when those demons you're looking to purge just might be your own: Nazareth Hill, by Ramsey Campbell.

0812539303
Tor, 1998
383 pp

paperback

No, S.T. Joshi, this book does not "rival" Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, but it is certainly a good one. It's an incredibly well-balanced novel where the supernatural provides a backdrop for an intense psychological examination of a man as he sinks into his own madness.

Outside the market square, beyond the park gates on a hill in the village of Partington, there lies an old ruined house on Nazareth Row.  It is known to the locals as Nazarill,  but to eight year-old Amy Priestley, it is "the spider house."  Maybe it has something to do with the idea that "its ominous stillness reminded her of a spider crouching in its web," but more likely because

"...since she'd glimpsed her father's fear of spiders despite his efforts to conceal it from her, it somehow stood for fears of her own that she would rather not define."

At the time, though, she "hadn't the words to express that idea." Regardless, dad Oswald decided to teach her a lesson about conquering her fear, and makes her look into the window, so that he can prove to her that there's nothing there. Later we find out that at the time, he's actually more worried that Amy might be showing symptoms of her maternal grandmother's mental illness, so he tries to make her realize that there is absolutely nothing to fear from the house. Unbeknownst to Oswald, he's just made a huge mistake -- Amy does see something there, but so as not to make her parents upset, she hides the panic it causes and never says a word. After a time, she forgets, but it all comes back  seven years later when Amy and her father take up residence in their  newly-rebuilt Nazarill upscale condo. All seems to be going well until strange things start happening at Nazarill -- including a death -- and Amy becomes convinced that there's something more there than meets the eye.  Looking for any kind of answers, she starts researching Nazarill's history.  The more she digs, the more she finds, but in trying to persuade Oswald into believing her that there is weird stuff happening here, she only manages to convince him that there's something terribly wrong with her -- and that perhaps her grandmother's mental illness has caught up with her. Things take a very wrong turn when Oswald refuses to listen to her and she decides to call in and tell the truth on a radio talk show, which only makes things worse and alienates her from the conservative locals. Their complaints to Oswald, her resistance to her father's growing tyranny,  and Oswald's own increasing paranoia lead him to take some pretty drastic and horrific measures to rid her of the demons he thinks are plaguing her.

I must say, I read Campbell's Ancient Images not all that long ago, and Nazareth Hill makes that one seem like the work of an amateur.  This is a great book -- it is a drama based in the real world that finds itself played out on the stage of the supernatural.  It is a look at a man's descent into utter madness and how it affects others around him. The big question, I think, is whether or not what ultimately happens in this book has its roots in Nazarill itself, or would Oswald's decline have eventually happened no matter where he and Amy lived?   It seems that whatever is inside Nazarill has the ability to isolate, understand, and then magnify the fears of its inhabitants. After all, it's not just Amy and Oswald who have issues -- other people in the Nazarill  building have seen and experienced strange things (one even manifesting itself in a group photograph).  But sadly for Amy, Oswald has a number of issues he's internalized (including his arachnophobia) so if you opt for Nazarill,  he's a particularly susceptible candidate for the house's influence.  What's really and truly frightening to me, though, is how calm and caring he appears to those on  the outside, seen to all as a father who wants to help his little girl. The problem is that  no one really understands how far into his own delusional paranoia he's fallen, and even worse -- because of things Amy's done to rock the boat in this little conservative community, no one will listen to her when she begs for help.

I don't understand the negative reviews of this novel -- some people didn't find it scary enough, some thought it was too long and too clunky in terms of how Campbell writes here. I mean, each to his own, but I found it exceptionally frightening on a human level. And while I'm a huge fan of the author's short stories, he manages to keep the tension flowing and building throughout the entire length of this book. A lot of authors I've read can't make that transition and do it well, but in this case, I was hopelessly lost in this story until the ending.  Actually, the ending was kind of what I found not so great about this novel, but for me it's usually about the journey anyway. I have zero qualms recommending this book.

