"In the Dark" by Mary E. Penn, *The Argosy*

"In the Dark" by Mary E. Penn

This domestic mystery tale unfolds at a Victorian riverside villa called The Cedars, rented for summer by widower John Dysart, an insurance manager, and his daughter Ethel. Ethel begins hearing mysterious sounds—a child's voice crying "Let me out"—emanating from a closet adjoining her bedroom. Despite her father's skepticism, the disturbances persist. Dr. Cameron, a neighbor-physician, reveals that previous tenants reported identical phenomena. He explains: years earlier, the house's occupant Captain Vandeleur locked his orphan nephew, a nervous boy with morbid fear of darkness, in a dark closet overnight as "treatment." The child was found dead the next morning. Though Vandeleur avoided prosecution, the doctor suspects intentional cruelty caused the boy's death. The account suggests supernatural manifestation of the child's suffering, leaving Dysart deeply unsettled about his daughter's exposure to this haunted house.