Patrick McGrath – The Empty House

Patrick McGrath is the author of several novels and short story
collections including The Grotesque, Spider, Dr Haggard’s Disease and
Blood and Water and Other Tales. He is married to Maria Aitken and
lives in South London.

“I have recently rediscovered the short stories of a great writer of
English ghost stories, Algernon Blackwood. His years are 1869 to 1951;
in 1906 his first book was published. It contains  one of the finest
and spookiest examples of supernatural literature in the canon, a
short story called The Empty House. All Blackwood’s work is worth
reading but The Empty House is perhaps the best of the lot. A young
man is given the keys to what his aunt assures him is a haunted house.
The young man moves in. What follows is a sustained nightmare of weird
noises and other terrifying effects suggesting that the house is
occupied, in fact very spookily haunted indeed, and no writer has
aroused and sustained such ghastly supernatural entities for sixteen
terrifying pages–and an with utterly perfect, horrible
denouement–than Blackwood. Heartily recommended!”

Thank you to Patrick McGrath for recommending this book!

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To see our previous Books of the Month, click here.

Photo credit: Isabella de Maddalena