"Swaddling Clothes" by Yukio Mishima

"Swaddling Clothes" by Yukio Mishima (1953, 4 pages)


"Swaddling Clothes" by Yukio Mishima (1925 to 1970-Japan) is a very strange story that compresses a really lot into just a few pages.   It is really must reading for devotees  of Yukio Mishima as it contains in just four pages much of the basic themes of the work of Mishima.   I am not inclined as of now to make a list of "best Japanese authors" but I will say if one wanted to read the full translated oeuvre of a Japanese writer with the objective of learning as much as you could about all aspects of Japanese culture I would say read Mishima (no small task with nearly fifty works available in translation) over all other authors.   (There is some additional background information on him in my prior posts.)


"Swaddling Clothes" begins with a woman from a good family recalling with great embarrassment the story her actor husband told a number of their friends.  A lot of the themes of Mishima can be dug from these remarkable lines:

Earlier that evening, when she had joined her husband at a night club, she had been shocked to find him entertaining friends with an account of “the incident.” Sitting there in his American-style suit, puffing at a cigarette, he had seemed to her almost a stranger.        “It’s a fantastic story,” he was saying, gesturing flamboyantly as if in an attempt to outweigh the attractions of the dance band. “Here this new nurse for our baby arrives from the employment agency, and the very first thing I notice about her is her stomach. It’s enormous—as if she had a pillow stuck under her kimono! No wonder, I thought, for I soon saw that she could eat more than the rest of us put together. She polished off the contents of our rice bin like that....” He snapped his fingers. “ ‘Gastric dilation’—that’s how she explained her girth and her appetite. Well, the day before yesterday we heard groans and moans coming from the nursery. We rushed in and found her squatting on the floor, holding her stomach in her two hands, and moaning like a cow. Next to her our baby lay in his cot, scared out of his wits and crying at the top of his lungs. A pretty scene, I can tell you!” 

The husband and the doctor he calls have complete contempt for the poor to them totally ignorant servant woman.   They wrap her baby in newspapers just to show their contempt for the baby.    The woman begins to think about how the baby will never have a chance to grow into a successful person of any kind.   She sees him as doomed to a life of poverty and crime by the degrading way he was brought into the world.   She begins to imagine he will one day grow up twenty years hence and will in a random senseless act stab her own son to death.  You can also see the very common theme of Mishima relating to the corruption of Japanese culture by the intrusion of Americans (something very strongly felt in still occupied Japan at the time of the writing of this story).

Now the story in its extreme artistry relies on the reader's help to determine what happens next.   Was the woman murdered that very night in a knifing or has twenty years gone by and has the mother intentionally been guided by paranormal elements to stand in for her son at the time of his murder by at the hands of the maid's baby?


You can read this story online HERE

Mel u

"Black Death" by Zora Neale Hurston

A Powerfully Intelligent Gothic Tale

from the American South

Zora Hurston (1881 to 1960-Alabama, USA) was one of the leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance.   Hurston had a very interesting life.     Born in relative poverty she attended   Howard University until she was offered a scholarship  to attend Barnard college, an elite women's college at which she was the only person of color in attendance at the time.    She graduated, along with her very famous co-student Margaret Mead, with a degree in anthropology.     Her anthropological focus was on  the customs and speech of African-Americans living in the rural south of the USA.    Hurston studied and wrote about  people of color from small towns in Alabama and Florida very much as her mentor and former professor, Ruth Benedict did in her famous studies of the customs of the people of Polynesia.    Hurston also wrote and published a number of short stories, and novels.    Her most famous work was her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.    She co-wrote a play with Langston Hughes.   

"Black Death" (1921, 8 pages) is set in Orlando Florida USA in the 1910s.    It is a really brilliant account of race relations at the time.   It also goes right to the heart of the origin and role of paranormal stories in many cultures.    I have been having a lot of fun reading and posting on older paranormal short stories for Carl V's great paranormal reading event, The RIP Challenge (Sept 1 to Oct 31-the simple rules are on Carl's webpage).   One of the things I am discerning in the stories is that an interest in the occult is often an "escape valve" for people in an impoverished powerless situation who are oppressed by an exterior culture.   In Ireland it was the English.   In Japan it is a bit harder to see but it arises as a reaction of "country people" to the increasing westernization of Japan.     In "Black Death" Hurston directly  writes on this theme.   This is my second look at this story as I wanted to see again how it deals with the paranormal elements of African-American culture in the early part of the 20th century.

