ALGERNON BLACKWOOD Article by Matt Cowan

Algernon Blackwood was born in 1869 in Kent, England to a prosperous family.  He became interested in the occult at a young age, which would later become evident in his writing.  He rebelled against his family in his early twenties and moved to Canada and America to pursue various jobs.  Some of these jobs included being a dairy farmer, a hotel proprietor, an actor, and a reporter for The New York Sun, where he investigated numerous haunted houses.  He eventually returned to England where he wrote several collections of ghost stories and radio programs.  In 1947, he started telling ghost stories on BBC TV and was dubbed ‘The Ghost Man’.  He received a knighthood in 1949.  Blackwood’s classic tale “The Doll” (1946) was given the small screen treatment in an episode of the wonderful television anthology series ‘Rod Serling’s Night Gallery’.  This story of a cursed doll sent to a British Colonel in retribution for dark deeds he committed in India is one of the highlights of the series. Blackwood died in December of 1951.

1- “The Empty House” (1906) – A man is lured to his elderly aunt’s house because she wants him to accompany her in exploring a nearby haunted house to which she has obtained a key.  When he notices her mind is set on the task, he agrees.  The build up of nervous excitement and the intimidating atmosphere of the place is palpable in Blackwood’s narrative as they approach and enter the dark, vacant place.  As eerie things start to happen, the two take turns drawing strength from one another. 

2- “Keeping His Promise” (1906) – A student cramming all night to study for his exam the following morning is disturbed by someone calling on him.  It turns out to be the disheveled form of his childhood friend that he had not seen for seven years.  His friend is very pale and apparently starving.  He feeds him and lets him sleep at his place, while continuing to study in a different room.  Later when he goes to check on his friend, he is nowhere to be found, but the loud rhythmic sounds of his breathing remains.  The reason for his visit goes back to the early days of their friendship.

3- “A Case of Eavesdropping” (1906) – A man rents a room in a house that has had a partition put up to make one room two.  He is the only tenant but he keeps over hearing loud, violent arguments in the next room.  The growing hostility he hears starts to cause him great concern.

4- “The Willows” (1907) – A pair of friends take an ill advised canoe trip down a section of the Danube River during flood season and encounter tough weather before docking on an island filled with willows.  Strange things begin to occur, and the two thrill seeking adventurers become trapped there.  They witness unimaginable events that seem to be brought about by a powerful unearthly presence.  This is widely considered an all-time classic of horror fiction due to how it subtlety moves from obscure hints that something is not right to the fearful awe-inspiring things that happen towards the end.

5- “The Kit-bag” (1908) – A defense attorney’s secretary asks his employer if he can borrow a kit-bag for his upcoming vacation over the Christmas holidays after successfully defending a grisly murder case.  The case haunted the secretary, and he was glad when it ended.  The D.A. agrees to have one sent up to his room.  The bag he receives is beat up and stained but serviceable.  After it arrives however, strange things begin to occur.  He notices the bag slumps over to form a representation of the murderer’s face, and he starts to hear footsteps nearing his room.

6- “The Whisperers” (1914) – A writer who needs sterile, empty rooms to compose his stories, free of any distractions, gets invited to do so at a house with just such a room.  Inside the room he is assailed by a multitude of different whispers that fight to take control of his imagination.  The best part of this story is what is actually haunting the room.  It is not your run of the mill haunting, but to reveal more here would ruin the story.

7-  “The Other Wing” (1915) – A young boy who lives in a sprawling estate believes an entity representing Sleep visits his room at night to secretly check on him.  This sets him on a quest to find where ‘Sleep’ and its children ‘Dreams’ stay during the daylight hours.  He starts to believe they live in the closed off ‘other wing’ of the house he calls ‘The Nightmare Corridor’.  The lord of this corridor and why he is stuck there are all part of the mystery in this wonderful tale of childhood fantasy.

 8-  “The Valley of the Beasts” (1921) – A cruel hunter and his Indian servant track an enormous Bull Moose into a beautiful valley.  The Indian refuses to go into the area despite the hunter’s brutality to try and force him.  The Indian leaves his master during the night but gives him a small, carved, wood totem for protection inside what he refers to as ‘The Valley of the Beasts’.  The cruel hunter goes in without him and finds an intensely beautiful and serene area, where animals of all sorts show no fear of him.  For a while he forgets his mission in the valley, but when his mind starts to clear things turn much darker.