King Arthur Movie Tristan

In the mood for some thrills and chills? Curl up with this 1921 collection of spooky tales by some of the English language’s best writers. Such masters of the supernatural as Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Arthur Machen bring you terrifying tales of revenge from beyond the grave, frightening stories of shadowy spirits who threaten their victims’ sanity, and touching pieces about love and devotion that know no (earthly) bounds.

I have been reading Famous Modern Ghost Stories a little bit every day courtesy of Daily Lit. As I read, I've decided to review the short stories one by one. This way I can give each story the attention it deserves. Here is my first review:








First in this collection is a short story called:

THE WILLOWS by by Algernon Blackwood

first line: After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Buda-Pesth, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes.

rated: creepy






Two friends go on a canoe trip down the Danube river. They decide to camp on an island surrounded by willows, but once there, they become stranded. This is how the 'willows' are described:

humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive






That first night that they make camp, strange things happens throughout the night, strange noises are heard and in the morning, the two men find that their boat is broken, an oar is gone and the other oar is damaged. Each man is suspicious of the other.
They also notice odd sounds and movement that seem to be coming from the willows. But though they are afraid, each man is trying to keep his cool and not let these strange events mess with thier heads.

With this multitude of willows, however, it was something far different, I felt. Some essence emanated from them that besieged the heart. A sense of awe awakened, true, but of awe touched somewhere by a vague terror. Their serried ranks growing everywhere darker about me as the shadows deepened, moving furiously yet softly in the wind, woke in me the curious and unwelcome suggestion that we had trespassed here upon the borders of an alien world, a world where we were intruders, a world where we were not wanted or invited to remain--where we ran grave risks perhaps!

Another strange thing that happens is a constant 'humming' sound. The men cannot pinpoint where it is coming from or what it actually sounds like, but it is freaking them out. Also, after spending the first night on the island, in the morning, the men notice some of thier food is missing.

But the willows especially: for ever they went on chattering and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out, sometimes sighing--but what it was they made so much to-do about belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily together, oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves even when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible.

They mend their boat as best as they can and contemplate making a run for it, to try to go down the river and escape off the haunted island. But to go downstream would mean to go into 50 more miles of willows. So instead, they wait it out.

"Look! By my soul!" he whispered, and for the first time in my experience I knew what it was to hear tears of terror in a human voice. He was pointing to the fire, some fifty feet away. I followed the direction of his finger, and I swear my heart missed a beat.


There, in front of the dim glow, something was moving.

One night, one of the men begins sleep talking, saying things about making a sacrifice to the willows. Then he tries to drown himself. The other man saves him.
I won't give away any more of the story, but this was a good one. It was just the right length, had a creepy plot, and a good ending.

"The Willows" was the personal favorite story of H.P. Lovecraft, who wrote in his treatise Supernatural Horror in Literature, "Here art and restraint in narrative reach their very highest development, and an impression of lasting poignancy is produced without a single strained passage or a single false note.

quoted from wikipedia