✥ For the sixth 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. This year we feel it is important to point out that Christmas itself is entirely incidental to the contest; the stories need not necessarily be set on or around or even mention the Nativity.
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:
1. 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.
2. The prize is for stories no longer than ten thousand words. There is no minimum length.
3. Stories, while obviously intended to be frightening, must not contain obscene or indecent material.
4. Stories must involve the supernatural, however sensitively portrayed or faintly suggested.
5. Stories must be written in English.
6. Stories must be original, which is to say, they must not have been published previously, either in print or in any public online forum. Stories written with the assistance of a large language model will not be considered.
7. “Simultaneous submissions” are not permitted.
8. Only one story per entrant is allowed.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. Submissions must be sent by midnight Eastern Time on October 1, 2026, in order to be eligible.
12. 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.
✥ In our Trinity 2026 issue, we asked readers to send in lists of things that fascinate and repel them. Thank you to everyone who wrote in. Here are some of our favorite entries:
Things that fascinate me: the melancholic romance of the émigré, the Wild Geese, the Jacobites, Charles X dying in Czechoslovakia, the last of the imperial Russians in Paris and New York, the Duke of Berwick, Bonnie Prince Charlie; Spanish Holy Week confraternities; Marian apparitions; priest hole–ridden English manor houses stunted in their growth by recusancy fines; the American Southwest, the red dirt and rocks, the secret rites of the Pueblo and Hopi in their forbidden kivas; vampires; the decadent, blood-drunk Aztec Empire with Montezuma dreaming of his own doom before the arrival of Cortes; Creole cultures; the lost churches of Byzantium hidden in the mosques of Istanbul; cavalry charges; genetics and genealogy; Venice; pre-Haussmann Paris; Ptolemaic Egypt; dragons; the fae; the Oath of Fëanor; ghost-infested castles; nineteenth-century spiritualism and spirit photography; the Civil War; angels and fallen angels; the hands of the priest at the moment of consecration; Wolfe and Montcalm both dying at the Plains of Abraham; scrapbooks and paper ephemera; my children and the things they find fascinating.
Things that repel me: marijuana; digital gambling, especially sports gambling; anti-natalism and people who dislike children; A.I.-generated “art”; peas, beets, and squash; Masonry, Jacobins, Philippe Égalité and Cromwell; wet leaves; space; the bottom of the ocean.
—Amanda Piccirillo
Things that fascinate me: the Shakespearean authorship question; historic downtowns of Midwestern towns; the casual conversation of old men with each other; pre-modern family life; baking bread; sacred polyphony, especially sung by non-professionals; the seasons, especially spring; my children as adults; old houses; courage.
Things that repel me: recreational drug use; amusement parks and shopping malls; horror films; trimming the fat off raw chicken; ugly churches; politics; fluorescent lights.
—Sibyl Niemann
Things that fascinate me: Joan of Arc; the Great Lakes; Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago; cemeteries founded in the nineteenth century; Poussin; Marriages: Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Phyllis Rose and Laurent de Brunhoff, Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina, and too many others to list; Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and other Muslim megacities; Vincent Ferrer; Nancy Mitford (letters, histories; I don’t care about her novels or her sisters); outdated encyclopedias, institutional histories, newspaper archives; Brutalism; the Grand Tour; forgotten wars, closed cities, demilitarized zones; mountaintops.
Things that repel me: liars; whiners; space travel; two-factor authentication; drunkenness; video calls; mice, rats, cockroaches; Repulsion.
—Ian Crown
✥ In May 1974, Graham Greene wrote to Pope Paul VI to complain of “certain reprehensible events” occurring within the church of Saint Stephen on Capri. Following the implementation of the Second Vatican Council’s reforms, the church’s pastor introduced a series of liturgical novelties. The final straw for Greene was the priest’s habit of playing recorded pop music from the church’s belfry in place of chimes. The letter was drafted in Italian by Greene’s friend Shirley Hazzard. (Greene, though he spent much of his time in Italy, refused to learn its language.) The letter is reproduced in translation below.
Allow me to draw Your Holiness’s paternal attention to certain reprehensible events occurring within the Church on this island, under the leadership of the current parish priest of Capri at the Cathedral of Saint Stephen.
Since the aforementioned priest took office some years ago, ancient religious festivals, customs, and institutions have been inexorably eroded or suppressed, and traditional forms of worship have been disparaged in a manner both disconcerting and offensive to the island’s kind and devout population.
The town of Capri and its peaceful surroundings—already beset by civic neglect and speculative greed—are now bombarded, morning and night, by electronic popular music blaring from the cathedral’s bell tower. This loud, mechanical musichetta—combining film themes and crude arrangements of sacred music—constitutes a dual profanation that offends both aesthetic and religious sensibilities, causing great distress to all forced to listen to it.
The parish priest has completely ignored the numerous, persistent appeals from both residents and visitors against this hateful cacophony.
Far from introducing a modern spirit of broader tolerance, this spurious modernity has been imposed upon a population previously unacquainted with such vulgarity—a people left stunned by the affront to their Church. Although the priest’s intentions are undoubtedly excellent, the faithful feel mocked in the way they express their faith.
These events culminated this May in a drastic curtailment of the festival honoring the island’s patron saint, Saint Constantius—a ritual involving processions and services that has for centuries been a source of celebration and the renewal of faith. During my twenty-five years of residence on this island, I myself have witnessed these beautiful festivals with deep emotion. This simple and joyful expression of faith—which has steadily diminished in recent years, to the keen disappointment of all Capresi—was reduced this year to a mere shadow of its former self, serving only to needlessly intensify ill will and discontent.
It may be easier for a casual observer to bring these matters to the attention of those capable of providing higher guidance. In this spirit, I humbly ask Your Holiness to intercede so that these expressions of simple beauty and serenity—which the Church can rightly foster—may be preserved in Capri.
A month later, Greene wrote to Hazzard, complaining that he had “received no reply whatever from the Vatican.” Ecclesial authorities, however, did eventually intervene. It was with some relief that by May 1975 Hazzard could joke about the past torture of “pop-songs at 6:45 A.M. and Bing Crosby tunes on the hour.”
—Nic Rowan
