Feuilleton

✥ For the fifth year in a row, THE LAMP is sponsoring a Christmas ghost story competition in the spirit of Dickens and M. R. James. When we say “in the spirit of,” we do not have in mind wan pseudo-Edwardian pastiches of James and others; we mean stories that “succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours,” stories with contemporary or near-contemporary settings that achieve effects similar to those sought by the genre’s masters.

The winner of this year’s competition will receive one thousand dollars, and his or her story will appear in the Christmas number of the magazine. At least two runners-up will receive three hundred dollars each and have their stories published online during Christmastide.

The rules are as follows:

i. The contest is open to all writers aged eighteen and older. With the exception of THE LAMP’s editor, any judges involved will not be aware of the identities of the authors before assessing their work; they will examine entries “blind,” without regard for previous publications, background, etc.

ii. The prize is for stories no longer than ten thousand words. There is no minimum length.

iii. Stories, while obviously intended to be frightening, must not contain obscene or indecent material.

iv. Stories must involve the supernatural, however sensitively portrayed or faintly suggested.

v. Stories must be written in English.

vi. Stories must be original, which is to say, they must not have been published previously, either in print or in any public online forum.

vii. “Simultaneous submissions” are not permitted.

viii. Only one story per entrant is allowed.

ix. Entries may be submitted by email to boo@thelampmagazine.com (.doc, .docx, or .rtf only: .pdf attachments will not be read). Biographical information limited to a single sentence should be contained in a separate document.

x. Entries should be formatted in Times New Roman with single line spacing. Do not include tab stops, indents, headers, footers, page numbers, or illustrations original or otherwise. A title will suffice. Epigraphs are also permitted.

xi. Submissions must be sent by midnight Eastern Time on October 31, 2025, in order to be eligible.

Both the winner and at least two runners-up will be notified at a date to be announced later. No other editorial correspondence related to the contest will take place. The decision of the judges is final.

✥ During a recent panel conversation at a conference in California, Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway, delivered some remarks which caught our eye. Speaking in reference to Vatican II, Varden characterized much of the fifty years of post-conciliar debate as confrontations between “conservative” and “liberal” positions: “unedifying clashes—and almost invariably dull.” But now that we are three generations on from the council, he added, the “collective remembrance of what the council and its aftermath felt like has faded” and “lucid reflection” in its meaning and effects is possible. “Today’s young Catholics are not ungrateful for the council’s great gifts, but unable to proceed with their grandparents’ mindsets, uninclined to flog dead horses, unenthused by fossilized projects of aggiornamento when the sun has set on the giorno by which they were defined,” he said. “What they long for is to awaken the dawn, to know the saving power of Christ, the same today, yesterday, and always, yet making all things new, often enough by exploding time-bound dichotomies.”

✥ THINGS THAT I HAVE HEARD BLASTING HEADPHONE-FREE FROM PHONES WHILE TRAVELING ON THE ABOVE-GROUND SECTION OF THE NEW YORK SUBWAY LINES OF QUEENS

6:06 A.M., a man, mid-forties, who looks just like J. B. Smoove twelve years ago, blasting Alicia Keys’s “If I Ain’t Got You” and smiling.

2:36 P.M., a woman, early twenties, applying makeup, phone on the seat next to her playing Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable.”

5:05 P.M., a man, mid-thirties, slight, with Middlemarch in his lap, watching lip-sync videos on TikTok.

5:25 P.M., a nurse, late twenties, in full scrubs, standing in the middle of a packed train watching And Just Like That . . ., full volume.

2:28 A.M., a man, twenties, work clothes, the cheap, irregular DING DING DING of a mobile game with in-app purchases.

8:17 A.M., a withered man, mid-sixties, watching something in Persian, every few minutes croaking, “Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh,” like sandpaper.

9:06 A.M., a woman, early forties, pantsuit, sweating, on speakerphone with a very heated lawyer.

11:12 P.M., a couple, both early thirties, leaning into one another, watching a YouTube video about rescue dogs.

8:55 A.M., a harried woman, late thirties, herding a flock of children, holding out the phone like a platter, playing manic, clinking children’s music I can’t recognize. It cuts suddenly to an ad: CAN’T FALL ASLEEP? USE WHITE NOISE TO HELP RELAX. TRY BROWN NOISE. TRY BLUE NOISE. TRY GREEN NOISE. TRY GRAY—

11:48 P.M., a very thin man, forties, the kind of addict Midwesterners imagine have taken over every car, “Confessions Part II” by Usher.