As the story opens we meet "Old Man Morgan", a black man who can kill anyone, he does it for money, with his magic.    We are told the whites of the community would laugh hysterically when told this and say "that just shows how ignorant the blacks are".   

Besides "Old Man Morgan"  (I think the name is being used as a mockery of the American financier J. P. Morgan) there are three central characters in the story.    A young beautiful pure hearted woman, her very protective mother and a man with a great reputation as a lady's man in the Black community.   I will compress the story and tell a bit of it (not to much as I really think anyone who reads this story will like it as lot).   The young woman gets pregnant.   Her mother confronts the man and he tells her that he only promised to marry her daughter to get her in bed and besides he is already married and he laughs.   To make it all much worse, he tells everyone that the daughter is just a common tramp trying to extort money from him.    The mother wants the man dead.  She goes to see Old Man Morgan.    He asks her how she wants the man who ruined her daughter to die.    She tells him she wants to shoot him but does not have the courage.    I will leave the rest of the plot unspoiled for you.

The passage below will give you a good feel for her prose style.


In the swamp at the head of the lake, she saw Jack-O-Lanterns darting here and there and three hundred years of America passed like the mist of morning. Africa reached out its dark hand and claimed its own. Drums, tom,tom,tom,tom,tom,beat in her ears. Strange demons seized her. Witch doctors danced before her, laid hands upon her alternately freezing and burning her flesh. She cried out in formless terror more than once before she found herself within the house of Morgan.


You can read the story HERE.


Please share your experience with Hurston with us.  If you have any suggestions for older paranormal short stories (that can be read online) please let me know.


Mel u

"The She-Wolf" by Saki

Supernatural Saki?

My Prior Posts on Saki

"The She-Wolf" (1912-7 pages)  is a really well done twist ending story by Saki (Hector Munro-1870-1916-UK).    I have been having a lot of fun reading and posting on older paranormal short stories for Carl V's RIP paranormal reading event.    Many people, including myself until recently, never associated Saki with the paranormal.   Most all of his many short stories are gentle satires of the follies and vanities of the upper class of his day.   

Russian "gurus" were very much in fashion in England in the first two decades of the 20th century.  "The She-Wolf" is in part a satire of that vogue.   Just imagine great hairy Rasputin like figures spewing forth mystical profundities at tea parties and you get the setting.   

As the story opens we meet Leonard Bilster.   Leonard finds the "real world" uninteresting and has taken refuge in an "unseen world".    Of course Leonard knows his views are only for the very few, those few being any who will listen to him explain the occult wisdom he acquired while on a trip to Siberia.   Here is a very representative sample of Saki's prose (some like me love his prose style but some do find it too mannered):

In company with a friend, who was interested in a Ural mining concern, he had made a trip across Eastern Europe at a moment when the great Russian railway strike was developing from a threat to a reality; its outbreak caught him on the return journey, somewhere on the further side of Perm, and it was while waiting for a couple of days at a wayside station in a state of suspended locomotion that he made the acquaintance of a dealer in harness and metalware, who profitably whiled away the tedium of the long halt by initiating his English travelling companion in a fragmentary system of folk-lore that he had picked up from Trans-Baikal traders and natives. Leonard returned to his home circle garrulous about his Russian strike experiences, but oppressively reticent about certain dark mysteries, which he alluded to under the resounding title of Siberian Magic. 

When Leonard gets back home he begins to tell others, reluctantly of course, of his great new wisdom.   He gets very peeved when no one really seems interested in his remarks so he states at a party that he can turn a woman into a she-wolf.   Of course people are very skeptical nearly laughing at him. Leonard goes to a friend who has a very large private zoo and asks if he has a tame she-wolf he could borrow for an evening.   Remember this is Saki so there is a twist coming.    

