This edition first published in 2016 by Weiser Books, an imprint of
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Copyright © 2016 by Judika Illes
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ISBN: 978-1-57863-606-8
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For Zoltan Illés, who taught me to love a good short story.
With heartfelt thanks to Michael Kerber, Bonni Hamilton, Jane Hagaman, and the wonderful staff of Weiser Books; to Rachel Nagengast, typist extraordinaire; and, especially, to the authors of the fabulous stories in this compilation for the many hours of reading pleasure they have given me
Introduction, by JUDIKA ILLES
The Stories
Dracula's Guest, by BRAM STOKER
A Water Witch, by H. D. Everett
The Ash Tree, by M. R. JAMES
The Canterville Ghost, by OSCAR WILDE
The Haunted Orchard, by RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
The Yellow Sign, by ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Dagon, by H. P. Lovecraft
The Horror at Martin's Beach, by H. P. LOVECRAFT AND SONIA H. GREENE
The Trial for Murder, by CHARLES DICKENS
The Twisting of the Rope, by W. B. YEATS
The Inmost Light, by ARTHUR MACHEN
Blood Lust, by DION FORTUNE
The Woman's Ghost Story, by ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
The Lady with the Carnations, by MARIE CORELLI
The Guest, by LORD DUNSANY
The Oval Portrait, by EDGAR ALLAN POE
The Spider, by HANNS HEINZ EWERS
The Monkey's PAW, by W. W. Jacobs
It is pleasant to be afraid when we are conscious that we are in no kind of danger . . .
—VIRGINIA WOOLF
Welcome to The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten. In these pages, you will find a host of supernatural and weird tales featuring ghosts, witches, vampires, ominous crossroads, houses with secrets, haunted paintings, and more. The stories in this book are old—vintage and classic. They are written in the language of their time, but language has a way of evolving, shapeshifting into new meanings that may obscure previous ones. For that reason, let's define some words to make sure we're all on the same page.
This book contains “fantastic and forgotten tales.” “Forgotten” is straightforward: it means no longer remembered; an accurate assessment of some of the stories and their authors; for example, the works of H. D. Everett and Marie Corelli. How many readers are now familiar with the massive literary output of Lord Dunsany, among the primary masters of the weird tale genre? Even something like “The Monkey's Paw”—sure, people are familiar with the title and the basic plot outline, but how many have actually read the original tale or, in fact, realize that there is an original tale, that the monkey's paw is not some kind of ancient folklore?
These collected stories are each powerfully evocative; forgotten in the manner of long-buried treasure. I hope The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten will help remedy this situation, transforming the status of these tales from forgotten to favorite. I confess: there is not a single story in this collection that I do not enjoy, even after repeated readings.
Not all the tales in this book are forgotten, although each one is fantastic.
Exactly what does that mean? Am I telling you that these are all “good” stories? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, they are, but also no: “fantastic” is among those words whose archaic meanings are now frequently overlooked.
Let's look at the dictionary. Three definitions are offered for “fantastic”:
The first definition is not inaccurate, but it's that last one that truly describes the content of this book: the concept of the “fantastic” as something beyond belief or, at least, beyond conventional thought. Conventional wisdom would suggest that many of the events in these stories could not occur. And yet . . .
(So as not to keep mentioning it, let's be clear: all stories mentioned in this introduction are to be found within The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten.)
Should the execution of a witch have any impact on the lives of the descendants of the man whose testimony convicted her? You'll find out in “The Ash Tree,” by M. R. James. What is the likelihood that three people, with absolutely nothing in common and nothing to connect them, should commit suicide in precisely the same manner in the very same room on three successive Fridays? That is the puzzle at the heart of “The Spider,” by Hanns Heinz Ewers.
H. P. Lovecraft writes in his story “Dagon”: “Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.” Recognizing that the “celebrated ethnologist” will resist the fantastic, not even considering the possibility that it might be true, the narrator of “Dagon” does not share his tale with him. (That said, many of the stories in this volume, including “Dagon,” offer the reader a choice of a conventional or a fantastic solution. Are his the ramblings of a drug-addled mind, or have strange experiences, unbelievable to others, including many readers, sent him around the bend?)
I have had my own share of odd experiences: things that occurred that, by all conventional logic, should not have; experiences that many others might find hard to believe; incredible in the most traditional sense of that word. It is for this reason that I do not automatically scoff when people tell me of their own strange experiences.
