Outside the Door

Fiction ~ short story
First published in London Magazine, January 1910
Collected in The Room in the Tower (1912)
3,055 words
(First read 03/07/2012) 

Outside the Door is more interesting for containing a clear(ish) exposition of a favourite 'spook' idea of EFB's than as an actual ghost story.  The idea is that just as violent human emotions ~ most notably fear ~ can affect the body, so too can they affect the physical fabric of surrounding objects, so that the objects become somehow permanently 'imbued' with those emotions: hence a lot of ghostly manifestations are merely 'echoes' of past events.  (Well, something like that, anyway.)  Benson then goes on to illustrate his theory with a woefully humdrum haunting which wouldn't so much as disconcert a highly-strung nun.
You can judge for yourself by reading it online here.