The Haunting of Drumroe

The Haunting of Drumroe
Claudette Nicolle | Fawcett Gold Medal | 141 pages | 1971

Eileen Donegan returns to Ireland and her ancestral family home after receiving a cryptic letter of help from her aunt Agnes, Lady Donegon of Drumroe. Driving to the remote estate, Eileen is nearly killed by a tree falling across the road, sending her rental car plunging into a lake. Finally arriving at the great house, she is alarmed to discover that her aunt has gone missing, and that none of the household staff can explain her absence.

A familiar gothic thriller template is further established with the introduction of two competing love interests for Eileen, the dark-haired solicitor Rory Muldoon and the gray-eyed local historian Colin Riorden. A bit of unnecessary backstory relating to Eileen’s philandering ex-husband lays the groundwork for her shifting affections between the two men, which is expressed mostly through some feverish hand holding and a few chaste kisses.

Claudette Nicolle is a pseudonym for John Messman, who wrote a number of these genre staples, almost universally featuring covers depicting women in nightgowns running away from castles. Hints of this underlying male authorship abound by the fascination with Eileen’s sleeping in the nude, and the repeated references to her firm and ample breasts.

Although there are no actual hauntings in The Haunting of Drumroe, supernatural elements emerge through Eileen’s psychic abilities. Reportedly descended from an infamous local witch, Eileen has received psychic impressions of family tragedies at various periods throughout her life, some at great distance. Now, her psychic impressions tell her that aunt Agnes is dead, although the details are maddeningly scarce.

Beyond simply “knowing” that her aunt is dead, Eileen’s psychic talents are mostly underutilized and not particularly relevant in solving the mystery. Eileen is even less gifted as a traditional detective, since she seems bluntly oblivious to the fairly overt clues leading to the person responsible for her aunt’s disappearance, the attempts on her own life, and a laundry list of other mysterious deaths in the family.

The Irish setting is modestly rendered, but appealing: the small villages, the rolling hills, the chilly lough, the lonely cemetery, and—of course—the weird pagan rituals in the woods at night. The political violence in Northern Ireland is introduced as a possible explanation for an attack on Eileen, but it does feel slightly out of place in an otherwise standard genre work that could have easily been set in the nineteenth century.

A perfectly serviceable, if altogether unmemorable, gothic thriller.

The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux | Warner Books | 1986 (first published 1909) | 264 pages

With Andrew Lloyd Webber’s pop-cultural juggernaut retiring from Broadway, now is perhaps a good time to return to the Paris Opera House and reevaluate Gaston Leroux’s original The Phantom of the Opera.

The book unfolds almost as a true-crime account, with the unnamed narrator reflecting back from some distance of years upon the course of the strange events, disappearances, and unexplained deaths that confirm his ultimate conclusion:

“The Opera ghost really existed.”

The atmosphere of fear is established at once, as a group of ballet dancers relate the various sightings of the “Opera ghost” that sometimes appears within the labyrinthine Palais Garnier. After one such encounter, stagehand Joseph Buquet was discovered hanged to death, although the rope itself was not found. The existence of the ghost, however, cannot be dismissed as simple hearsay among the performers. A change in stewardship of the Opera leads the outgoing directors, Debienne and Poligny, to confirm the existence of the ghost to their replacements and to pass along his written list of demands, hand lettered in blood-red ink.

Initially dismissing the ghost as a practical joke, the new directors, Moncharmin and Richard, slowly come to realize the deadly seriousness of the missives received in the shaky block lettering of the phantom’s hand. Their attempts to ignore or thwart the ghost’s instructions lead to several genuinely suspenseful moments, culminating in a decidedly memorable performance of Faust and a deadly falling chandelier.

The Palais Garnier provides a fantastic background, the theater’s opulent private boxes, warren of backstage rooms, and multiple mezzanine levels offering its shadowy resident the ability to travel in secret and set in motion his elaborate plans. The phantom’s disembodied voice is eerily present, whether from behind a dressing room mirror or from an empty seat inside a private-viewing box. The locations become even more fantastic at greater depth beneath the Palais Garnier, culminating in the secret lair on the far shore of the underground lake, its mirror-lined torture room providing a deadly trap for intruders.

Considering it features a purported ghost, the story mainly eschews any specifically supernatural elements. However, a greater fantastical lore beyond the phantom is implied through several references to other denizens existing under the Opera House, such as the flame-headed rat catcher and the mysterious siren of the lake, without explicitly detailing their nature. The eventual need to explain all in mortal terms causes the book to fall somewhat in its extended epilogue, which provides unnecessary explanations of every seemingly impossible action perpetrated by the ghost, along with some improbable personal histories.