I am haunted by something said by Betty Hill. It's a simple statement, but it shocked me when I first read it. I've never forgotten it, and it's something I find myself pondering from time to time. Betty Hill, you may recall, along with her husband Barney Hill, are considered to be the first documented case of alien abduction. Theirs was the first case to be taken seriously by a broad audience.
According to their account, on the night of September 19–20, 1961, the couple, together with their dachshund, were abducted by extraterrestrial beings near Indian Hill, New Hampshire. The Hills appeared credible to many people, because they seemed so normal: they were a middle-aged, middle-class couple; he was a postal worker; she was a social worker; they were involved with local politics. Their story had to be pried out of them; they clearly weren't publicity seekers. The Hills seemed as if they would be nice neighbors. They didn't seem weird. Because they couldn't be simply dismissed as crackpots, neither could their story be automatically dismissed.
Perhaps to enhance their aura of normalcy, to further bolster their credibility, Betty Hill wrote that—and this is the part that haunts me—she and Barney did not believe in ghosts but did believe in extraterrestrial life and travel. Well I've seen ghosts all my life, and that is precisely why I'm willing to believe that the Hills were abducted by something not of this planet.1 Having experienced something completely out of this world, how does one automatically reject someone else's strange story?
The stories in this book are among the best weird tales, which means they make us think. They introduce and explore possibilities: things that perhaps could happen. They encourage our minds to venture beyond the mundane into the realm of the fantastic, to question and redefine reality. In an interview for Weird Fiction Review, author Neil Gaiman describes weird fiction as “like a visit to a strange place . . . a holiday in unearthly beauty and oddness, from which you may not always safely return.”2
Many of the stories in our collection have to do with death, the greatest mystery of all; not necessarily dying or even what to expect in the afterlife, rather these tales explore the relationship between the dead and the living, although whether this relationship is contentious, friendly, or mutually beneficial varies. In Oscar Wilde's story “The Canterville Ghost,” the heroine says that the eponymous ghost made her “see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.”
But the genre of the weird isn't limited to ghost stories. Other great mysteries of our universe are also explored: ancient civilizations and what they've left behind and how this impacts us, the realm of spirits, as well as experiences that we may currently be unable to accurately categorize. Weird tales reflect the reality that we live in a world of wonders: weird and wonderful, as the old saying goes.
Some of these stories explore the potential supernatural power inherent in words and objects; for example, a book that, if read, shatters the very sanity of its readers (R. W. Chambers's “The Yellow Sign”). Artists and portraits feature in several stories, including “The Yellow Sign.” When the art of photography first emerged in the 19th century, many people feared being photographed, afraid that bits of their soul or their vital essence would be stolen in the process, leaving them debilitated, devitalized, and endangered. Was Edgar Allan Poe cognizant of this fear while writing “The Oval Portrait”?
It's not only portraits that potentially cause anxiety. Sellers on eBay and similar auction sites frequently advertise objects like rings, boxes, talismans, and dolls purporting to contain genies or the trapped souls of powerful magicians who will allegedly do your bidding. Consider the implications. If a powerful magician or a supernatural entity can be enslaved in this manner, what about the rest of us? Is it even possible for one's essence to somehow be captured and contained in an object, trapped and at the mercy of another? That's among the themes of Arthur Machen's complex story, “The Inmost Light.” Many of these tales leave us with mysteries that will keep us pondering long after the story has been read.
Fantastic tales are frequently referred to as weird tales. Technically, they fall into the literary genre of weird fiction. Academia has now further classified weird fiction as a subgenre of speculative fiction, defined as any literary fiction containing elements, characters, plots, or settings deriving from speculative sources, as in the human imagination, as opposed to being based on everyday life or “reality.” Science fiction, horror, and fantasy are all categorized under the speculative fiction umbrella. To me, there is an inherent flaw in this particular system of literary classification. Whose reality sets the standard? Whose everyday life? I suspect that my reality and your reality and Betty Hill's reality may not all be precisely the same, although clearly we share commonalities. I prefer calling it weird fiction, especially because of the complexity and history of the word “weird.”