And I digress: following the path of the haunted house -- post number one

from "The Haunting" -- Hill House

A few weeks ago,  I read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and was just blown away with just how great of a book it is. It's definitely not your average haunted house story, for example, as in the case of John Boyne's This House is Haunted, where there is an actual spirit in the house who haunts the governesses of her children, or in  Haunted by James Herbert where there are definitely ghosts who cause trouble for a paranormal investigator. While there's absolutely  nothing wrong with the appearance of ghosts and other creepy entities in haunted house novel (and let's face it -- they're fun when you want a bit of light reading and want that nice shiver of fright running down your spine), The Haunting of Hill House gave me an entirely new perspective on things.  When it was over and I thought about it, I realized that unlike the straight-up haunted house novels mentioned above,  The Haunting of Hill House works at a much deeper level, focusing mainly on the character of Eleanor Vance.  At some point I remember asking myself whether it could possibly be Eleanor herself  unconsciously projecting her own neurosis (and she has many psychological issues that revealed themselves as I went through the book)  and actually creating the "hauntings" that occurred there. On the other hand, it could be the house itself  that is evil in its own right, something malevolent that wants something from the people within. Actually, now that I'm rehashing it in my head, maybe it's a combination of both.

Borley Rectory, England

As much as I would love to talk about the psychological implications of Jackson's novel, since to me they're at the very core of this story,  this post isn't a "review" of the novel at all. Reading Jackson's book has kind of put me onto this haunted house kick, so until I get really sick and tired of the topic, I'm thinking I'd like to do kind of a survey of haunted house fiction to explore how different authors use these spooky dwellings in their work. Nothing too literary, mind you -- just reading for my own entertainment and personal enlightenment.  Right now I'm sort of flying by the seat of my pants re my book choices, sticking to what I have on hand, but I think I'll spend some time researching the history of haunted house literature and sort of arrange my findings/reading in some kind of chronological order if possible. [As an interesting sidebar, I read somewhere once that one of the Plinies even wrote an account of someone staying in a house that was supposedly haunted, but I'll have to double check that].

So far since Jackson, I've read Nazareth Hill, by Ramsey Campbell (another excellent novel but not quite in the same range of excellence as Haunting of Hill House, imo, but close), which I will discuss sometime soon down the road, and another I'll post about shortly, Kim Newman's An English Ghost Story.  Currently I'm reading The Feast of Bacchus by Ernest G. Henham written in 1907 and republished by Valancourt Books.

 Any help with titles would be welcomed, the more obscure, the better.

in search of lost time: The St. Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires, by Eric Stener Carlson

9781905784165
Tartarus Press, 2009
233 pp

hardcover

"Hobbes was right...life is too short." 

Set in Buenos Aires, Miguel Ibaňez spends his days working as a civil servant, "the lowest-rung bureaucrat"  in the "most obscure" Ministry of Parks, Public Monuments and Green Areas. His boss, Gutierrez, has dumped a lose-lose assignment in his lap -- telling him that since he had been a student of "all that philosophy and shit at the University of Buenos Aires," maybe he could figure out how to keep everyone happy on both sides of the issue of gating all of the city's parks and then locking them at night to keep the homeless out.  Miguel knows that whatever he does will cause controversy, and matters are made even worse when he's told he'll be organizing a conference on the topic.  This wasn't the life Ibaňez had planned -- once he'd been a promising PhD student working diligently on his dissertation with the aim of being a professor, but as things so often happen, he had to set his future plans aside and take a job.   As an escape, he often returns to his favorite haunts, bookstores. Not the

"modern bookstores, with hip-hop blaring and cappucinos foaming and salesgirls in tight T-shirts offering self help books on everything from Zen Buddhism"

 but the old stores with "musty" smell, "dusty, isolated from the cares and troubles of the outside world. His favorite is Bernardo's, where the owner sat perpetually thumbing through his well-worn copy of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu.  And indeed time, or more specifically, the secret of  controlling time, is the subject of this fascinatingly strange book, which weaves its way through the streets, the subways and the old bookstores of Buenos Aires.