The book is inarguably a classic on many levels. Undoubtedly deriving from the original serial nature of the work, the action constantly moves the story forward at a brisk pace. The evocative locations raise the Palais Garnier to a fully realized character in its own right. However, it’s the latent romantic triangle that fully occupies the story’s heart and tragically informs the entire work.

Young understudy Christine Daaé delivers a star performance when she steps in to replace the lead soprano, who has suddenly fallen ill. However, her success comes with a price, namely the growing obsession of the man she refers to as the Angel of Music. Christine knows this secret music tutor as Erik, but he is also–of course–the phantom of the Opera. When her childhood crush, Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, visits her dressing room after the performance, the ensuing jealous rivalry sets into motion a fatal series of events.

Raoul proves to be an earnest, somewhat bland, and frequently ineffectual romantic hero. After Christine’s disappearance, he relies heavily upon the Persian, a ubiquitous character with a mysterious personal history, to pursue Erik through the various underground realms. Christine’s continued loyalty and empathy toward the tortured genius Erik, even after his unmasking, is not entirely unthinkable, skull face and dangerously violent personality notwithstanding. She may be romantically drawn to Raoul, but she is unable to break the profound musical bond she shares with Erik, even though she is simultaneously repulsed by his physical appearance. Undoubtedly evil, but Erik is also something of a Renaissance man: unmatched vocalist, genius composer, cunning assassin, master architect, and gifted…ventriloquist?

This universally acknowledged classic is, unsurprisingly, well worth a revisit–even without the benefit of the soundtrack album.

The Listening House

The Listening House
Mabel Seeley | Doubleday | 1938 | 296 pages

“You let me see you talking, just talking, to that guy, and I’ll take your pants down and spank you with a table leg.”

After losing her copywriting job because of a major proofreading error, Gwynne Dacres moves into a slightly down-at-heel boarding house to stretch her modest savings. Although described as “respectable” by the house’s landlady, Harriet Garr, 593 Trent Street is perched on a steep incline overlooking a seedy neighborhood, and produces a somewhat disquieting effect upon Gwynne. Her anxiety proves justified, however, when she discovers the body of a murdered man that has been dumped over the railing behind the house.

The dead man is found to have ties to organized crime, but the police ultimately fail to connect him to any of the tenants. Meanwhile, Mrs. Garr appears nervous, suspecting someone in the house of searching through her possessions. Several days after purportedly leaving town on a trip to Chicago, Mrs. Garr’s body is discovered in the locked basement kitchen–the cause of death obfuscated by the gnawings of her hungry pet cats!

The various details may be grisly, but the general tone is lightened by Gwynne’s unflagging determination and self-confidence. Although met with personal setbacks and much condescension from various authority figures, she remains steadfast in her resolution that Mrs. Garr was murdered. Her banter with Hodge Kistler, fellow tenant and playboy heel/romantic interest, evokes the kind of back-and-forth patois found in other sparkling Golden Age mysteries, although not as fully successful here. Even the grumpy Lieutenant Strom (whom Gwynne suspects is married) eventually wants to take her out to dinner and a movie.

Gwynne is also remarkably resilient. She is almost strangled, attacked with ether, struck with a hammer, and tumbles down a flight of stairs, but never loses her verve and good humor. She plays the role of amateur detective well, searching through the private lives of the motley group of tenants who inhabit the boarding house. The case becomes more complicated than it initially appeared, when Mrs. Garr and several of the tenants are revealed to be connected to a tragic suicide that occurred nearly twenty years before.

Gwynne describes the house as quiet, yet seemingly listening to all activity, and this atmosphere of eerie suspense adds much of the appeal of the story. Although the murderous events take some time in getting going, the mood established through the location and its cast of dubious characters is thick with menace beyond Gwynne’s door–wedged shut with a kitchen chair under the knobs.

Add the prospect of a hidden treasure to the whodunnit, and The Listening House becomes an enjoyable, if not particularly weighty, romp.

Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Night Has a Thousand Eyes
Cornell Woolrich | Ballantine | 1983 (first published 1945) | 304 pages

A dark prophecy of death sends a man and his daughter into a downward spiral of despair in this supernaturally-tinged noir from the famed author of Rear Window.

