Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood

The bleak, ancient, charnel terrors of a Canadian backwood in the loneliness of a brutal winter; the fever-pitch horror of an apartment tenanted by a vague memory of something ‘other’ and dripping with disease; the vicious portent of things not yet transpired, when seen through the eyes of a troubled and unwilling ‘accessory’ to tragedy; a haunted woodland; a peculiar, abandoned house—Algernon Blackwood’s spellbinding hand weaves each of these, the mundane as much as the startlingly original, into dark jewels of unwavering elegance. Never presumptuous, and yet always the portrait of sophistication, Blackwood’s brooding visions are full of the stuff of nightmare: and yet also dreamy, uncertain testimonies to the merciless show more and mystic facets of a Nature so close to man, and yet so incredibly distinct from him.

Favorites of mine here, in a collection more easily available and more diverse than other Blackwood offerings, include: ‘The Listener,’ which I would consider the most overwhelmingly unnerving and supremely horrifying tale I’ve ever read; ‘Accessory Before the Fact’ and ‘The Empty House,’ both popular Blackwood tales, which operate on more typical ‘supernatural’ levels than the more complex musings found elsewhere in this collection, but are nonetheless especially engrossing and quite scary; and ‘The Wendigo,' which is so blackly atmospheric that, a hundred years after being penned, it still resonates deeply on a level that is difficult to touch in the hearts of men and women who live so far removed from the Nature explored here.

Algernon Blackwood is, by a hair, my favorite author of the short story, and a singular treasure for readers of Weird fiction and the Gothic alike, who will experience a profound and moving admiration for what is truly the horror story elevated to art: there is terror here, certainly, but it is a terror that can only be explained as ‘beautiful’ in its own strange and otherworldly way. Never cliché, a master of atmosphere, and a glowing icon of the genre, Blackwood is required reading. show less

With the thirteen stories presented in "Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood", the author takes what could be the typical ghost story and, while not turning it on its ear, engulfs the reader with a full sense of terror. Not because the stories are filled with blood, death, monstrous demons with fiery eyes and long sharp teeth dripping with saliva. Blackwood creates atmosphere, offering a detailed sense of time and place which turn them into an integral part of the story, almost like characters themselves. Many of his stories feature Nature as an antagonist, when man suddenly finds himself crossing into its unknown and forbidden territories. in The Willows, the trees surrounding a small sand island in the middle of the Danube seem show more almost alive with murmurings and movement to the two men trapped on its shores for two nights. And in Ancient Lights, the forest through which Mr. Thomas must cross in order to reach a small red house appears to toy with him, trees seeming to move to block his path or the trail circling back to his point of entry into the forest.

He also explores the physical and mental terror that the main characters feel, such as in "Max Hensig" when the protagonist Williams begins seeing the poisoner Hensig almost everywhere he goes in New York, as if he were trailing him, waiting to spring his murderous plan into action. With each new sighting, Williams' fright increases until toward the end of the story, he's in full blown terror, and the readers are dragged right along with him.

What I also enjoy about these stories is that the protagonists always have some sort of psychical connection to the events about to take place, such as the immediate, unwarranted dislike of Hensig when Williams first meets him in prison; the feeling that the premonition Martin experiences in "Accessory Before the Fact" as he walks along a road was not meant for him but for another traveler; the hunger that Miss Gould senses calling from a dead patch of earth in her Master's garden in "The Transfer". I think we've all experienced something akin to that at one point or another, a certain sense that tries to warn us about something, but we don't know what it is exactly or how to interpret it so we ignore it. This link just adds to the terror.

Of course, Blackwood also throws in a few traditional tales which still manage to scare the pants off any reader: "The Empty House" which deals with a certain house in which no one will stay for a long period of time; or "The Wendigo" which thrusts a Native American legend upon the minds of two woodsman in the late 1800's.

Fantastic tales, all of them, just waiting to send a few shivers up and down your spine. show less

There is something I find endlessly fascinating about a good ghost story. Reliant entirely on atmosphere and tension (as well as the well-timed release of that tension), the best ghost stories are case studies in sustained mood. Blackwood was simultaneously a master of the form and one of its pioneers. He pushed the limits of what qualifies as a "ghost story" while always remaining true to the basic feeling behind them. By no means a literary virtuoso (and like many genre writers of his era, he was prone to some pretty hackney plots), he was often a brilliant craftsman. This collection, while uneven, contains many of his masterpieces, in particular "The Willows," which stands as one of the best short stories to come out of the horror show more genre. The book could have done without the inclusion of "Max Hensig," an interesting though ill-placed crime thriller that feels more like a place holder than a legitimate entry, rising to comic absurdity when it is supposed to be at its most suspenseful. The popular "John Silence" stories, a couple of which are included here, feature Blackwood's reoccurring psychic detective character in barely more than bit parts, his inclusion a distracting afterthought.