9:12 A.M., the same couple as before, both early thirties. She is watching a Twitch streamer play Baldur’s Gate; he is looking out the window at the Triborough Bridge. It’s quiet, but I hear the streamer say, “What is this? What is this?”

5:15 P.M., a small Hispanic grandma, early seventies, wearing a home-care nursing smock, watching an old episode of La Otra.

3:34 P.M., a gaggle of teenagers, sixteen or seventeen years old, huddled in a circle. Silence, then six seconds of what is obviously pornography, gasps, laughter, silence.

4:10 P.M., a serene young woman, mid-twenties, watching Zohran reels.

1:18 A.M., two women, early twenties, “jealousy, jealousy,” by Olivia Rodrigo. They’re singing along.

9:37 P.M., a man, mid-forties in a suit, top buttons open, an Instagram story with girls shrieking, laughing.

10:02 A.M., a beautiful Haitian man, mid-twenties, blasting Supa Denot. An older man approaches him: “What is that? Rap? Hello? What is that? French?” “Creole,” the first man says. “Fantastic!” says the old man. “Fantastique!”

5:12 P.M., a child, eight or nine, striped shirt, watching a video that’s playing too softly for me to hear. Then: USE WHITE NOISE TO HELP RELAX. TRY BROWN NOISE, TRY BLUE—

11:12 A.M., a frowning woman, fifties, listening to what I believe is a television show, but at the conclusion of a long, dramatic monologue in Spanish, she lifts her phone, says, “No,” and hangs up.

7:24 P.M., a man, early thirties, from that couple, holding the phone very close to his ear, but I can hear it’s Lana Del Rey, “White Mustang.”

2:10 P.M., a very tall man, mid-twenties, E.D.M. so intense that the plastic seats are vibrating.

6:17 A.M., a woman, early thirties, excellent posture, “Who’s Crying Now” by Journey.

3:33 P.M., two teenagers, fifteen or so, a video of a room chanting, “Hare Krishna.” One of them says, “This isn’t Jonestown. Hare Rama. Hare Hare.”

9:46 P.M., two men, one early twenties, tank top, one late teens, denim jacket, on opposite sides of the train. One plays “Bloodline” by Slayer. The other plays electrocumbia. They do not look at one another, but when one gets off, the other turns his music off.

8:11 A.M., a Greek woman, mid-fifties, screaming into the phone over the tiny sound of crying.

6:12 P.M., a man, fifties, perfectly round in a three-piece suit, eyes squeezed shut, a podcast of the Alan Watts disciple Alberto Caiero intoning, “You must split from yourself to join with the world. You must return to yourself when the world falls awa—” CAN’T RELAX? USE WHITE NOISE—

7:06 P.M., a child, eight or nine, striped shirt, listening to the sounds of island birds.

5:11 P.M., a man, early twenties, a would-be dancer rocking M.J.’s “Bad” from a boombox. But the train is too crowded; he just bobs his head and smiles.

10:34 A.M., a man, late twenties, More Fish, Ghostface Killah, no skips.

4:54 P.M., a child, twelve or so, gripped and playing, the tiny sound of fake machine guns firing.

9:33 A.M., a man, mid-twenties, TikTok videos about side hustles.

11:23 P.M., a man, mid-thirties, YouTube videos about how video games are woke now.

8:02 P.M., seven or eight different songs all at once. I can’t make them out. Nobody looks anybody in the eye.

9:10 A.M., a woman, late fifties, YouTube video of a news story describing a riot.

11:37 P.M., a woman, mid-forties, eyes closed, listening to white noise, then green noise, then brown noise, then gray noise, then blue.

9:06 A.M., a man, familiar, early thirties, and a woman, late twenties, new, leaning into one another, watching reels from a cat rescue on his phone, free hand drifting, distracted.

6:15 P.M., a man, late thirties, dusty from labor, holding his phone to his ear: PROCEED TO THE ROUTE. PROCEED TO THE ROUTE. PROCEED—

10:10 P.M., a striped shirt, sized for a child, folded neatly on the seat with a phone atop it, the songs of island birds.

10:10 A.M., a man, fifties, in a three-piece suit, eyes shut, rail thin. Caeiro says, “You may believe the inconsiderate do not believe that others matter. The truth is that they do not believe that they do. They may act like you’re invisible. In reality, they do not believe that anybody can see them. You think they do not care about you. They believe nobody cares about them.”

8:56 P.M., a frail woman, early eighties. Silence, then the emergency alarm broadcast warble, very loud. I look up and she’s laughing.

