At a Winter's Fire

Bernard Capes wrote ghost stories the way painters approach chiaroscuro: with an understanding that what lurks in shadow matters more than what stands in light. At a Winter's Fire collects his most haunting tales, each one steeped in the atmospheric dread of the Swiss Alps and the fractured human mind. The opening story, 'The Moon Stricken,' follows a traveler through desolate mountain passes who encounters Camille Barbière, a young man whose reason shattered after a traumatic encounter beneath a full moon. Capes builds tension through lingering descriptions of isolation, the suffocating intimacy of snow-bound villages, and the creeping suggestion that Camille's madness holds secrets the narrator dare not fully uncover. These are stories where the supernatural bleeds into psychology until you cannot tell whether the horror comes from without or within. Capes renders the Alps as a character itself: cold, ancient, indifferent to human suffering, its peaks and gorges serving as both setting and metaphor for the abyss. For readers who cherish the work of M.R. James or Stevenson's strange tales, this collection offers similarly sophisticated frights wrapped in prose that rewards slow, careful reading.