At a party Leonard does the magic he knows is fake and plans to substitute the wolf for one of the ladies at the party, getting her out of the room on a ruse.    Then it appears the lady has really vanished and a snarling she-wolf is in the midst of the party.  Maybe  Leonard really had invoked dark powers?   I will leave the ending unspoiled but it is very clever and leaves you wondering what really happened.    

In a way Saki may be telling us that a lot of the interest in the paranormal really comes from boredom and a wanting to feel you are important because of some occult knowledge you and only a few others possess.   It is hard to see him as wrong in this.

"The She-Wolf" is for sure worth reading.    

You can read it HERE.

Mel u

"Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions

"Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions (1911, 23 pages)

One of the wonderful benefits of having a book blog is learning about new to you authors from the great people who leave comments on our posts.   Fred of Fred's Place suggested I try one of the paranormal stories of  Oliver Onion (1973 to 1961-UK). Fred's blog has been a very consistent source of inspiration for me for a long time.   I have been having a lot of fun reading paranormal stories for Carl V's R I P reading challenge (Sept 1 to Oct 31-the simple rules for this fun event are on Carl's blog).   I read the  most famous story by Onions, "Beckoning Fair One" this morning and Fred was spot on as usual in his recommendation.   (There is a good article on Onions here.)

"Beckoning Fair One" can be read either as a haunted house story or the story of an author, very isolated from people with only one friend, working on a book he has been at for many years and now descending into madness.

The author in the story fears he has lost the ability to produce quality writing and he knows it.   He has only one friend, a lady.   It seems he has had a relationship, perhaps a romantic one, with her for a long time.   She seems to always come to him.   He decided maybe if he moves he will be jolted out of his creative doldrums.  He finds a place in a bad part of town, this does not matter to him and I am not sure he even knows it.   He speaks to someone about the property and tells him he wants to rent one of the floors.   He is referred to an attorney to close the matter. The attorney offers to sell him the whole house on very favorable terms so the man agrees to it and moves in.

The man, of course, begins to hear sounds others do not and begins to feel the presence of a perhaps malevolent but very feminine spirit.   His lady friend is given "the creeps" by the house and begins to tell him she will not keep coming there forever.   The mental state of the man begins to badly degenerate.  He ends up in a near coma like state, but not before something very terrible happens.  I will leave the rest of the plot unspoiled.

This story can be read as an examination of a mental breakdown brought on by creative exhaustion and isolation or it can be taken literally as a haunted house story.  The part of this story I think I liked best was a passing reference which suggests the author will one day be a haunting ghost himself.   This was a very subtly done story and I enjoyed read it a lot.

Here is a small sample of the prose of Onions:

" Formerly, Oleron had smiled at the fantastic thought that, by a merging and interplay of identities between himself and his beautiful room, he might be preparing a ghost for the future; it had not occurred to him that there might have been a similar merging and coalescence in the past. Yet with this staggering impossibility he was now face to face. Something did persist in the house; it had a tenant other than himself; and that tenant, whatsoever or whosoever, had appalled Oleron's soul by producing the sound of a woman brushing her hair."


Thanks again Fred.

You can read the story HERE.    It seems to be considered the master work of Onions, who did publish over forty novels and short story collections.

I am greatly appreciate and respect any reading suggestions from readers for additional older paranormal short stories that can be read online.

Mel u

John Buchan- Two Stories from a Great Scottish Author and a Governor General of Canada

"The Rime of True Thomas"  (1922, 8 pages)
"The Riding of Ninemileburn"  (1925, 7 pages)

One of the very best things about being a book blogger is discovering great new to us writers from the comments of our readers.   I owe my discovery of John Buchan to Geranium Cat.   Her blog is very interesting and focuses on Y.A. and children's literature from before 1950 as well as Canadian literature.   We came in contact with each other through our mutual participation in Carl V's R I P reading event (Sept 1 to Oct 31-the easy rules are on his blog) devoted to paranormal literature.   