At Bernardo's one afternoon after a particularly difficult morning at work, Ibaňez is searching for a particular edition of Plato's Republic that he'd been eyeing for a very long time. Grabbing it from its usual spot on the shelves, he discovers to his surprise that he'd picked up a "rather battered edition" of Butler's Lives of the Saints. When he questions Bernardo about the Republic, the only answer the old man can give him is a cryptic "Tempus fugit," before sticking his nose back in the Proust.  He turns to Bernardo's wife Bernardina with the same question, and her response, trying to snatch it from his hand, piques Miguel's curiosity. As he notes,

"The binding was good, the leaves sturdy. But the more I looked at it, the more I felt there was something deeper. I didn't know what it was, but I felt Bernardina sensed it too."

He also had the feeling that this particular book "belonged" to him.  It had for some reason been priced ridiculously low, so Ibaňez decides to buy it. Despite the fact that the money should go toward baby formula for his infant son,  Miguel hands over the cash and claims the book for himself, while Bernardina begs him not to take it.  That night he begins to read, and when he gets to the section on St. Perpetuus, eighth Bishop of Tours, he finds "a series of annotations between the lines," in "beautiful, flowing cursive, the kind you find in old court documents from the 1800s." As he soon discovers, this "sort of malicious diary hidden between the lines and arranged in a series of books" is "anything but saintly."  He begins to lose himself in this secret book within a book, uncovering the writings of a man who claims to have the power to control time. As he follows this man's story, this book becomes Miguel's obsession while juggling work, a wife, and fatherhood; after all, who wouldn't want to know the secrets of how this is possible?  In searching for answers, his obsession slowly turns into a quest, even as he lets his wife and child slip away from him.

The hidden book turns out to have been written by someone who, like Miguel, was a civil servant himself. I won't go into his story, because it is so strange and so fascinating that it has to be experienced firsthand. What I will say is that this book explores the hidden treasures and secrets of a city, saying in effect that even when time is of the essence, there's much to be discovered in the "dark fissures," the history, and the public spaces of where one lives. As Miguel says as he's looking at the stories that are told on the murals of the city subways:

"Such fascinating stories on the subway walls, and yet I bet not one commuter in a hundred knows what the images mean. People are just too busy with their memos and their deadlines and all of the rest of their bullshit to pay attention."

 Beyond the obvious, though, there's the question of time itself -- what would a person do if he/she could go back in time and change things?   The answers are not as cut and dried as one might think.

There's is a LOT going on in this book, but it's all very tightly controlled in the hands of the author, who has woven several topics into one story: the nature of time, the nature of destiny, the hellish and often absurd world of bureaucracy and civil service, and the importance of history.  There are also some very funny moments in this book, including one where I actually recognized myself -- there's one scene where the lights go out in Miguel's apartment, and thinking about changing the fuses, he realizes he doesn't even know what to do -- that the fuse box was "an absolute mystery...Fucking humanities!" That's so me: booksmart but real-world things leave me scratching my head.  On the other hand, it's a very serious story that in my opinion, shouldn't be missed by anyone.

about as dark as it gets, folks...Songs for the Lost, by Alexander Zelenyj

9781908125323
Eibonvale Press, 2014
510 pp

paperback

my copy provided by the publisher -- a very huge and very grateful thanks!