Like “fantastic,” “weird” is a word with both modern and archaic connotations. Should you survey a group of random people and ask them to define the word “weird” for you, most will likely suggest that “weird” means strange or odd. This now most common interpretation of the word “weird” is fairly modern. It is only since the early 20th century that “weird” has been applied to everyday situations. (“He sounded weird when he spoke to me,” for example, or “What a weird ring tone!”) Previously, the word intimated something supernatural in nature or portentous. In fact, the word “weird” has a long, complex, and weird history!
The word has its roots in Norse mythology among the Norns, a trio of fate goddesses. According to Norse myth, the Norns, three wise women, are the most powerful of all beings: they determine the destiny of everything that lives. The Norns are the repository of all knowledge: past, present, and future. They are three sisters who operate together as a unit.
The Norns live together in a beautiful hall beside the Well of Urd, essentially the Well of Destiny, which is situated beside Yggdrasil, the world tree—a giant, eternally green ash tree. (Coincidentally, M. R. James's story “The Ash Tree” explores the influence of past events upon the present and how fate can be changed.) The Well of Urd waters the roots of the world tree; rain that drips from its leaves falls back into the Well of Urd. As the name indicates, the Well of Urd is most closely associated with the Norn of the Past. One could interpret this as indicating how much the actions and events of the past nourish the present and future, determining what sort of fruit will be borne, a theme implicit in so many weird stories.
Our fantastic tales are intended as entertainment; rarely heavy handed, they are instead fun or suspenseful or pleasantly scary—thrillers and chillers. Keep the implications of the Well of Urd in mind, however, and you may recognize a subtle current that runs thematically through these tales.
In Norse cosmology, Yggdrasil is the axis mundi that unites all worlds. The world of living humanity, the world of the dead, and the worlds of the deities and other spiritual entities may all be accessed via the trunk and branches of this world tree. (Norse cosmology recognizes nine such worlds.) In other words, all these realms, even though distinct, are also all interconnected. Anything that happens to one part of the tree, whether accidentally or intentionally, potentially affects another. The Norns are the caretakers of the well and the tree, hence the world.
The Norns are spinning goddesses. They weave the Web of Urd, the matrix of fate. The Old English variant of the word “urd” is wyrd, which eventually evolved into our modern spelling, weird. The Anglo-Saxon variant of the Norns, known as the Weird Sisters, spin the Web of Wyrd. This web is the reminder that the actions of the past and present impact the future and perhaps vice versa.
By the 16th century, the word weird was extinct in the English language, although it survived in Scots. When William Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, his Scottish play, he reintroduced the word with his trio of witches, named after the Weird Sisters. (Coincidentally, norn is an Old Norse word meaning “a witch or a practitioner of the magical arts.”) Shakespeare used “weird” as an atmospheric, ambient word. The modern connotation of weird as something uncanny derives from Shakespeare's era and after.
Let's take another look at that dictionary to make sure we understand the true and complete concept of weird. Here are some meanings:
Unless they are already metaphysically minded, most random modern people asked to define “weird” would probably think of the fourth and fifth definitions, but what of the authors of classic weird fiction? Which definitions did they have in mind as they wrote? These are other mysteries to ponder rather than answer definitively or, at least, not in this brief space. The subject of the orientation of the finest writers of weird fiction—the world views of the masters—has been the subject of bitter, contentious debate for decades and will probably remain so. This is especially true for author H. P. Lovecraft, whose many devotees argue about the nature of his fictional creations. Just how fictional are they, in other words?
Although he didn't invent it—the term was used previously—H. P. Lovecraft is credited with popularizing the name “weird fiction.” Lovecraft was not only a spinner of weird tales; he was a lover, scholar, and definer of the genre. In this, he was a member of a very small minority. Even now, the weird fiction and fantastic tale genres receive little critical respect, although this is changing. Slowly, more and more university conferences and symposia are dedicated to weird tales and supernatural fiction, but this was not always so—quite the contrary.
In Lovecraft's day, weird fiction was relegated to pulp magazines, like Weird Tales or Uncanny Stories. If you think comic books get little respect, the pulps received even less. The entire genre of weird fiction was considered disreputable, disposable, rubbish, trash. H. P. Lovecraft, along with a few others, disagreed.