John Buchan (1875 to 1940-Perth Scotland) was a very successful person in all respects.   He began a career in the British diplomatic service after graduating from Oxford and ended up in 1935 as Governor General of Canada.   He did all he could to promote a sense of cultural pride in Canadians.   He published over 100 books (his only still famous one, I think, is 39 Steps, you might have seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie based on it).   In  addition to serious historical works he wrote 30 novels and had seven collections of short stories.  


Buchan was deeply influenced by his Scottish background.   Both of the stories by him I read make use of Scottish dialect for the speech of the characters.   One of the stories has elements of Scottish paranormal folklore and the other is very moving story reflecting the extreme poverty of the country Scots in the 1920s.  (There will be a link where you can read these stories at the end of this post.)


"The Riding of Ninemileburn" opens on a tragic no doubt all too common scene at the time.   A woman has recently given birth to a much wanted son but she has no milk to give him because there is little but gruel for her to eat and the family cow has been given to their hard as nails cousin as security for a loan.  The country people of the area are under an almost feudal like obligation to support the laird of the area.  The woman's husband sets off to see his cousin in the hope of some help.   Along the way he is ordered to join in a bounty hunt for a group of cattle thieves who have raided the holdings of the laird.   I saw the violent undertones of the culture of the man when I saw how much he was drawn into this and his savage delight in killing one of the  thieves.   His cousin is along on the hunt also.  The cow that was put up as collateral for his loan has been killed in the fighting.    The cousin forgives the debt but the man still has no cow.   He is so excited over the fight he cannot wait to get home to tell his wife about what happened.   Only when he gets home and sees her and the baby starving to death does he understand what his fight has cost him.   This story gave me a vivid look at the life of the very poor in Scotland.   


"The Rime of True Thomas"  is a really interesting story letting us see some of the Scottish paranormal folk traditions and their place in rural culture.  I think this story is also about how the poverty of the Scottish Highlands produced a culturally destructive outflow of population to America and elsewhere that the Scots tried to understand through their folklore.   This is a very good story.  It required I put aside my perhaps normal narrow minded dislike of "country" dialect in literature and am very glad I did.  Just slow down your reading speed a bit and the dialect is easy to follow and it was really quite a lot of fun.  I admit I loved it when a group of birds were referred to as a "feathered clan".   The story is basically structured as a conversation between a rural man, Tom, and a bird. As he begins to converse with the bird (there is even a conversation about whether animals have souls) he learns of "The Rime".  It is a vision or a way of seeing under the veil of surface appearances.   It allows Thomas to see into the deep past of Scotland through accessing his cultural memories.   Here is a sample of the wonderful prose style of Buchan:


Then the melody changed to a fiercer and sadder note. He saw his forefathers, gaunt men and terrible, run stark among woody hills. He heard the talk of the bronze-clad invader, and the jar and clangour as stone met steel. Then rose the last coronach of his own people, hiding in wild glens, starving in corries, or going hopelessly to the death. He heard the cry of the Border foray, the shouts of the famished Scots as they harried Cumberland, and he himself rode in the midst of them. 




The bird tells Thomas that many a man (men are most influenced by the rime) are driven to leave Scotland by the terrible reevaluations the rime can produce in those sensitive to its power.


There is a lot more in this story but I will leave it untold for the new reader to have the same pleasure in discovery that I did.




You can read both of these stories (along with a lot more of Buchan's work) here


Once again, my thanks to Geranium Cat for her great suggestion.   


I recommend these stories to anyone, as long as you can have the patience to read the dialect (and a lot of people love dialect stories).


The next classical paranormal writer I will read is Oliver Onions, suggested by Fred of Fred's Place.  


I will also soon, I hope, post on another classic Irish paranormal writer.


Mel u

"Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" by M. R. James

"Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" by M. R. James (1904, 8 pages)

Montague Rhodes James

Early English Master of the Ghost Story

I have been having a lot of fun reading and posting on stories for Carl V's R I P reading event (Sept 1 to Oct 31-the easy rules are on his web page) devoted to paranormal and Gothic literature.   