While strolling along the riverside late one night, off-duty detective Tom Shawn comes across a distraught young woman standing upon the raised embankment, seemingly in contemplation of jumping to her death. Talking her down from the ledge, Shawn escorts her to a nearby diner, where she confides her fatalistic story of a foretold death.

The book is split roughly into thematic halves, with the first recounting the series of successful prognostications leading Jean Reid and her father, Harlan, to become convinced of the veracity of a psychic’s visions of the future. The predictions culminate in a very precise foretelling of Harlan’s death three days hence at midnight.

Even the means of death, simply described by the psychic as death by lion, becomes somehow less absurd when a pair of lions escapes from a local traveling sideshow.

The second half of the book is less satisfying, describing Shawn’s attempts at stopping the prophecy and saving Harlan’s life. Even considering that Shawn is calling in a personal favor from his superior on the police force, the sheer number of officers pulled into an extensive investigation and protection operation—based on a nominal threat described in a psychic vision—is almost as comical as the purported means of death.

Harlan’s rapid descent from self-confident businessman to sniveling coward in the light of the fatal prediction also deflates much of the interest in seeing Shawn triumph in saving his life. By the time a wasted Harlan begs not to be left alone while watching the clock tick down to midnight, many readers will probably wish that Shawn would drag the defeated wretch down to the zoo and toss him headfirst in the lion’s den himself.

The final dinner party, characterized by Shawn and Jean’s forced cheerfulness in order to distract Harlan’s broodings, goes on much too long, with several instances of conversational near-blunders referencing time or tomorrow. Even playing records isn’t safe, with unexpected lyrics mentioning destiny threatened to send Harlan deeper into a fully self-absorbed despair. Intended as a suspenseful, against-the-clock countdown, the scene just drags along, not helped by the latent romantic undercurrent of Shawn and Jean’s banter.

However, the overall mood is effectively dark, with a fatalistic, downbeat atmosphere for characters to squirm around inside while fighting against their destinies. Although the conclusion casts the nature of the predictions themselves in an ambiguous light, the inevitable outcome clearly suggests the futility of struggling against one’s own fate.

***

SPOILER ALERT: Fraud or not, the psychic was—strictly speaking—not wrong about the lion!

The Black Abbot

The Black Abbot
Edgar Wallace | Hodder & Stoughton | 1959 (first published 1926) | 192 pages

Harry Alford, 18th Earl of Chelford, is obsessed with the legend of a buried treasure hidden somewhere on the grounds of Fossaway Manor. His search for the cache of gold bars–not to mention a bottle containing a magical elixir granting immortal life–is thwarted by his fear of the Black Abbot. This ghostly specter is rumored to restlessly stalk the estate, the reputed site of his murder two centuries earlier, and protect the treasure from discovery.

Although an early encounter with the Black Abbot is reported by a second hand witness, nearly a dozen chapters elapse before the sinister figure is directly spotted in the ruins of the old abbey. The bulk of the early novel revolves around a series of schemes and extortions to secure the engagement of Leslie Gine, Harry’s fiancée and sister of the Alford family attorney, Arthur Gine.

Arthur has accumulated a series of gambling debts, fueled by theft from his sister’s inheritance and from the Alford family trust. However, his plan to wed Leslie to the Earl of Chelford is thwarted by his colleague, Fabrian Gilder, a shady character who has his own romantic designs for Leslie. Complicating the romantic landscape is Richard Alford, Harry’s brother and penniless “second son” of the Alford family, who is Leslie’s secret love.

Leslie seems to be more of a prize than the buried treasure, with a spinning wheel of characters determined to win her affections. The unfolding of various plots to win Leslie’s hand in marriage easily supplants the hunt for the buried treasure. The Black Abbot remains mostly a background figure until deep into the book, when the murder of a figure in a black cowl sends the narrative into a more action-oriented mode.

Although mixing elements of blackmail, extortion, and murder, the obsessive search for treasure–whether buried or married–also manages a more lighthearted tone, although perhaps it could simply be a result of the book’s vintage or melodramatic machinations. Strip away the mystery elements and play up the slapstick, and the single-minded pursuit of treasure could eventually sink into It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

After Leslie is kidnapped, the chase is on through the subterranean labyrinth sprawling beneath the ruined abbey. The atmosphere is evocatively gothic, and although the villain’s reveal is not particularly unexpected, the lagging narrative finally gets some punch. Some of the other characters who were initially teased as potential villains show an unexpected willingness to assist in Leslie’s rescue. They remain morally dubious, but the shift in allegiance is curious.

