Our fear of the unknown, of elemental nature, gives us some terrifying moments in John Buchan's "Skule Skerry" when the venturesome scientist, alone on the tiny islet, realizes he is close to "the world which has only death in it" and, shuddering, stands "next door to the Abyss - that blanched wall of the North which is the negation of life." John Metcalfe takes us to "The Bad Lands," where ordinary things become charged with "sinister suggestion" and the scenery develops "an unpleasant tendency to the macabre" - small wonder that it evokes a dream in which, with Brent Ormerod, we walk "up and up into a strange dim country full of signs and whisperings and somber trees, where hollow breezes blow fitfully and a queer house set with lofty pines shines out white against a lurid sky." Br-rrr! And, accompanying H. Ambrose Bierce's little shocker, "One Summer Night," is typical of this writer's bold delineation of brutality and callousness its grave-robbing scene, with the ghoulish enterprise illumined by fitful lightning flashes, is appropriately eerie. Whitehead's "Cassius" high-lights a fine example of the strange-beast theme.
The malignant creature which attacks the terrified servant night after night in Henry S. The eleven other stories, however, produce shivers of other, widely varying kinds. Wakefield gives a distinctively modern twist. James, and I have included here his wonderfully titled, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad," as well as "Ghost Hunt," which H.
That type was, perhaps, written most effectively by M.
It doesn't take a ghost story, necessarily fear has many forms, and the spectral tale has lost the monopoly it once enjoyed. They tell me - I have never had occasion to experiment - that "there is more than one way to skin a cat." I know, by reason of many delightfully quaking hours while equipped with slippers and easy chair, that there are a good many ways to induce shivery sensations in a reader.
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