The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

About the book

In the title story, an investigation of a reputedly haunted house tests whether its visitors can maintain their resolve as the atmosphere changes around them. The other pieces move through lodgings, wilderness settings, private employment, and unexpected meetings, finding different ways for the familiar world to disclose an unwelcome possibility. Blackwood is particularly interested in the gradual pressure of an environment on attention: a sound, a silence, or a sense of another presence can matter before any explanation is available. This collection mixes direct ghostly encounters with unease that depends on the witness's incomplete understanding. Its narratives ask what makes a place feel inhabited even when it appears empty, and how a person's confidence changes when ordinary observation no longer seems sufficient to account for experience.

• Haunting
• Atmosphere and perception
• The unseen

Why read it

For ghost stories that build their force through the gradual alteration of a place's felt atmosphere.

Ghost-story collection · English text