However, the essence of Leslie’s attraction remains stubbornly vague, with her character finally reduced to a kidnap victim repeatedly screaming for the aid of her beloved, would-be rescuer, “Dick! Dick!”

Night-World

Night-World
Robert Bloch | Tor Books | 1986 (first published 1972) | 252 pages

Karen Raymond, copywriter for a downtown Los Angeles advertising agency, receives a call from the small private sanatorium where her husband Bruce has committed himself. The clinic’s director informs her that Bruce’s condition is improving, and requests that Karen come visit her husband for the first time in six months to help confirm the diagnosis and potentially trigger his release from custody.

Upon arriving at the remote Topanga Canyon institution, Karen discovers that the director and sanatorium staff have all been murdered, and that the small group of patients–including her husband–has escaped. Prior to fleeing the sanatorium, the escapees burned all their case files, casting their individual identities into question. Since the police are able to positively identify Bruce Raymond through Karen, he immediately becomes the prime suspect for the murders.

However, the killings don’t end at the sanitorium. The bodies of the escapees soon begin to be discovered around Los Angeles, apparently murdered by one of their own. Although Karen maintains her husband’s innocence, she slowly begins to wonder whether she will become a target herself.

Although alternating chapters detail the final moments of the victims, none of the kills are particularly gruesome or suspenseful. The primary tension arises from whether or not Karen’s steadfast support of her husband will waver, as the circle of death closes in around them both.

Underlying the obvious slasher formula is a bleak commentary on modern society, from cynical riffs on the marketing and consumption of cheap goods to allusions of lonely consumers eating frozen dinners off plastic plates. Frequent asides rage against the dirty life-styles of (then current) hippies, the scurrilous banter of stand-up comics, and the injustice of the economically divided neighborhoods of Los Angeles, its smoggy streets seemingly populated by a never-ending roster of cheap hustlers and serial killers.

These sour bits of social commentary read more curmudgeonly than insightful, attempting to cast a little shade in the background of a rather straightforward thriller narrative. A brisk, single-sitting read at a few hundred large-type pages, Night-World tries for a twist ending and tidy resolution, but ultimately lacks much impact.

Pin
Andrew Neiderman | Pocket Books | 1981 | 264 pages

Not just your typical love triangle between a boy, his sister, and an anatomically correct mannequin, Pin is a deviant little oddity that exudes a disquieting charm.

Raised by an emotionally distant father, a detached and unfeeling medical doctor, and a cleaning obsessed mother, Leon and Ursula learned early in their lives to exclusively rely upon each other. After the untimely death of their parents, the siblings retreated even further into their hermetically sealed world, living alone in their inherited estate. The only other person of significance, particularly for Leon, was not exactly a person at all, but was instead their father’s life-sized medical model, Pin.

Leon engages in dialogue with Pin on all manner of topics, but most noticeably about what his father termed “The Need” in his adolescent children. Leon and Ursula share a frank openness regarding their developing bodies, but the insertion of Pin as a plastic proxy sends their relationship into an unsettling, borderline incestual territory. After accepting a job in a library, Ursula meets Stanley, a potential young suitor, who upsets the delicate balance in the household and triggers a potential confrontation with an increasingly jealous Leon.

The atmosphere is squirmy and uncomfortable, but not overtly or shockingly explicit, that is, until Leon manipulates Ursula into a menage a trois with Pin—effectively constructing <ahem> a Pin sandwich in Ursula’s bed. Equally a gothic melodrama as much as an overt horror story, all the odd little details fall into place, like Stanley’s wooden leg literally fueling the fire of suspense. Pin’s whisperings drive Leon to more extreme actions while his hold over Ursula becomes more tenuous, driving his growing resolve to restore the former bonds of their little family unit at all costs.

Although written before author Andrew Neiderman became the ghost writer for V.C. Andrews, the taboo relationship and isolated family environment at the heart of Pin suggests a Flowers in the Attic variation upon Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle–by way of William Goldman’s Magic.

But Pin stands alone (or rather, sits alone in a wheelchair) as a creepy and unsettling glimpse into a fractured mind spiraling deeper into madness, driven on by the whispered goadings of a transparently molded companion.

Devil May Care

Devil May Care
Elizabeth Peters | Fawcett Books | 1978 | 239 pages

Ellie agrees to house-sit for her eccentric Aunt Kate in the wilds of rural Virginia, never suspecting that—beyond her aunt’s menagerie of thirteen cats, a handful of dogs, and an intelligent rat named Roger—she would also share the estate with a procession of nighttime phantoms.

