The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
1906
Algernon Blackwood didn't write ghost stories. He constructed psychological labyrinths where the supernatural is merely the door to something far more disturbing: the dark architecture of the human mind. This 1906 collection announces a master at the height of his powers. The titular tale follows Jim Shorthouse and his formidable Aunt Julia as they spend a weekend in a house reputed to be haunted, armed with nothing but candles and curiosity. But the murder that happened within those walls isn't the real horror. It's the slow, creeping recognition that the house has been waiting for them and that some doors, once opened, never close again. Blackwood understands that true terror lives in implication, in the sound just beyond hearing, in the shape that might be a shadow or might be something patient. Other stories venture into haunted islands, eavesdropped conversations, and woods where the dead do more than linger. For readers who厌恶 easy scares and crave instead the deep, lingering dread of a mind that cannot unsee what it has witnessed.
Editions
X-Ray
“The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings.””
— Algernon Blackwood
“Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their immediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from a thing diseased.””
— Algernon Blackwood
“Ordinary sounds remain ordinary only so long as one is not listening to them; under the influence of intense listening they become unusual, portentous, and therefore extraordinary.””
— Algernon Blackwood
“It was three o'clock; the hour when life's pulses beat lowest; when poor souls lying between life and death find it hardest to resist.””
— Algernon Blackwood
“Of course, he smothered it in words”
— Algernon Blackwood
“For one single second I understood clearly that the past and the future exist actually side by side in one immense Present; that it was I who moved to and fro among shifting, protean appearances.””
— Algernon Blackwood
“It is the same with all the emotions," he said. "The experiences of others never give a complete account. Until a man has deliberately turned and faced for himself the fiends that chase him down the years, he has no knowledge of what they really are, or of what they can do.””
— Algernon Blackwood
“Giles de Rays, maréchal of France, who was said to have killed and tortured to death in a few years no less than one hundred and sixty women and children for the purposes of necromancy,””
— Algernon Blackwood
“He was trying to make up for lost time and money in a way that showed conclusively he did not understand the value of either.””
— Algernon Blackwood
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-empty-house-and-other-ghost-stories-cfc412d4-c40a-478f-9b49-18c167b5eb37"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-empty-house-and-other-ghost-stories-cfc412d4-c40a-478f-9b49-18c167b5eb37)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-empty-house-and-other-ghost-stories-cfc412d4-c40a-478f-9b49-18c167b5eb37][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-empty-house-and-other-ghost-stories-cfc412d4-c40a-478f-9b49-18c167b5eb37Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Blackwood, Algernon. The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-empty-house-and-other-ghost-stories-cfc412d4-c40a-478f-9b49-18c167b5eb37.Blackwood, A. (1906). The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-empty-house-and-other-ghost-stories-cfc412d4-c40a-478f-9b49-18c167b5eb37Blackwood, Algernon. The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-empty-house-and-other-ghost-stories-cfc412d4-c40a-478f-9b49-18c167b5eb37.