A lot of paranormal and Gothic stories have as one of their central characters a professor.   He is often a bachelor (as one said in the old days "a confirmed bachelor"), very learned in some completely obscure topics such as Third century Anatolian ceramics, sheltered from the ways of the work a day world and off on a holiday or a trip somewhere as the story opens.   This is no accident.  Several of the authors that first made the ghost story a popular genre in England exactly fit this description.   

Montague Rhodes James (often designated as M. R. Janes-1862 to 1936-UK) attended Kings College,  Cambridge as an undergraduate and basically never left.   He lived there most all his life, never married, and became Provost of the college.   He was also a very highly respected medieval scholar.   His specialty was medieval Latin and English church history of the period.   He also wrote a popular guide book to English abbeys.  He is still read widely today for his wonderful ghost stories most of which he originally wrote to be read aloud to friends at college.   His first published collection of ghost stories was Ghost Stories of an Antiquarian (1904 in which "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" first appeared).   I was very happy when I read Professor James held Sheridan Le Fanu in such high esteem that he wrote an introduction to two of his books.  


The central character in "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"  is Professor Parkin of Cambridge who is on a solitary holiday at a hotel somewhere on the east coast of England.   Professor Perkins is given to long walks and as he is walking through an overgrown unkempt cemetery he notices something protruding from one of the graves.   He assumes it is an old bone but when he uncovers it he finds a whistle.    As he begins to walk back to the hotel he notices a dark figure way in the background that seems to be watching him.   


Back in his room he looks the whistle over.   It has an inscription, in Latin, that translates as "Who is this who is coming".   That evening he cleans up the whistle and blows it.   It produces a strange and unearthly sound.    Later that evening he will be awoken by strange sounds.  When he is at breakfast one of the other guests asks him if he believes in ghosts and Parkin basically says the whole notion is silly.    He is, however, very disturbed when the chamber maid tells him that someone slept in the second bed in his room last night.    He begins to wonder who the phantom that seemed to follow him from a long way off after he took the whistle was.  (Spoiler alert)   That night he awakes in terror as the sheets in the second bad begin to flap and he sees the shadowing figure that followed him after he took the whistle arise from the other bed.   


"Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" can be read online here.   Many more of his ghost stories can also found online.


I really like his prose style.   Here is a good sample:


The speech served to remind Parkins of his little discovery of that afternoon. It was with some considerable curiosity that he turned it over by the light of his candles. It was of bronze, he now saw, and was shaped very much after the manner of the modern dog-whistle; in fact it was - yes, certainly it was - actually no more nor less than a whistle. He put it to his lips, but it was quite full of a fine, caked-up sand or earth, which would not yield to knocking, but must be loosened with a knife. 




I enjoyed reading this story and I think most other people will also.  It is a gentle work meant to entertain, not terrify.   I hope to read more of his stories in the future.


The next older paranormal writer I will post on will be James Buchan.


Mel u

"The Vampyre" by John Polidori

"The Vampyre" by John Polidori (1819, 12 pages)

Is This the First Appearance of the Vampire

in English Literature?

I am having a lot of fun reading Gothic and paranormal short stories for Carl V's R I P reading event dedicated to these themes.   I am sort of focusing on some of the early masters of the genre (if one may call it that) like Arthur Machen, Sheridan Le Fanu, Algernon Blackwood and Gerald Griffin.   I have also posted on a paranormal story by an Indian and a Japanese writer.    The literary fixation on the paranormal is hardly a new trend.


"The Vampyre" is by John Polidori (1795 to 1821)  who was born in London.   His father was an Italian emigre who was a well known scholar of Italian political history.   His mother was a governess.    He became a physician at age 19.   He was the uncle by marriage of Dante Rossetti, from his sister's marriage.  


It appears Polidori first became interested in writing after he became the personal physician for Lord Byron.   He was paid by a publisher to keep a journal of the trip.  At one point they spent some time with Mary and Percy Shelley.    Byron suggested one evening that they all should try their hands at writing ghost stories.   Mary Shelly's story became the basis for her Frankenstein.    "The Vampyre" was Polidori's story and is by far his most famous work, really the only part of his work still read.