Once again Eibonvale has scored really big on the anthology scale, this time with its collection of short stories Songs for the Lost by author Alexander Zelenyj.  There is no way to pigeonhole these tales in terms of genre or style, so the term "dark fiction" or my new favorite phrase "literary darkness" (thank you, RD) will just have to do for the moment. David Rix, "who first launched the good ship Eibonvale,"  notes in the book's introduction no less than twenty genres, which "suggests a diverse range of styles" including "surrrealism", "weird western," "weird war fiction," "children's fiction," "urban fantasy," "weird erotica," "pulp," "noir," and then his final category, "as well as other less defined things." It is certainly one of the most diverse collections I've ever read -- one minute you're reading about the horrors found in the jungles of Vietnam or Laos and the next thing you know you're in the middle of a suicide cult's final moments -- but even with the wide range of styles on offer here, thematically they all tie together perfectly.  Turning once more to the book's introduction, Songs for the Lost deals with "Human pain on a level that is very real," the kind of pain that brings with it a "parallel need for escape, and with it a kind hope."

There are a total of 34 stories and poems in this collection so it is a huge, all but impossible task to talk about each one on an individual basis and to give each the detailed attention and it deserves.  This is a book inhabited by the lonely, the damaged, the lost, the emotionally tortured;  their collective pain an undercurrent that runs through the entire volume,  their collective desires for deliverance made manifest in several different forms.  For example: a soldier whose mind is broken because he carried out orders. A brother and sister standing on a beach waiting for the inevitable. Two adventurers who stumble into an unknown civilization, one of them guided by fame, the other by wonder. A rock group which rises to cult status and fame after they simply vanish  along with hundreds of fans in an "exodus" tied to the twin stars of Sirius.   And many, many more lost souls to be examined.

I have several favorites from this volume -- "The Dying Days of Treasure Spiders Everywhere," about a troubled boy and his grandfather; "Maria, Here Come the Death Angels," which made me want to cry; "Or the Loneliness of Another Million Years," about a man who meets up with a boy who hears about a special door on a toy radio; "On Tour With the Deathray Bradburys;" "Roaring Dream of the Weeping Spider-Men," which emotionally floored me solely because of its subject matter, and then there's "Far Beneath Incomplete Constellations," one of the best stories in this collection, about a man who uses and abuses a young girl he meets who somehow finds it within her to love him even though he admits her body is just a vehicle for him (to what I won't say).  This story alone, probably the best written in the entire book, combines erotica, fantasy, and magical realism to examine a man who is quite frankly dead inside.

 To unashamedly borrow from the book's foreword  written by Brian A. Dixon, once you step into Songs For the Lost  "you will find yourself among lost souls touring abandoned hopes and forbidden dreams at the edge of an impossible paradise."   And it is exactly the author's ability to place the reader at that edge that  is Zelenyj's special gift.   It is a dark place to be sure, and there were times while reading that I wanted out, but I was just not ready to pack up and leave until the last word appeared on the last page.

Songs for the Lost is that perfect, excellent blend of literary and dark that I am always looking for and in my opinion, it is an absolute must-read for anyone who loves dark fiction.  Highly recommended but not just for anyone. Prepare to be gut punched, and do not read this book while you're depressed. Once again, it's a small press that proves that literary and dark can indeed go hand in hand -- cheers.

sit back, relax, and have fun with this little Valancourt gem: Our Lady of Pain, by John Blackburn

There's a blurb in the back of  this book by Michael Dirda of the Washington Post that says the following:

"Valancourt Books champions neglected but important works of fantastic, occult, decadent and gay literature. The press's Web site not only lists scores of titles but also explains why these often obscure books are still worth reading...So if you're a real reader, one who looks beyond the bestseller list and the touted books of the moment, Valancourt's publications may be just what you're searching for."

I read that little paragraph and recognized myself in the part where he says "if you're a real reader, one who looks beyond the bestseller list and the touted books of the moment," thinking OMG that's me in a nutshell.  I also related to the "often obscure books" that "are still worth reading," thinking yes! That's me too! I love finding new old books, because there's something very satisfying and worthwhile in discovering and reading  off-the-beaten-path books from the past.

