Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood (Dover Literature: Gothic/Horror Short Stories)

No spoilers. 4 stars. BEST GHOST STORIES OF ALGERNON BLACKWOOD...Although I've rated this collection of 13 short stories by Algernon Blackwood 4 stars overall, there are a few 5 star tales within and I've rated each story individually... so enjoy!...THE WILLOWS: 5 stars.Two camping companions canoeing on the Danube decide to stop for the night on a small island surrounded by marsh willows... they got more than they bargained for because the willows were looking for a victim...SECRET WORSHIP: 4 1/2 stars.Harris, traveling from England through Germany stops at a railway inn for supper and meets a priest and fellow Englishman at table. Harris tells the men he had attended university here at a school run by a devout brotherhood of priests and he intends to pay them a visit... the priest tells Harris: You will find the brotherhood different...ANCIENT SORCORIES: 3 stars.A psychic doctor who loved to unravel mysteries to their very soul meets a man who was crossing northern France and decided to exit the train at the next stop and spend the night at the inn there... but the little village was stranger than he anticipated... and so were the people...THE GLAMOUR OF SNOW: 3 stars.Hibbert is vacationing in the snowy Alps. Three worlds vacationed there: tourists, peasants and nature; he felt he belonged to the world of nature... and it was this self-identification that led him to be vulnerable to the wiles of a young woman he met one cold, windy midnight in the deserted skating rink..THE WENDIGO: 4 stars.A seasoned group of moose hunters camp in the Canadian wilderness... one of the men goes missing... some say he had met the Wendigo...THE OTHER WING: 2 stars.A little boy is fixated on a forbidden wing of the old family house. One night he wakes to find the doors open to the corridor of the Other Wing... he gets his great grandfather's walking cane and enters the Corridor of Nightmares...THE TRANSFER: 2 stars.A clairvoyant English nanny and her little charge, a boy called Jamie, seem to be the only people aware of the vampiric pull of a dead patch of ground in the corner of the garden and an energy-sucking Uncle Frank... which of the two will win the energy tug-of-war?...ANCIENT LIGHTS: 4 1/2 stars.A surveyor's clerk was on his way to see about cutting down an ancient wood which was interfering with his client's view... the day was blustery and cloudy with a threat of rain when the clerk came to the wicket gate leading into the wood. He quickly became lost in the trees... he saw in the distance the gamekeeper and asked if this was Lumley Wood... the gamekeeper replied: This wood is ours; trespassers will be persecuted (not prosecuted)...THE LISTENER: 4 stars.A man finds cheap rooms for rent at the end of a brick alleyway surrounded by tall buildings in the center of London... the rent is good but the rooms are as quiet and cold as the grave... but late... after midnight... each evening... he hears footsteps on the stairs leading to the little room under the roof...THE EMPTY HOUSE: 2 stars.An elderly aunt and her nephew get the keys to a house in the town square believed to be haunted... they agree to go there at midnight and see if there is any truth to this urban legend...ACCESSORY BEFORE THE FACT: 5 stars.A man on a walking holiday stood at the moorland crossroads reading the signpost and consulting his map... he thought he had taken a wrong turn while taking a shortcut......but the shortcut snare is an old trick. He followed one of the arms of the signpost and, at dusk, came upon two tramps covered in rags who appeared to be waiting for someone...KEEPING HIS PROMISE: 4 stars.A student cramming for the next day's exams was interrupted at about 11:00 pm by an old friend who appeared on his doorstep on this rainy night tired and clearly starving... Very atmospheric!...MAX HENSIG: 5 stars.This is an excellent story about a NYC reporter writing a story about a German doctor on trial for his wife's murder... the man was eventually acquitted but not before the reporter had written a series of stories about the trial slanting toward the doctor's guilt...... now the disgruntled German doctor is out to kill the reporter... This engrossing cat and mouse story is similar in some ways to Stephen King's short story APT PUPIL.This was a great sampling of the atmospheric and eerie stories of Algernon Blackwood. They make good bedtime stories (for adults) which can be finished in one sitting although 2 of the stories, THE WILLOWS and MAX HENSIG are more in the novella territory. I usually avoid collections but this one is exceptional!