Lovecraft, who had been raised on The Arabian Nights, which he loved, recognized the inherent power of the best weird stories. He devoted the same kind of attention to them that others give to what are conventionally considered more scholarly subjects. Lovecraft laid the groundwork for the appreciation and reappraisal of weird fiction. He believed it to be worthy of respect, analysis, and study.
In his lengthy essay, “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” which was written and revised over a period of several years, Lovecraft named the four authors he deemed to be the “modern masters” of supernatural horror: Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, and Arthur Machen. All four are represented by stories in The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten, as is Lovecraft himself, both on his own and in collaboration with his wife, Sonia Greene. Lovecraft is the only author represented in this book by more than one title, but general Lovecraftian scholarship suggests that Greene wrote the bulk of “The Horror at Martin's Beach,” while Lovecraft revised and enhanced the initial tale. There are those who disagree with that assessment, however, and it may never be possible for this to be definitively determined.
Paradoxically, because stories intended to serve as popular entertainment have historically garnered so little respect, they have served as repositories for otherwise hidden wisdom. If information is important, we wish to share it or at least preserve it. What if by doing so, however, we put ourselves and others in jeopardy? For centuries, millennia perhaps, bits of suppressed spiritual, magical, and shamanic knowledge has hidden in plain sight within folklore and fairy tales. Instead of being presented directly, the information has been passed on in an oblique fashion via storytelling.
It is not even necessary to travel that far back in history to consider this practice. Until 1951, when the last law against witchcraft was repealed in the United Kingdom, it was illegal to publish books that in any way advocated the practice of witchcraft. Gerald Gardner, founder of modern Wicca, is credited with authoring the first factual book in English about the practice of witchcraft, written by a self-professed practitioner. His Witchcraft Today was published in 1954.
Before the repeal of the Witchcraft Act of 1604, should an author wish to share magical wisdom—or anything that could potentially be interpreted as promoting witchcraft—the way to get around the law was to present the information as fiction, typically in the form of a novel. Gardner himself wrote such a novel, publishing High Magic's Aid in 1949. Dion Fortune, author of “Blood Lust,” is best known for her six romantic novels, including The Sea Priestess and The Goat Foot God. These may be enjoyed merely as fiction; however, Fortune, a true adept, sidestepped the witchcraft laws by presenting esoteric instructional material in the form of these novels. Material in her novels have since been incorporated into Wiccan and Neo-Pagan rituals.
Essentially, stories, whether folktales or popular novels, were not considered worthy of surveillance, so the information contained within them could slip beneath the radar. Exceptions exist, of course. Medieval Russian church leaders, recognizing the subversive potential of stories, especially those told within women's spinning circles, included injunctions against storytelling amid various antiwitchcraft and anti-Paganism laws.
A good story is the perfect hiding place for information that one may, for one reason or another, be otherwise unable to share more overtly. Popular stories tend to be static, repeated the same way over and over again. This may just be human nature. Consider the ability of small children to detect the tiniest deviation in the telling of a favorite bedtime story. Likewise, consider W. W. Jacobs's story, “The Monkey's Paw”—even those who haven't read the story, who may have only seen parody versions, know the rough outline of the tale and its message to be careful of what you wish for.
The prime example of this phenomenon lies in fairy tales. Many, although not all, fairy tales are loaded with references to ancient and once-forbidden Pagan practices. There are clues to this content, if only one knows where to look or rather what to listen for, as these stories were originally not read but told out loud. Look for references to spinning, for instance, as with the spindle in the story “Sleeping Beauty.” These are often oblique references to the ancient veneration of fairies and the goddesses of fate from whom they derive. (The word fairy derives from the same linguistic roots as fate. This is more obvious in Italian, where the word for fairy is fata, as in Fata Morgana: Fairy Morgan.) In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Mother Holle,” a girl sent to sit beside a well and spin inadvertently discovers that dropping her spindle into the well opens a portal to another dimension. Those of an esoteric bent would suggest that that story, named for a Germanic goddess, contains vestigial shamanic lore.
All this said, however, after several generations of the telling of a tale, these hidden gems are easily distorted or forgotten. Information not presented explicitly is easily lost, so even if the hidden references survive, listeners may lack the ability to recognize or interpret them.
