostly terror plainly, but Otis interprets its most conspicuous feature as a nuisance requiring a remedy.

He offers the apparition a bottle of Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator, explaining that it is supposed to work with one application and bears testimonials from prominent native divines. He leaves it on a marble table by the bedroom candles and says he will provide more if needed, then closes his door and returns to bed. The ghost’s chains, meant to announce a frightening supernatural presence, have instead prompted a brisk offer of household assistance.

Humiliation and Retreat

For a moment, Sir Simon de Canterville stands motionless in natural indignation. He then dashes the bottle onto the polished floor and flees down the corridor, groaning and emitting a ghastly green light. His attempt to recover the scene as a conventional haunting does not last: when he reaches the top of the great oak staircase, a door opens and two little white-robed figures appear. A large pillow whizzes past his head.

With no time to lose, the ghost adopts the Fourth dimension of Space as an escape route and vanishes through the wainscoting. The house becomes quiet. His flight turns what should have been a display of supernatural power into a sequence of reversals: the minister’s calm remedy first affronts him, and the twins’ attack completes his retreat.

Narrative Significance

The scene establishes the mismatch between Sir Simon de Canterville’s inherited methods of terror and the Otis family’s unawed practicality. Its comic force comes from concrete substitutions: chains receive lubricant, a fearsome approach meets a measured offer, and an apparition is answered with a pillow. Even the ghost’s green light and groans cannot restore his authority once his audience refuses the expected response.

The encounter also begins a recurring pattern in the haunting. Sir Simon de Canterville enters intending to frighten the household, but the family’s responses leave him frustrated and driven away. The episode makes the ghost’s vulnerability visible without denying the supernatural event itself: his apparition is real within the story, yet the human beings he means to intimidate determine how little power the display has over them.