Although superficially placing itself in the tradition of gothic horrors, Devil May Care instead delivers a much lighter tone. Occasionally self referential, it cheerfully points out each relevant trope Ellie encounters as she navigates the spooky environment left in her charge. The nearly constant pet brigade also serves as a continuous light-comic relief, with many of the animals displaying individual personalities.

Starting on her first night, Ellie witnesses ghostly manifestations in and outside of the house. She eventually identifies the spectres as ancestors of the notable families of the town. Although the danger threat grows as the story unfolds, Ellie never seems to be in any great peril, and treats it all as a cheeky adventure.

The prerequisite romantic subplot of the potboiler gothic is represented here, in a fashion. Away from her dull fiance for a few weeks, Ellie finds herself falling for a young neighbor, who joins her effort in solving the mysterious events in Kate’s house. Their back-and-forth banter is no match for the razor-sharp dialogue found in classic thirties screwball comedies, but it’s somehow more appealing than it has any reasonable right to be. There are even some fainting spells used for slapstick effect, although they come at the expense of Ellie’s fiance.

The football references are unquestionably more groan-inducing than the unexpectedly light romantic tone. The author appears to be a Washington fan, and using Aunt Kate as her mouthpiece, stuffs way more football content into the story than strictly necessary (which is probably zero). Not a deal breaker, as far as the narrative goes, but a low-grade annoyance in the context of a haunted house story.

The tension increases as the narrative coalesces around the control of a secret manuscript, but the resolutions surrounding the various strands that make up the totality of the mystery are all fairly unconvincing. When the mask is finally pulled away from the underlying all-too-human agent, referred to simply as “The Villain” by the other characters, an untidy mix of explanations remains to cover the rest of the supernatural happenings.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, because the story never aspires to the lofty ranks of a tightly-plotted, locked-room mystery from the golden age. Devil May Care may be completely lightweight and disposable, but does provide a modestly successful comic riff on the gothic romance genre.

If Walt Disney & Company had bought the film rights to this book back in its heyday, it could have cast Hayley Mills and Dean Jones as the leads, and—except for the bit about summoning the devil—the movie would have easily been a tonal companion piece to That Darn Cat!

He Arrived at Dusk

He Arrived at Dusk
R.C. Ashby | Valancourt Books | 2013 (originally published 1933) | 232 pages

A fractured narrative ultimately derails this otherwise atmospheric tale of ghostly murder on the desolate Northumberland moors, replete with a spooky old mansion, a nearly fatal séance, and an ancient spectre.

In the first of three perspectives, antiquarian appraiser William Mertoun recounts his strange experiences to a fellow member of a London club, determined to convince him of their supernatural origins. This first section comprises the bulk of the narrative, and provides nearly all of the mysterious happenings and their associated haunts.

After receiving a commission by mail from Colonel Barr, a man he has never met, Mertoun travels to the isolated Barr family house on the edge of the North Sea. However, he is unable to consult with the Colonel, who is bedridden with an unspecified illness. Winifred Goff, his private nurse, displays an unusually strict protocol in protecting the Colonel’s health, locking the door of his room and prohibiting contact with outsiders.

Mertoun also meets Charlie Barr, the Colonel’s nephew, who has recently arrived back home from a long stint living in America. As Mertoun soon discovers, a dark cloud hovers over the entire family. Ian Barr, the Colonel’s brother, recently died in a mysterious accident on the nearby cliffs. The people of the village believe the place to be haunted, and that the ghost of a murdered Roman centurion is responsible for Ian’s death. Charlie seems resigned to the ultimate fate of the Barrs at the (spectral) hands of this Roman ghost.

Mertoun’s arc from skeptic to true believer in the supernatural is driven by a series of inexplicable events, starting with a coldly violent grip on his throat upon his arrival at Barr’s mansion. The escalating hauntings—a slashed family portrait, a ghostly murder attempt with an ancient weapon during a séance, and Mertoun’s own eyewitness sighting of the Roman ghost prowling the lonely moors—are the most appealing passages in the book, fueling the suspense and adding to the overall desolate atmosphere and sense of isolation.

Nurse Goff’s increasingly cold behaviour toward Mertoun, along with her rigidly inflexible attitude in prohibiting visitors to the Colonel’s sickroom, draws suspicion of more than supernatural forces at play. The excavation of a strange stone in the cellar with the centurion’s name etched into its face along with the revelation about a sandal-print found on the moor at the site of Ian’s death all contribute to the confounding sense of the uncanny unfolding at the Barr house.