One of these old gems is John Blackburn's Our Lady of Pain, now back in print thanks to Valancourt Books:

It's really hard to pigeonhole this novel.  While there is an entire subgenre of "paranormal mystery,"  that's not really an  apt description of this book, nor is it the feel I got while reading it -- I've read enough of them to know the difference. There are definitely some weird elements involved, but Our Lady of Pain is more of a hybrid of mystery and pulp with a helping of horror and supernatural strangeness to keep things lively and entertaining.  It reminds me of a lot of old books I read when I was a kid that incorporated the same three elements and held me completely spellbound for hours.

Our Lady of Pain begins when Daily Globe reporter Harry Clay (who writes "the kind of pretentious tosh our readers love; bless their empty little bird brains")  is sent by his boss to review a production of Shaw's Saint Joan. Lead actress Susan Vallance is widely hated by the public and has a reputation for bullying her co-workers, and Harry's boss thinks that if she happens to flop on opening night, the Globe's readers will be elated since they're "always regaled by the fall of unpopular figures." Harry isn't overly enthused with the idea, and before the curtain rises, he slips out for some air after seeing a doctor whose life story he'd written two years earlier ("a completely evil human being," he believes)  for the paper leaving the stage door.  Harry smells a story and neglects the play in favor of following the doctor.  Once he's home, he writes a glowing review and turns the story just before the paper is put to bed. Unfortunately for Harry, the evening's performance was beyond terrible, bad enough that his review will make the Globe a laughingstock while its  "rivals will have headlines crucifying Susan Vallance."  He wasn't fired, but moved to another paper, The Advertiser, where his life was "now devoted to bishops and mayors opening schools, mayoresses gushing at flower-shows, and aldermen pontificating about the rates."  Harry just knows that if the right story comes along, he can get back in the Globe's good graces -- and he finds it in a conversation  he just happens to overhear at a pub, a conversation that refers to a woman named Naureen in hospital and a "job" done by three people.  One of the speakers mentions a curse and "creatures," which really whets Harry's appetite, especially when he realizes just who it is that is speaking. Following his nose, Harry resorts to some pretty lowlife antics to get the story -- and the trail leads right back to the theater, this time for a production of "Our Lady of Pain," starring Susan Vallance as the countess Elizabeth Bathory.  Harry's attempts at following the path of this cryptic conversation constitutes a large part of this book and leads him on a crazy ride, but even he knows that there's much, much more to this story than quite literally meets the eye.

Blackburn gets very clever in this novel.  Not only does he bring in and add his own versions of the old legends of Elizabeth Bathory, but he also contributes into the mix a unique form of  punishment (perhaps even   justice) suffered by the criminals.  One by one, they become residents of their own personal hells, which are referred to here as "Room 101" reflecting Orwell's  1984. In Orwell's work, it is a place where people are forced to confront their worst fears as a sort of torture designed to completely break down one's spirit, and the same symbolically applies here. He adds another layer to this story by placing it in the context of a house haunted by a strange family tradition starting in 1643, one that only the male heir is made party to on his seventh birthday. When all is said and done, the novel is  particularly creepy and even a little campy sometimes, but more than that, it is immensely entertaining up to the very end, which is definitely one of the more chilling endings I've read in a long while.

I tend to say this a lot, but it's true:  nowadays I think people prefer gorefests, torture and splatter in their horror reading, which is truly a shame because there's so much more out there quality wise in terms of modern horror/dark literature and past works of the genre.  I constantly see bad reviews given to what I consider works of worthwhile writing both past and present because they're "too tame," while stellar reviews are awarded for the instant gratification brought through gore & splatter and the grossest, most dehumanizing  things anyone can imagine.  If that's your schtick, then whatever, but to me it's just plain sad that this sort of thing seems to be so  de rigeur nowadays when I know there is better work out there.  While Our Lady of Pain may not be the epitome of great horror reading,  it is still a fine, forgotten book that deserves to be read, campiness and all.

Stephen King's Revival

9781476770383
Scribner, 2014
403 pp

hardcover

"...it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means."
         
My quotation is not from Revival, but rather from Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan," * a story that seems to have been an influence on King in the writing of this book.  It also influenced HP Lovecraft, whose influence comes shining through here in no small way.

