The titular signalman in the story is responsible for keeping people safe by monitoring the trains that come through his station. However, two mysterious train accidents occurred before the events of the story, which the signalman believes were caused by supernatural forces—a ghost supposedly warned him about the accidents in advance. But the narrator doesn’t believe the signalman’s ghost story, instead assuming that the signalman has lost his mind. At the end of the story, however, the signalman is killed by a passing train, and the details surrounding the accident suggest that the ghost may have predicted his death as well. Readers are thus left to wonder whether the signalman’s death was a simple tragedy or a supernatural event. By leaving room for both possibilities, Dickens suggests that the supernatural is fundamentally unknowable, and that trying to understand and analyze it does more harm than good—doing so may have even caused the signalman’s death.
Although the narrator doesn’t believe him, the signalman is certain that supernatural forces caused the deaths on the train line—and he wants to find out how and why. The signalman’s certainty is based on compelling evidence: he tells the narrator that a ghost appeared at the end of the train tunnel six hours before a train accident occurred nearby. Then, the ghost appeared a second time, just one day before a woman died on a train passing through the signalman’s station. Furthermore, when the narrator first meets the signalman, he apparently repeats the same words that the ghost uttered (“Halloa! Below there!”)—so if the ghost story is true, then the narrator is part of the haunting, which validates the signalman’s belief in the supernatural. The signalman is already certain that the ghost is real, so he confides in the narrator in hopes of figuring out why the hauntings are happening. He tells the narrator that “what troubles [him] so dreadfully is the question: What does the spectre mean?” In other words, the signalman hopes that the narrator will help him better understand the supernatural, demonstrating his belief that the supernatural can be understood.
But instead of confirming the signalman’s belief, Dickens provides alternative explanations through the narrator, who is certain that the supernatural is not involved. The narrator seems to be a trustworthy source of information; though he can be condescending, he judges the signalman fairly, praising his “exact and vigilant” nature and paying close attention to his story. As a result, the narrator’s later skepticism seems credible and unbiased: he acknowledges the strangeness of events, saying that the train accidents are a “remarkable coincidence.” However, he denies that this coincidence is significant. Because of the narrator’s logical nature, his disbelief casts doubt on the signalman’s certainty. The narrator explains away the hauntings by claiming that the deaths are a coincidence, and that the wind in the train tunnel mimicked the sound of a cry. Later, he determines that the signalman has lost his mind as a result of his dismal living situation and high-stress job. The narrator is as certain about the signalman’s mental state as the signalman is about the ghost, and both men provide evidence to prove their point, attempting to analyze the situation according to their own beliefs.
Rather than explaining the true cause of events, Dickens suggests that both the signalman and the narrator’s efforts to understand the situation are futile—and even harmful. Because the narrator is certain that the supernatural is not involved in the railway accidents, he leaves the signalman alone overnight, planning to return the next day to take him to a mental institution. But before he can, a passing train kills the signalman. Though his death may or may not have been an accident, the narrator’s certainty led to a false sense of security, which could have allowed the ghost to harm the signalman in the narrator’s absence. On the other hand, the signalman’s certainty that the supernatural was involved in the accidents could also have caused his death. After all, his death doesn’t fit the pattern he described to the narrator: the first two accidents came almost immediately after the ghost appeared, but this time, the ghost returned a week before the signalman died. The signalman’s manner of death was also different: he didn’t move out of the way after multiple warnings from the engine-driver, Tom, and he died in the same spot the ghost always appeared. It’s possible that the signalman interpreted the ghost’s warnings to mean that he was supposed to die and allowed the train to hit him. Alternatively, the signalman may have been searching for the ghost, too distracted to notice the train. In both cases, his belief that he understood the supernatural, or his belief that he could understand it, may have indirectly led to his death.
In the story’s final paragraph, the narrator explains that the engine-driver whose train hit the signalman spoke his own thoughts out loud: earlier in the story, the narrator assigned the phrase “For God’s sake, clear the way!” to the ghost’s gesture, and the driver yelled this phrase to the signalman. Despite the suspicious coincidence, the narrator chooses not to “dwell on any one of [the] curious circumstances,” never clarifying whether or not he now believes the signalman. Yet he provides no other explanation, implying that he’s uncertain about the truth. By ending the story with a logical character’s uncertainty, Dickens suggests that supernatural events are impossible to understand, like the signalman tried to, or to explain away, like the narrator tried to—neither man’s certainty was beneficial. Instead, accepting uncertainty may be the proper course of action when it comes to the unknown.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Supernatural and the Unknown ThemeTracker
The Supernatural and the Unknown Quotes in The Signalman
His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.
The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.
Was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some conditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night. In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above those lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.
He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken.
‘[…] Let me ask you a parting question. What made you cry, “Halloa! Below there!” tonight?’
‘Heaven knows,’ said I, ‘I cried something to that effect—’
‘Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. I know them well.'
‘Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt, because I saw you below.’
‘For no other reason?’
‘What other reason could I possibly have?’
‘You have no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural way?’
‘No.’
“‘One moonlight night,’ said the man, ‘I was sitting here, when I heard a voice cry, “Halloa! Below there!” I started up, looked from that door, and saw this someone else standing by the red light near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse with shouting, and it cried, “Look out! Look out!” And then again, “Halloa! Below there! Look out!” I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling, “What’s wrong? What has happened? Where?”
[…]
‘I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I stopped, and held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back here. I telegraphed both ways. “An alarm has been given. Is anything wrong?” The answer came back, both ways: “All well.”’
He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice, giving a ghastly nod each time: ‘That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver, Stop! He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us.’
His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.
‘When it first stood under the Danger-light,’ he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, ‘why not tell me where that accident was to happen—if it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted—if it could have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, “She is going to die. Let them keep her at home?” If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signalman on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?’
When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding Appearances.
Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.
The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft a little low hut entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.
‘Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,’ he said, ‘I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.'
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, “Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!”’
I started.
‘Ah! It was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.’
Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the engine- driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate signalman had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself—not he—had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.