Nothing about He Arrived at Dusk breaks any new ground, but all the elements of a diverting cozy supernatural mystery are present. The only obvious distraction may be the inclusion of the obligatory romance subplot, with the arrival of a much-too-precocious love interest for Mertoun. However, the eventual engagement can easily be overlooked as simply another traditional element demanded from this kind of golden age mystery fiction.

The conclusion of Mertoun’s account and the resultant shift to other character’s points-of-view is where the momentum begins to stutter. Nurse Goff’s brother, Hamleth, writes a series of diary entries illuminating one aspect of the overall mystery while recounting events of the original timeline from his own perspective. However, the story here is not an impossible locked room mystery with elaborate plot threads needing to be analyzed from every possible angle. The change in narrator mainly serves to dissipate the tension that was building in the cursed household through Mertoun’s personal viewpoint.

The final section, told through the eyes of the sympathetic friend Mertoun met in his London club, arguably completely deflates the suspense in the story arc, wrapping up the proceedings with Mertoun on the sidelines (distracted by his young fiance). Serving as an extended epilogue, all the loose mysteries are tidily explained and the underlying culprit unmasked. The greatest successes derived from the story are those (un)comfortably suspenseful moments playing out in the general atmosphere of dread and distrust, not any deviously constructed puzzle that requires an elaborate unpacking.

Structural criticisms aside, He Arrived at Dusk remains a comfortably engaging mystery with supernatural elements, easily providing enough eerie chills to justify a recommendation to those searching for an overlooked vintage read.

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
M.R. James | Penguin | 1976 (first published 1904) | 303 pages

Classic collection of Edwardian ghost stories by the undisputed master of the genre. Undoubtedly tame by the standards of contemporary horror fiction, these stories are nonetheless evocative. Sometimes told by narrators at some remove from the story, whether reading from personal accounts or discovered manuscripts, the tales are spookily atmospheric, and are probably best read alone at night.

Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book
An English traveler in southern France purchases a manuscript from the caretaker of a remote church, only to discover the terrible secret it hides in its pages. A startling demonic visitation highlights this entry in the catalogue of cursed tomes.

Lost Hearts
A young orphan goes to live with his reclusive cousin, but soon experiences strange visions. The glazed window of a locked and disused bathroom door offers an unexpectedly horrific nighttime view. The spectres he encounters have other plans than simply terrifying a young boy, however, as the dark history of the house is revealed. An eerie tale of weird experiments and ghostly children, with some shockingly unexpected macabre details.

The Mezzotint
A collector of fine prints acquires an engraving that changes between viewings, detailing a particularly terrifying story of retribution from beyond the grave. The seeming movement of a figure inside the frame of an artwork was effectively used decades later in the pilot episode of Rod Serling’s The Night Gallery.

The Ash-tree
A curse from a woman hanged for witchcraft takes an unusually creepy-crawly form, entering a squire’s bedroom from the window near a neighboring ash tree. Expressive details of blackened corpses and rustling from the tree hollows make for a menacing atmosphere, more so than the generational recounting of a curse.

Number 13
There is reason behind triskaidekaphobia, as the lodgers in rooms twelve and fourteen in a small Danish inn discover. Although the conclusion doesn’t necessarily satisfy in terms of tying the protagonist’s historical research to the blighted room, the sporadically appearing room thirteen (and the related shrinking and expanding of its neighboring rooms) makes for a compelling haunted hotel story.

Count Magnus
A travel writer uncovers the dark history of an enigmatic Swedish nobleman, whose alchemical obsessions led him on a “Black Pilgrimage” to a village rumored to one day give rise to the Antichrist. The device of a narrator recounting events second hand from a lost manuscript creates a slight sense of detachment, but the mounting dread—as each of three padlocks unfastens in turn from the sarcophagus of Count Magnus—engages readers with the fate of the doomed protagonist. Overarching explanations of all the supernatural machinations are not always forthcoming (How does invocation work? Is it like saying “Candyman” three times in the mirror?). However, individual details leave an indelible mark, particularly the gruesome fate of a poacher, whose face was sucked off the bone while trespassing on the Count’s lands.

Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad
A bronze whistle found at an ancient site calls something more than the wind, as a vacationing professor in a small seaside town discovers. An empty bed in a hotel room has probably never been more terrifying.

The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
A medieval scholar deciphers a series of arcane clues in an attempt to uncover a buried treasure. His quest leads him down an abandoned well to face a malevolent entity that could rival Sadako from Koji Suzuki’s Ring.

ruined head

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