Algernon Blackwood

"He had always been tremblingly aware that he stood on the borderland of another region, a region where time and space were merely forms of thought, where ancient memories lay open to the sight, and where the forces behind each human life stood plainly revealed, and he could see the hidden springs at the very heart of the world."--Algernon Blackwood, from "The Insanity of Jones"The Empty Room and Other Ghost Stories is Algernon Blackwood's first collected work, ten original stories submitted by an old friend of Blackwood's, who thought so highly of them that he sent them to a new publisher by the name of Eveleigh Nash. Nash was so impressed, he offered Blackwood an immediate advance and brought the stories out to the British public that same year in 1906. Filled with chilling, unsettling and unnerving tales of ghostly visitations, The Empty Room serves as the perfect introduction to the world of Blackwood. But it wasn't until The Listener and Other Stories, his second collection, was published by Nash in 1907 that the true brilliance of this master storyteller was revealed to the reading public. Here you will find the otherworldly stories for which Blackwood is best known, true nightmares of supernatural fiction: "The Listener," "Max Hensig," "The Insanity of Jones," the poignant "The Dance of Death"...and, of course, his classic, "The Willows," in which two men on a boat trip down the Danube discover that there are more things in Nature than Man should ever know.

The reputation of early-twentieth century British writer Algernon Blackwood currently resides with his two novellas `The Willows' (1907) and `The Wendigo' (1910), and with good reason. They are perfectly crafted horror tales that convey feelings of mystical otherness; they hint at the possibility that there are forces which lie beyond the confines of our everyday understanding of the world and which may, given the right circumstances, manifest to humans. In `The Willows', `unearthly' creatures are responsible for arousing `some dim ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything' the protagonists have ever known. In `The Wendigo', fear of the titular monster from Native American folklore is used to create a discombobulating atmosphere of dread. In both novellas, as in many other of Blackwood's fictions, wild landscapes (a desolate island, a labyrinthine forest) act as more than enhancing backdrops to the action - they become essential elements to the generation of anxiety and metaphysical awe. Both stories have become staples of the weird literary tradition, of which Blackwood was undoubtedly a modern master. Blackwood's slow and measured prose, deeply psychological and descriptive, grants his fiction an intrinsic cumulative effect. It both builds up to potent climaxes and brilliantly chronicles the aftermath of horrific encounters. His poignant narrative pace, sparse use of action and marked interest in how the mind filters perceptions, rather than on objective physical descriptions, makes Blackwood truly unique. Only a handful of other stories in horror fiction manage to conjure up the type of uncanny ambience found in `The Willows' and `The Wendigo'. This is why they are included in this collection.

The haunted house is a foundational motif in the literary ghost story. There may be a distinct spectral presence, or the building itself (or even just a room) may take on the supernatural essence. Authors have been playing with the theme for decades, exploring the idea of haunting and being haunted within what was intended to be a welcoming home, making clear that tragedy, pain, and evil leave their marks. Eighteen stories and a short series ('The Ghost Hunters, ' by Allen Upward) are included in this volume. Included are: The Ghost Story of Pliny the Younger; The Tapestried Chamber (Sir Walter Scott); The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington (Charles Ollier); The Haunted and the Haunters (Edward Bulwer-Lytton); An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House (Sheridan Le Fanu); The Ghost at Laburnum Villa (Anonymous); The Spook House (Ambrose Bierce); The Little Room (Madeline Yale Wynne); The Red Room (H. G. Wells); The House that was Not (Elia Wilkinson Peattie); A Case of Eavesdropping (Algernon Blackwood); The Southwest Chamber (Mary E. Wilkins Freeman); The Empty House (Algernon Blackwood); The Toll-House (W. W. Jacobs); Afterward (Edith Wharton); The Beckoning Fair One (Oliver Onions); The Attic (Algernon Blackwood); The Decoy (Algernon Blackwood); The Ghost Hunters (Allen Upward)For additional anthologies of supernatural fiction and fantasy, visit CoachwhipBooks.com.

The Willows is famous for being influential on a number of later writers, in particular horror author H. P. Lovecraft who praised it as the finest supernatural tale in English literature. The set-up is intriguing: Two friends are taking a break from a canoe-trip down the snaking, sinuous Danube River when they discover the corpse of a peasant in the woods. When they return to their canoe the oars are missing. As night sets in, a general creeping sense of unease permeates the wild and rural setting...

Newly recruited Scotland Yard detective Gabriel Syme infiltrates a dangerous underworld anarchist group with the help of a poet he befriends, named Lucian Gregory. The taut adventure that ensues is part spy narrative, part dystopian novel and part Christian allegory. Chesterton's unconventional masterpiece has been described as "one of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges."

The Algernon Blackwood Collection includes four of the best Blackwood novellas: The Empty House, The Damned, The Willows and The Wendigo.

The Algernon Blackwood Collection includes four of the best Blackwood novellas: The Empty House, The Damned, The Willows and The Wendigo.

"The Willows" is a novella by English author Algernon Blackwood, originally published as part of his 1907 collection The Listener and Other Stories. It is one of Blackwood's best known works and has been influential on a number of later writers. Horror author H. P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature.

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Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories. His most work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Excerpt: "Certain things, however, gradually then became apparent, forcing themselves upon me. They came slowly, but overwhelmingly. Not that facts had changed, or natural details altered in the grounds-this was impossible-but that I noticed for the first time various aspects I had not noticed before-trivial enough, yet for me, just then, significant. Some I remembered from previous days; others I saw now as I wandered to and fro, uneasy, uncomfortable, -almost, it seemed, watched by some one who took note of my impressions. The details were so foolish, the total result so formidable. I was half aware that others tried hard to make me see. It was deliberate. My sister's phrase, 'one layer got at me, another gets at you, ' flashed, undesired, upon me."

A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr. Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was interested in other things besides moose-amongst them the vagaries of the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....