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was a fascinating writer. Although he wrote in other forms-novels, children stories, and an autobiography, for example-it is his horror/supernatural stories that have most endured. His "The Willows" (included in this anthology) is often singled out as the best English-language supernatural story.His writing career was long, spanning about 1905-1945, with peak productivity about 1910. Because of this long career, his earlier and later works have a noticeably different "feel," the earlier works having a decidedly Edwardian cast. Taking 1910 as the benchmark, Blackwood's writing falls about halfway between the pioneers in the horror/supernatural genre (Mary Shelley, John Polidori, et al) and the present. Blackwood lived for extended periods in the US and Canada, but most of his writing occurred in England, his birthplace. He left no stylistic direct descendant, though Lovecraft is often mentioned.If there is a single theme connecting Blackwood's supernatural writings, it is the Platonic idea that "ordinary" reality is but a façade. Behind this façade lie other realities, awesome, but imperfectly accessible to the human mind. Of course many religions share this idea. But whereas their "other reality" is vastly superior to the one we know, Blackwood's is grimmer and darker.Blackwood serves up this idea in several flavors: 1) alien creatures from another dimension (The Willows), 2) elementals or animistic spirits (Glamour of the Snow, The Transfer, Ancient Lights), 3) devil-worshiping monks (Secret Worship), 4) people and entire towns with secret lives (Ancient Sorceries), 5) conventional ghost stories (The Empty House, The Other Wing, Keeping His Promise), 6) Jekyll/Hyde duality (Max Hensig). A few stories, such as The Wendigo, are hard to characterize, seemingly falling into several of the above.To what extent must a writer actually believe his/her ideas to be effective? Does a ghost-story writer need to believe in ghosts? Not consciously perhaps, but on some level almost certainly. Apropos of this, much has been made of Blackwood's Sandemanian background. An extreme Calvanistic sect, the Sandemanians place great emphasis on sin and perdition. In adult life Blackwood appeared to reject these teachings, and turn to other religions. (In fairness to that religion: the great Michael Faraday appeared to be a contented life-long Sandemanian.)Yet, it is probable that highly emotional ideas, learned early in childhood, can never be completely expunged. Such ideas, in one form or another, appear to become permanent dwellers of the persons psyche. Attempts to expunge them only result in the temporary breaking of the bonds these ideas have with other parts of the mind. The ideas themselves however refuse to stay isolated, and constantly strive to form new meaningful connections. It is possible that this striving can become a great source of creativity.This ceaseless striving may also explain some inconsistencies in Blackwood's works. Consider: the effectiveness of his masterpiece, The Willows, lies in its premise of an intelligence so utterly alien that "it has nothing to do with us." Vastly powerful and amoral, this intelligence cares nothing about mankind and mankind's affairs. While it is not expressly hostile, neither can it be propitiated in any known way. As a result, humans are reduced to utter insignificance. Yet toward the end of the story this intelligence is seemingly "propitiated" by a human "sacrifice." How so? If human lives are nothing to this intelligence, why not 10,000 victims - or none at all? Could Old Testament ideas of sacrifices and burnt-offerings be intruding? Does this anthology really contain all the best ghost stories of Blackwood? Yes, by and large, it does! However, Blackwood was quite prolific, so it would be very easy to compile a second anthology nearly as good as the first. (Perhaps Dover can be convinced of the merits of this.) Two personal favorites that I would like to see included in such a collection are "The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York," a kind of werewolf story in which the lycanthropy appears to be induced by chemical experiments - and "The Doll," quite possibly the inspiration for Chucky. (Rev. A, Feb. 2004)

Ordered this because, for years, I had been teaching Blackwood's story "The Kit-Bag" as part of a Gothic module at Key Stage 3 at school and wanted to read more stories by the same author, who I knew very little about. There is a good introduction about Blackwood himself and the edition includes the author's own 1938 introduction to his tales, which is excellent. He is a master of building up tension and suspense and the tales are worth reading for this alone. He is particularly interested in the power of Nature to come alive and take possession of people as a terrifying entity; read "The Willows" and "The Wendigo" to experience this for yourself. His skill lies in layers of small detail that slowly build up to create fear; don't expect lots of action, but do expect to feel your skin crawling and a sense of claustrophobia when reading these tales. You are relieved when a story ends, but you don't want to reach the end either!This man was an unsung master of the ghost story genre-I recommend you to read these and more!

There is a humanity in Blackwood's stories I believe born from his life experience of both the ordinary and banal and the extraordinary and esoteric. Highly recommended.

This book shouldn't be called "ghost" stories, because only two of them were about ghosts. Most are just VERY strange. Recommended.

Not sure about this, i remember reading Blackwoods work when at school and don't remember them being such hard work,It seems that the stories are a lot longer than they need to be.Theres setting a scene, and there's boring.

I have not started this book yet although i am already familiar with some of the stories. Algernon Blackwood is my personal choice as the best twentieth century writer of supernatural fiction.