(This review originally appeared on zombieunderground.net) show less

This is a collection of the most famous of Algernon Blackwood's spooky stories, plus a concluding one, 'Max Hensig' which is non-supernatural and deals with a reporter's brush with the psychopathic killer of the title, quite interesting in its own right.

The book opens with 'The Willows', a long story which some have stated is the best ghost story in the English language. I wouldn't agree; for a start, it isn't about ghosts but about the encounter of two men, travelling to the source of the Danube, with forces from another dimension. The setting is a remote marshy area covered in stunted willow bushes, and in the course of the story, the willows take on something of the nature of the inimical force which threatens the two men. I found it show more a bit slow, and its chief interest lay in my conviction that it must have influenced H P Lovecraft, a well-read man, because it is surely the earliest example (the 1907 credit is of its first collection in another anthology, so it is earlier than that) of a story about the intrusion into our dimension of hostile forces alien to humankind - a theme which became Lovecraft's entire oeuvre.

Other stories, such as 'Ancient Sorceries' and 'Secret Worship' concern those who worship traditional sources of evil, such as the devil Asmodeus. A hapless protagonist is drawn into a situation where he feels an irrestible attraction to a place or person, sometimes both - in 'Ancient Sorceries' and 'Glamour of the Snow' the person in question is a femme fatale who exercises an almost literally fatal attraction. The portrayal of witchcraft is always traditionally satanic in nature; far from the nature worship of the modern Wiccan religion which antedated Blackwood's stories.

Other tales are more varied - 'The Listener' concerns an impoverished magazine article writer who takes rooms because they are cheap and finds out why, and 'He Kept His Promise' is about a student who is cramming for his exams when an old friend arrives, sadly transformed. In 'Ancient Lights' a staid officeworker is pixie-lead in an old wood, and an equally unadventurous character on a walking holiday is brought face to face with a moral dilemma in 'Accessory Before the Fact'. 'The Empty House' is the most traditional ghost story in the collection, in which the protagonist is asked to accompany his plucky but elderly aunt who wants support when she spends the night in a local haunted house.

'The Transfer' is unusual in that it is the only story with a female protagonist: a governess who witnesses the visit of her employer's brother, a psychic vampire who leaches vitality from all around him, but who finally meets his match in a rather mystical fashion. And 'The Other Wing' is from the viewpoint of a young boy, although it is rather confusing at first, implying that the boy is an invalid - he isn't - and then that he is much younger than eight or nine; but it does capture well the attempt by a child to make sense of strange phenomena by inventing his own story about it to tell himself.

Some of the stories fall a bit flat with non-conclusive endings: 'Ancient Sorceries', already mentioned, is one of a series Blackwood apparently wrote where someone tells their tale to a "psychic doctor" called John Silence, and trails off rather flatly. However, even where they strike a modern reader as a bit slow or predictable, or lacking an impactful ending, they nevertheless are usually good at evoking an atmosphere of creepy awareness of the supernatural.

Not the final story in the book, but the one I most enjoyed was the first Blackwood story I ever read, 'The Wendigo'. Despite last reading this as a child, I still remembered certain striking details. The story holds a strange power and tellingly, is set in the great outdoors of remote Canada. Blackwood was a great explorer of wildernesses which still existed in the early Twentieth Century, Canada being one, and in 'The Wendigo' he evokes the remote loneliness and power of the forests and the strangeness of its denizens. Loosely based on a Native American mythological character, this story still creates shivers, though it is necessary to overlook the stereotypes of the era, including the somewhat condescending portrayal of the Native American cook and general dogsbody.

Given the mixture of stories and their varying success for me, my overall rating for the collection is 3 stars. show less

the "horror" in these stories is mostly "i flirted with a pretty woman but sexual attraction is a lure used by witches" or "i talked to a stranger and he turned out to be German" or "i trusted a Frenchman and you know how those Frenchmen are (demons)" and "ugliness is probably a sign that god hates you."

so ... a good read, if you're incredibly sexist & xenophobic, and really really really love a prose that does not hint at an idea so much as explains it, repeatedly, with flashing neon arrows just in case you missed the point.

I mostly liked reading this collection of stories by Algernon Blackwood. There was a number of creepy moments, and the stories that stood out for me include "Max Hensig," "The Other Wing," "Keeping His Promise" (which quite spooked me!) and "The Wendigo."

Except for "The Wendigo" I just couldn't get into this. The stories start out interesting but tend to fizzle out as they reach the end.