5:10 P.M., a man, mid-twenties, “In Da Club,” 50 Cent. He’s vibing.

7:00 A.M., a full train, thirty people at least, and every phone is humming its own noise. White noise, brown noise, blue noise, gray noise, green noise, red, and yellow: a static hymn to a very chilled-out God. After Queensboro Plaza, we descend into a tunnel under the East River. The lights go out and reception is lost and when we pull up at the Lexington Avenue station in Manhattan, the train is empty and silent and bright.

—Emmett Rensin

✥ Recently I went to Rennes, France, to learn more about the life of Benjamin Marie Petit, who lived in the early nineteenth century and served as a missionary to the Potawatomi of northern Indiana and southwest Michigan. I scoured the Internet, wrote to archives, had a francophone friend call churches—nothing! I was feeling desperate, and desperation often leads to prayer: “Father Petit, lead me to places I should visit when in Rennes.” Suddenly, I recalled that I had contacted a descendant of the French priest’s brother several weeks earlier via LinkedIn. I had forgotten all about it, but immediately after my petition, I saw that I had received a message from Petit’s descendant. I responded right away, and within a few hours I had the address for the family home, the name of the street where the priest had been born, and the name of the family church, the last being quite a find in a medieval town full of churches.

My eighteen-year-old daughter joined me on the trip, and as we walked around the town, we imagined the young Petit traversing the streets we were now strolling, praying in the churches we were now praying in, and sitting and sipping at the many cafés that line the narrow streets where we sat and sipped. As we did so, we began to notice something: Everyone was nice. Really nice—as my daughter quipped with an eyebrow raised, “suspiciously nice.”

We began to speculate that the young missionary was behind all this kindness. Was he so pleased that someone came from America to study his life and mission that he brought out the best of Rennes to welcome us? As we continued to walk the streets, this wonderful thought never quite left my mind.

Until Petit left to attend the Saint-Sulpice Seminary in Paris, he had lived his entire life in Rennes. He was born on Rue de la Motte Fablet, close to the Parlement building, where it is likely his father, as a court of appeals attorney, plied his trade. When Benjamin was five years old, his father died at age twenty-seven. The family then moved to the first floor at Thirty-Four Place des Lices. When he left home every day, he would have seen the ruins of the city’s fifteenth-century ramparts and the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, both of which are about a block from his doorstep. For Petit’s entire time in Rennes, the cathedral was being renovated, so the Notre-Dame-en-Saint-Mélaine served as the pro-cathedral. He attended with his family the much smaller Saint Etienne, a two-minute walk from his home.

There is a centuries-old market on the street where Petit grew up. One can imagine his mother shopping there every weekend, and, once Benjamin was old enough, dispatching him to do the same. Eventually, Petit attended the University of Rennes and later its law school. He practiced law for a few years and developed a reputation as a public speaker. Did he work in the courts housed in the imposing Parlement building, just like his father? Did he reflect on the priests who were tried and executed there a few decades earlier during the Terror?

No one knows exactly when or how, but Petit was called to the priesthood. Was this something that had been tugging at his heart while attending Mass at Saint Etienne or during a quiet moment within the ancient majesty of Notre-Dame-en-Saint-Mélaine? Whenever it was, it led him to leave his profession and to enter the seminary in Paris.

We returned to Paris after spending two days in Rennes picturing Petit walking here, praying there, laughing with friends there; or looking to a window and imagining him telling his mother he was leaving his profession for the seminary, and then, a couple years later, leaving for the American wilderness; and then his mother sitting by the same window, with unimaginable pain, learning that her young missionary son had died. After arriving in Paris, we met Petit’s descendant at the fountain in front of Saint-Sulpice. We shook hands, walked to a café, ordered a couple of La Goudale I.P.A.s, and marveled, on this beautiful Parisian evening, at the legacy of Father Benjamin Petit, who still works wonders in people’s lives.

—Christopher J. Young

✥ An old tune from the fin de siècle music halls:

Come on, feel the poise,
Boys, rock your boys.
We’ll get Wilde, Wilde, Wilde—
Wilde, Wilde, Wilde!

So you think my tastes are too refined? I tell you, honey.
Je ne sais pas pourquoi. Je ne sais pas pourquoi.
So you think my bon mots are unkind? They make me money.
Je ne sais pas. Je ne sais pas.

Come on, feel the poise,
Boys, rock your boys.
We’ll get Wilde, Wilde, Wilde—
Wilde, Wilde, Wilde!

&c