It is appropriate for stories to serve as repositories for arcane knowledge. In many cultures, storytelling is considered a sacred art, potentially as mystical as divination. Spiritual traditions are taught through storytelling—consider mythology or Bible stories. In some traditions, storytelling is a healer's art. Ghosts and restless spirits are reputedly soothed by stories in the manner of tired children. A method of allaying temperamental djinn, for example, is to catch their interest by telling exciting or suspenseful stories. Lured by the narrative, they will become at least temporarily peaceful and distracted from the trouble they had intended to cause.
Winter, in northern climates, is the time when ghosts roam. Ancestors return to visit their families, sometimes happily, sometimes not. It is also the season of storytelling: the repetition of certain stories is said to attract these ghosts, who will cease any harmful hauntings to listen instead. In some cultures, both European and Native American, certain stories are reserved for certain seasons, told only at that time.
How does this apply to modern weird tales? Do these potent and often mystical tales serve a similar purpose, or are they merely good stories? That question provokes incendiary arguments among devotees of weird fiction. We all carry our own experiences and orientation. Lovers of weird fiction may have little in common beyond that love. Some are convinced that at least some of these stories contain deep metaphysical secrets, while others are appalled at that suggestion. Either way, these tales are easily enjoyed, but let's consider for a moment.
Do these weird tales knowingly or unknowingly preserve esoteric information or serve as portals to other dimensions? We know what the most vocal scholars of weird fiction think, but what about the authors, especially the masters? Are they spinning the web of weird or just spinning a good yarn? In some cases, these authors were genuine occultists—Dion Fortune, William Butler Yeats, Hanns Heinz Ewers, and possibly others. Bram Stoker knew Yeats, as well as several other prominent members of the Golden Dawn, but there is no proof that he ever joined that mystical organization himself.
Other authors, particularly Lovecraft, claimed to be materialists, believing in nothing that wasn't tangible or visible. Some devotees are offended at the suggestion that his stories may be anything more than great fiction, the product of his inventive mind. Others argue that Lovecraft, like his creation the narrator of “Dagon,” hid esoteric leanings beneath the mask of fiction, as have so many other authors over the years. Still others claim, even if Lovecraft himself didn't realize it, that he was a portal or channel for spirits and wisdom seeking to emerge from the shadows into the light.
Lovecraft often received inspiration for his tales in dreams. During his childhood, he experienced night terrors, figures that terrorized him that he named “Night Gaunts.” As an adult, he would incorporate these creatures into his fiction. Some point to this as proof that Lovecraft was in touch with genuine mystical phenomena, while others vociferously deny the possibility. No definitive answer to these mysteries exists. Neither side can be convinced by the other. What is known for sure is that Lovecraft spent his childhood immersed in classic tales, especially The Arabian Nights, and that he was a man who understood the power of a good story. I leave this as a mystery for you to ponder.
Here's another point to ponder. Many fantastic tales, especially, although not exclusively, those of Charles Dickens and M. R. James, were written specifically as Christmas entertainment. Consider Dickens's famous novella, A Christmas Carol, in which three ghosts take Scrooge on a wild ride through his past, present, and future, behaving like chain-clanking Norns. Dickens wrote many ghost stories for Christmas and presented them aloud as well. He was among the first celebrity authors—a showman, he loved telling a good story to an appreciative audience, especially at Christmastime. Many of M. R. James's ghost stories were written specifically to be read aloud to select gatherings of his friends as Christmas Eve entertainment.
Christmas is the weird season of ghosts. The BBC has a history of presenting a televised supernatural story as Christmas entertainment, many written by the stars of the weird fiction firmament. This echoes that ancient Northern tradition of stories reserved for the dead of winter. The old Pagan Germanic calendar was divided into tides. Each tide was roughly the equivalent of two of our modern months. The peak of this season of storytelling fell within Yuletide, the time corresponding to the months December and January. The winter solstice falls within this period, as do the twelve days of Christmas. The word Yule has evolved, for many people, into a synonym for Christmas—when some say Yule log, they really mean Christmas log. Yule also names the modern Wiccan sabbat that corresponds to the winter solstice. And so, one wonders, were Dickens, James, and other authors conscious of carrying on an ancient tradition of winter storytelling, or is it just that the time itself is conducive to the practice?
