Algernon Blackwood

Blackwood wrote over 200 short stories and 12 novels, and is considered by some to be the greatest supernatural writer of the early 20th century. His stories are most often set in an ordinary world, so that when the horror and ghostly elements appear, they surprise the narrator and the reader. Even the most innocent meeting (as in "The Glamour of the Snow" can turn into an event of terror. "The girl stood in front of him, very near; he felt her chilly breath upon his cheeks; her hair passed blindingly across his eyes; and that icy wind came with her. He saw her whiteness close; again, it seemed, his sight passed through her into space as though she had no face."

From The Empty House: "Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. With houses it is the aroma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof, long after the actual doers have passed away, that makes the gooseflesh come and the hair rise. Something of the original passion of the evil-doer, and of the horror felt by his victim, enters the heart of the innocent watcher, and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin, and a chilling of the blood. He is terror-stricken without apparent cause. . . . "