Let me just get this out of the way. Revival is not going to appear on my personal favorites list for the year. It's a very s--l--o--w  buildup of a story to an ending that well, frankly, has been done before. The scenario is very different, but I think having read so much of Lovecraft (and the authors he's influenced over the years) sort of spoiled it for me, so in a way, it's not the author's fault that I didn't like this one as much as I might have.    It's kind of like seeing a movie then going back to read the book -- you already know what's going to happen so there's less of an impact when the ending comes around.

Jamie Morton,  a man in his early sixties, recounts his life story in this book, one that first took a strange turn when he met the Reverend Charles Jacobs at the age of six in 1962.   Jacobs, as Morton notes, is his "fifth business,"  "the joker who pops out of the deck at odd intervals over the years, often during a moment of crisis."  Jacobs has an odd hobby, working with electricity, and his "youth talks" with the kids of the Methodist Youth Fellowship often involved lessons where he used electricity or couched his lectures in electro-speak to illustrate the points he was trying to make.  He was very well liked among the congregation, swelling its numbers to peak levels, and really made an impression when he used an electrical device to help bring back the voice of Jamie's brother Con after an accident that left him mute. All is well until the fateful day that the reverend's wife and little boy went out in their car and were killed.  Afterwards, in his grief,  Jacobs goes to the pulpit where he began  "edging into blasphemy" by renouncing doctrine on the afterlife and by renouncing religion in general as the

"theological equivalent of a quick-buck insurance scam, where you pay in your premium year after year, and then, when you need the benefits you paid for so --pardon the pun--so religiously, you discover the company that took your money does not, in fact, exist." 

The reverend is fired, of course, and leaves town, but it's not the last time Jamie sees him.  Over the next several years, he will cross and recross paths  with Jacobs, and a connection is made that will ultimately change Jamie's life and his understanding of all that he has come to know as reality.

There is a veritable slew of literary influence to be found woven throughout this book -- Machen and Lovecraft are the big ones  I've mentioned, but you'll also find in Jacobs a bit of Captain Ahab going after his white whale.  Mary  Shelley is definitely represented here (in more ways than one), as is M.R. James, Ray Bradbury, and I'm sure there are a few others that I've missed.   There are also, as in many books by this author, bits and pieces of King's own life (and other work) to be found here. As usual, he starts out in small-town America, where the people in the community are your neighbors in the true sense of the word, making everything seem so normal and easygoing that you just can't wait to see what's going to provide the catalyst that changes everything. He also continues his theme of innocence lost, here with a major twist.  When King is writing on religion and the whole spectacle of  the religious-healing-tent-revival he is amazing, making the reader feel like he/she is right there in the crowd,  and he sort of captures my own ideas on the topic. And there's one  more thing:  in one sense, you could try to understand this novel as a reflection on curiosity regarding what might lie on the other side -- and the perils of trying to comprehend forces beyond our understanding.  But on the flip side --  it's so slow -- by page 299 I was thinking that ""maybe, just maybe, we're starting to get somewhere in this book. One can always hope."  And frankly, I just didn't feel like the payoff was worth wading through Jamie Morton's entire life story.  I see so many ways that this book could have been better, but oh well. 

Perusing the normal book-related websites, it seems that people just can't get enough of this book, and the ratings are definitely high.  I wouldn't be surprised to see Revival jetting  into the top ranks of the NYT bestseller list soon, but for me, I'm doing that hand thing that means iffy.


 *from Machen in S.T. Joshi (ed) The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. I of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Chaosium, 2000).

The Master of the Macabre, by Russell Thorndike

9781939140470
Valancourt  Books, 2013
(originally published 1947)
213 pp

paperback

It's impossible to pigeonhole this book into a particular category, so I'm not even going to try, square pegs and round holes and all that.  There's a lot going on in this little book -- it's a different take on the usual haunted house story, it's a ghost story, it's pulpy, and there are a number of spots where it's also funny.  While it's not particularly frightening (or at least it wasn't to me), The Master of the Macabre is still a little gem of a book and makes for fine pre-Halloween (or any time for that matter) reading.