I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I do. I hope they encourage you to delve further into the treasure trove that is weird, supernatural, and fantastic fiction. A word of advice: these old stories were carefully wrought by meticulous authors. To leave them as intact as possible, their spellings and sentence structure have been preserved as written. In many cases, these are no longer technically grammatically correct, but, as we've seen, language evolves, and it's best to be conscious of that evolution. Some authors used standard British English spelling, while others used standard American English spelling. These have been left as written, so for those readers with sharp eyes who recognize inconsistencies, this is why.
May I also make a suggestion? Transcending anything else, these stories were intended to provide entertainment. Many were written with the expectation that they would be read aloud. With the advent of radio, television, and the Internet, with the exception of reading to young children, the practice of reading aloud to others has fallen by the wayside. Studies indicate that information processed through oral transmission affects brain chemistry differently from information processed through reading. (Those interested in this topic may find Leonard Shlain's 1999 study, The Alphabet and the Goddess [Penguin Books], to be insightful.) The tales within The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten, while wonderful if read silently, reveal their nuances, humor, and suspense with even more potency if read aloud. Their flavor is, essentially, better savored. Even if you do not normally read out loud, try it. You will be following in ancient footsteps. During the dark, eerie hours, when the wind is blowing and the ghosts are roaming outside, the night can be filled with pleasant terror.
JUDIKA ILLES
1. This quote and more information about the Hills may be found in The Weiser Field Guide to the Paranormal, by Judith Joyce; Weiser Books, San Francisco, 2010.
2 “Exclusive Interview: Neil Gaiman on The Weird,” Weird Fiction Review, November 1, 2011 http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/exclusive-interview-neil-gaiman-on-the-weird/.
Abraham “Bram” Stoker (1847–1912) has earned worldwide renown as the author of Dracula, the pivotally influential 1897 novel. Dracula is not the earliest English-language vampire tale to be published: Varney the Vampire, or the Feast of Blood appeared in book form in the year of Stoker's birth, having first been serialized in penny dreadfuls two years earlier. It was Dracula, however, that would define the literary vampire genre, transforming the loathsome vampire of Central and Eastern European folklore into a suave and charismatic bloodsucker.
During his lifetime, Stoker was best known as the personal assistant of the great actor Henry Irving and the business manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre. Stoker ran in the same circles as the artist Pamela Colman Smith, now most famous for illustrating the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck. She also did illustrations for Stoker, including those for his 1911 horror novel, The Lair of the White Worm, published by William Rider and Son. Stoker's friends included his fellow Irishmen, William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde. All three are represented by stories in The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten.
“Dracula's Guest” was first published in 1914, two years after Stoker's death, in the book Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories. The unnamed narrator is generally assumed to be Jonathan Harker, on his way to see the Count. In the preface to the original edition, Florence, Stoker's widow, wrote: “To his original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It was originally excised owing to the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband's most remarkable work.” That said, “Dracula's Guest” stands alone as an excellent tale of mystical suspense. It is not necessary to have read Stoker's novel nor have seen any of the over two hundred films inspired by it to enjoy it.
When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbrück (the maître d'hôtel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down, bareheaded, to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door: ‘Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be late.’ Here he smiled, and added, ‘for you know what night it is.’
Johann answered with an emphatic, ‘Ja, mein Herr,’ and, touching his hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after signalling to him to stop: ‘Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?’
He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: ‘Walpurgis nacht.’ then he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as big as a turnip, and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realised that this was his way of respectfully protesting against the unnecessary delay, and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started off rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. Every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads and sniffed the air suspiciously. On such occasions I often looked round in alarm. The road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high, wind-swept plateau. As we drove, I saw a road that looked but little used, and which seemed to dip through a little, winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, I called Johann to stop—and when he had pulled up, I told him I would like to drive down that road. He made all sorts of excuses, and frequently crossed himself as he spoke. This somewhat piqued my curiosity, so I asked him various questions. He answered fencingly, and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest. Finally I said:
‘Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all I ask.’ For answer he seemed to throw himself off the box, so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me, and implored me not to go. There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something—the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up, saying, as he crossed himself: ‘Walpurgis-Nacht!’
I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language. The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue—and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles and led them on some twenty feet. I followed, and asked why he had done this. For answer he crossed himself, pointed to the spot we had left and drew his carriage in the direction of the other road, indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in English: ‘Buried him—him what killed themselves.’
I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross-roads: ‘Ah! I see, a suicide. How interesting!’ but for the life of me I could not make out why the horses were frightened.
Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a bark. It was far away; but the horses got very restless, and it took Johann all his time to quiet them. He was pale, and said, ‘It sounds like a wolf—but yet there are no wolves here now.’
‘No?’ I said, questioning him; ‘isn't it long since the wolves were so near the city?’
‘Long, long,’ he answered, ‘in the spring and summer; but with the snow the wolves have been here not so long.’
Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath of cold wind seemed to drift past us. It was only a breath, however, and more in the nature of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out brightly again. Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and said: ‘The storm of snow, he comes before long time.’ Then he looked at his watch again, and, straightway holding his reins firmly—for the horses were still pawing the ground restlessly and shaking their heads—he climbed to his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our journey.
I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘about this place where the road leads,’ and I pointed down.
Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer, before he answered, ‘It is unholy.’
‘What is unholy?’ I enquired.
‘The village.’
‘Then there is a village?’
‘No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years.’ My curiosity was piqued, ‘But you said there was a village.’
‘There was.’
‘Where is it now?’
Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and English, so mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said, but roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there and been buried in their graves; and sounds were heard under the clay, and when the graves were opened, men and women were found rosy with life, and their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their souls!—and here he crossed himself) those who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived, and the dead were dead and not—not something. He was evidently afraid to speak the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear—white-faced, perspiring, trembling and looking round him, as if expecting that some dreadful presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain. Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried:
‘Walpurgis nacht!’ and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. All my English blood rose at this, and, standing back, I said:
‘You are afraid, Johann—you are afraid. Go home; I shall return alone; the walk will do me good.’ The carriage door was open. I took from the seat my oak walking-stick—which I always carry on my holiday excursions—and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said, ‘Go home, Johann—Walpurgis-nacht doesn't concern Englishmen.’
The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was deeply in earnest; but all the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native German. It began to be a little tedious. After giving the direction, ‘Home!’ I turned to go down the cross-road into the valley.
With a despairing gesture, Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I leaned on my stick and looked after him. He went slowly along the road for a while: then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew near the horses, they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror. Johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away madly. I watched them out of sight, then looked for the stranger, but I found that he, too, was gone.
With a light heart I turned down the side road through the deepening valley to which Johann had objected. There was not the slightest reason, that I could see, for his objection; and I daresay I tramped for a couple of hours without thinking of time or distance, and certainly without seeing a person or a house. So far as the place was concerned, it was desolation, itself. But I did not notice this particularly till, on turning a bend in the road, I came upon a scattered fringe of wood; then I recognised that I had been impressed unconsciously by the desolation of the region through which I had passed.
I sat down to rest myself, and began to look around. It struck me that it was considerably colder than it had been at the commencement of my walk—a sort of sighing sound seemed to be around me, with, now and then, high overhead, a sort of muffled roar. Looking upwards I noticed that great thick clouds were drifting rapidly across the sky from North to South at a great height. There were signs of coming storm in some lofty stratum of the air. I was a little chilly, and, thinking that it was the sitting still after the exercise of walking, I resumed my journey.
The ground I passed over was now much more picturesque. There were no striking objects that the eye might single out; but in all there was a charm of beauty. I took little heed of time and it was only when the deepening twilight forced itself upon me that I began to think of how I should find my way home. The brightness of the day had gone. The air was cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked. They were accompanied by a sort of far-away rushing sound, through which seemed to come at intervals that mysterious cry which the driver had said came from a wolf. For a while I hesitated. I had said I would see the deserted village, so on I went, and presently came on a wide stretch of open country, shut in by hills all around. Their sides were covered with trees which spread down to the plain, dotting, in clumps, the gentler slopes and hollows which showed here and there. I followed with my eye the winding of the road, and saw that it curved close to one of the densest of these clumps and was lost behind it.
As I looked there came a cold shiver in the air, and the snow began to fall. I thought of the miles and miles of bleak country I had passed, and then hurried on to seek the shelter of the wood in front. Darker and darker grew the sky, and faster and heavier fell the snow, till the earth before and around me was a glistening white carpet the further edge of which was lost in misty vagueness. The road was here but crude, and when on the level its boundaries were not so marked, as when it passed through the cuttings; and in a little while I found that I must have strayed from it, for I missed underfoot the hard surface, and my feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. Then the wind grew stronger and blew with ever increasing force, till I was fain to run before it. The air became icy-cold, and in spite of my exercise I began to suffer. The snow was now falling so thickly and whirling around me in such rapid eddies that I could hardly keep my eyes open. Every now and then the heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning, and in the flashes I could see ahead of me a great mass of trees, chiefly yew and cypress all heavily coated with snow.
