L.P. HARTLEY ARTICLE By Matt Cowan

Leslie Poles Hartley was born in Whittlesea, Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1895.  He joined the British Army in 1919, but was sent home after a short stint due to medical problems.  He started his writing career as a fiction reviewer for several magazines, which he continued at for thirty years.  His first published book was a collection of short stories titled Night Fears (1924).  He also published other short story collections of the supernatural, such as The Killing Bottle (1932) and The Traveling Grave (1948).  He is probably best known for his country life novel The Go-Between (1953), which won him the Heinemann Foundation Prize of the Royal Society of Literature in 1954 and was made into a well-regarded feature film 1971.  Hartley’s ability to create a strong atmosphere of country life is evidenced in many of his horror stories, particularly with “Feet Foremost” and “The Cotillon”.  Hartley died of heart failure in 1972.  

- “Feet Foremost” (1938) – A group assembles for the housewarming of the newly renovated Low Threshold Hall. The house had sat unoccupied for the previous hundred and fifty years.  A young woman and her fiancée arrive at separate times, which proves unfortunate for the prospective groom as he was not present to hear the legend of the malicious ghost that haunts the hall.  It is said that the ghost of an ill-treated former mistress of the hall tries to gain entry across the threshold of her former residence, and if successful, she will possess and eventually kill the person who carries her through the front doors.  Once that person is dead, she will leave the hall within their body, carried out of the house feet first.  The reason the house has a low threshold is to help identify the ghost, as she looks normal when she arrives at the front door seeking admittance.  If a woman appears and asks for assistance inside, they will know she is the vengeful specter.  She is seeking retribution against anyone who takes her inside no matter what their connection to the descendants of the cruel husband who crippled and later killed her.  She is a particularly malevolent entity that shows no mercy towards her victims in this great haunted house story.

- “The Cotillon” (1948) – Marion Lane is a beautiful and flirtatious lady who attends an event called a cotillon, which is like a masquerade party where there are a series of games designed to choose a dancing partner without knowing who that person is.  A mysterious man takes her interest during the event.  He irradiates an aura of cold and doesn’t speak much.  When he does speak to her after getting her alone, he says things that are both chilling and horrific.  This is a story where the ending will stay with you long after its completion.

- “The Thought” (1951) - A man’s pleasant existence becomes unbalanced when a dark thought enters his mind unbidden and starts to dominate everything else.  He can only banish the thought by going to a local church and praying in a loud, boisterous fashion.  Onlookers believe he is praying for things he should not.  When he soon becomes rich afterwards, his motives are questioned even more.  One evening, something dark comes to him when he is alone in the darkened church on a cold night.

- “W.S.” (1954) – A writer starts to receive postcards from someone he believes to be a fan.  Messages written on them start off friendly but gradually become more ominous.  They are all signed W.S. and originate from locations that are moving steadily closer to the recipient.  Strange coincidences regarding these notes cause him to question his own sanity, as well as to ponder possible supernatural origins of its sender.

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