Set in 1940s England, author Tayler Kent has been under a bit of stress over a four-week period,  perhaps due to the "mental strain" of working on finishing a "complicated biography" he's been working on, but he doesn't think so. He's been having strange dreams of shadowy figures with vivid eyes -- a pleading woman and a "commanding and servile" man, "compelling" him to "obey them."  Rather than seek medical help, he decides to take a trip to his cottage on Romney Marsh, where he hopes to find some much needed peace and quiet.  He makes a brief stop at his club, where he is handed a package left for him by his friend Carnaby.  Kent is to deliver the package to the Old Palace of Wrotham, the residence of "The Master of the Macabre." There is no other name given, and Kent shrugs it off as a joke, wondering what Carnaby's up to this time. As he's heading out, the weather is terrible and turns into a terrible snowstorm; on the road, where can barely see and loses control of both brakes and steering, he skids and is enveloped by a "gigantic snow-slide."  While trying to escape being buried in the snow, he injures his leg. Despite the pain, he makes his way to a "fine old place."  It seems that Kent is expected  -- and preparations have already been made for his stay there.  The elderly gentleman who greets him is Hoadley, general factotum to the home's owner, Charles Hogarth, who is also known as (you guessed it) "The Master of the Macabre."  Things start taking a strange turn the very first night of Kent's stay, and while he's laid up, Hogarth shows him a collection of strange relics that he's collected over the years, each with some sort of bizarre story attached to it, and shares his belief that  "every so-called inanimate object in this world...has a being" of its own, which also extends to the house and the objects found within. This theme recurs throughout the book, and is especially highlighted when Hogarth realizes that someone else has laid a claim for one of his valued possessions.   Hogarth is a collector of "the material of odd happenings," --  both his own and others --  and has spent time setting them down into manuscripts "for the few."  These stories, the mystery of the house itself, and the secret behind Kent's sleepless nights slowly unfold as the book progresses.

 

As Hoadley so eloquently reveals, "this house is very susceptible... to susceptible minds."  It also has "influences," and no one who comes to work there will ever stay there after dark.  Hogarth also reveals that the house is "alive," that it's "just like a human being with moods" that need to be humored; it's a house with a mind that needs to be understood.  The house also has  "powerful and insidious" properties, with some rooms much more alive than others, and are more often than not, places where history repeats itself again and again.   However, this book goes well beyond the standard haunted house story filled with ghosts or other terrors.  Hogarth himself is a strange figure, a sort of detective who ferrets out the strange, and as Mark Valentine notes in his introduction (which should definitely be saved until after you've read the last page), his creator finds himself in "good company" among other authors who have written books with a "major plot and conspiracy, augmented by piquant minor side-adventures," none the least of whom are Arthur Machen and Robert Louis Stevenson.  The introduction itself is enlightening, with a very brief history of the rise of the "investigator of the uncanny" and the occult detective.

While the language may be a little overbearing for a modern reader, I had no problem with it, but then again, I love classic tales and have also spent many an hour with my nose buried in the work of golden-age writers of detective fiction who also tend toward the sort of verbosity found here in places.  Some of the stories are delightfully pulpy, while some are just, well, there's no better word than "macabre" to describe them. There were times I couldn't help but chuckle (the story entitled "Concerning a Mad Sexton, A Drunk Hangman and a Pretty Girl" actually brought out a belly laugh) even as dark deeds were being done. Also, don't let the "investigator of the uncanny" thing  turn you away from this little book -- while it may not provide readers with in-your-face horror that many modern readers crave, it's still a fun little book that needs to be looked at  in its entirety rather than just in story-by-story mode.  It's definitely a book to be appreciated, and I give kudos to Valancourt Books for bringing it into the present.