I was soon amongst the shelter of the trees, and there, in comparative silence, I could hear the rush of the wind high overhead. Presently the blackness of the storm had become merged in the darkness of the night. By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away: it now only came in fierce puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.
Now and again, through the black mass of drifting cloud, came a straggling ray of moonlight, which lit up the expanse, and showed me that I was at the edge of a dense mass of cypress and yew trees. As the snow had ceased to fall, I walked out from the shelter and began to investigate more closely. It appeared to me that, amongst so many old foundations as I had passed, there might be still standing a house in which, though in ruins, I could find some sort of shelter for a while. As I skirted the edge of the copse, I found that a low wall encircled it, and following this I presently found an opening. Here the cypresses formed an alley leading up to a square mass of some kind of building. Just as I caught sight of this, however, the drifting clouds obscured the moon, and I passed up the path in darkness. The wind must have grown colder, for I felt myself shiver as I walked; but there was hope of shelter, and I groped my way blindly on.
I stopped, for there was a sudden stillness. The storm had passed; and, perhaps in sympathy with nature's silence, my heart seemed to cease to beat. But this was only momentarily; for suddenly the moonlight broke through the clouds, showing me that I was in a graveyard, and that the square object before me was a great massive tomb of marble, as white as the snow that lay on and all around it. With the moonlight there came a fierce sigh of the storm, which appeared to resume its course with a long, low howl, as of many dogs or wolves. I was awed and shocked, and felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it seemed to grip me by the heart. Then while the flood of moonlight still fell on the marble tomb, the storm gave further evidence of renewing, as though it was returning on its track. Impelled by some sort of fascination, I approached the sepulchre to see what it was, and why such a thing stood alone in such a place. I walked around it, and read, over the Doric door, in German:
COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ IN STYRIA SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH 1801
On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble—for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone—was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters:
‘The dead travel fast.’
There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. I began to wish, for the first time, that I had taken Johann's advice. Here a thought struck me, which came under almost mysterious circumstances and with a terrible shock. This was Walpurgis Night!
Walpurgis Night, when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was abroad—when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel. This very place the driver had specially shunned. This was the depopulated village of centuries ago. This was where the suicide lay; and this was the place where I was alone—unmanned, shivering with cold in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again upon me! It took all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught, all my courage, not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.
And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore on its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such violence that they might have come from the thongs of Balearic slingers—hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter of the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were standing-corn. At the first I had rushed to the nearest tree; but I was soon fain to leave it and seek the only spot that seemed to afford refuge, the deep Doric doorway of the marble tomb. There, crouching against the massive bronze door, I gained a certain amount of protection from the beating of the hailstones, for now they only drove against me as they ricocheted from the ground and the side of the marble.
As I leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards. The shelter of even a tomb was welcome in that pitiless tempest, and I was about to enter it when there came a flash of forked-lightning that lit up the whole expanse of the heavens. In the instant, as I am a living man, I saw, as my eyes were turned into the darkness of the tomb, a beautiful woman, with rounded cheeks and red lips, seemingly sleeping on a bier. As the thunder broke overhead, I was grasped as by the hand of a giant and hurled out into the storm. The whole thing was so sudden that, before I could realise the shock, moral as well as physical, I found the hailstones beating me down. At the same time I had a strange, dominating feeling that I was not alone. I looked towards the tomb. Just then there came another blinding flash, which seemed to strike the iron stake that surmounted the tomb and to pour through to the earth, blasting and crumbling the marble, as in a burst of flame. The dead woman rose for a moment of agony, while she was lapped in the flame, and her bitter scream of pain was drowned in the thundercrash. The last thing I heard was this mingling of dreadful sound, as again I was seized in the giant-grasp and dragged away, while the hailstones beat on me, and the air around seemed reverberant with the howling of wolves. The last sight that I remembered was a vague, white, moving mass, as if all the graves around me had sent out the phantoms of their sheeted-dead, and that they were closing in on me through the white cloudiness of the driving hail.