My research indicates this story might well be the first appearance of a vampire in English literature.   


As the story opens young Aubrey is traveling in  Italy in the company of Lord Ruthven, whom he has recently met.  Lord Ruthven has an enigmatic background and has just recently made his appearance in society.  (This does sound like the start of lots and lots of paranormal stories.)   He parts company with Ruthven when he seduces the pure daughter of one of his friends.    While in Greece, Aubrey develops a fondness for the daughter of the keeper of an inn where he is staying.  (Inn keeper's daughters are another standard fixture now.)   Ruthven by seeming coincidence shows up at the same inn.   The daughter is shortly killed by a vampire but Aubrey does not connect it to Lord Ruthven.   They begin to travel together again only to be attacked by bandits.   Ruthven receives a seemingly  fatal wound in the attack.   As he dies, he makes Aubrey swear he will not reveal anything about his death for a year and a day.


Aubrey goes back to London.   He is amazed when Lord Ruthven reappears in London society seemingly in perfect health.   Aubrey is deeply shocked by this as he thought he witnessed the death of Ruthven.   Ruthven begins a romance with the sister of Aubrey.    He reminds Aubrey that his vow prevents him for a year and a day telling anyone what he knows of him.   Ruthven seduces his sister and the anxiety causes Aubrey to have a breakdown.   Spoiler alert.   Ruthven and the sister are due to be married on day the before the oath will expire.   Aubrey sends her a letter warning her away from Ruthven.   He sends the letter but it does not arrive in time.   The morning of the wedding night she is found dead, drained of all of her blood.   Ruthven has vanished.


The language of the story may seem old fashioned to many people.   I found it very charming.   Here is a good sample to allow you to decide if you like it or not.


It happened that in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon London winter, there appeared at the various parties of the leaders of the ton a nobleman more remarkable for his singularities, than his rank. He gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein. Apparently, the light laughter of the fair only attracted his attention, that he might by a look quell it and throw fear into those breasts where thoughtlessness reigned. Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass.


If you are interested in older paranormal and Gothic stories, you probably will enjoy reading "The Vampyre" and you will see a lot of the things that have become part of the standard fixtures of the vampire story in this work.  


You can read it online HERE


I hope to soon post on two other earlier masters of  the paranormal short story, M. R. Smith and John Buchan.   


Mel u

A Ghost Story by Rabindranath Tagore-Asia's First Nobel Prize Winner

"Living or Dead?"  by Rabindranath Tagore (1916, 6 pages)

An Exquisite Ghost Story

Tagore on The Reading Life

"Men and ghosts fear each other, for their tribes inhabit different sides of the river of death"-

I am having a lot of fun reading and posting on ghost and paranormal stories for Carl V's really fun R I P reading event  devoted to horror, Gothic, and paranormal literature.    The rules for the event are on his blog and Carl has made it easy and a lot of fun to join in.
    

This will be the tenth story by Rabindranath Tagore (1861 to 1941-India) on which I have posted.   I really hope I can encourage others to read his stories as I think there is great wisdom in them  (Albert Einstein discussed metaphysics with him, W. B. Yeats wrote a preface to one of his books, and Gandhi came to him for moral consultations).  Here, taken from my post on a very famous ghost story of his, "Hungry Stones",  is some background information on him.

 Tagore  was born in Kolkata, Indian into a family whose wealth and life style can now only be seen in movies.    His father owned an estate so huge that at one point in his life Tagore traveled through it on a luxurious barge and was met on the river bank by tenants paying token rents to him.   Tagore was raised mostly by servants as his mother died young and his father was very busy administrating the vast estates he owned.   Tagore was educated in classical Indian literature and at age eight began to write poetry and ended up reshaping the Bengali Language.   Later in his life he founded a school and devoted himself entirely to his writing and teachings.   His moral authority became so great that he was able to write the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh, give Gandhi the title of Mahatma (teacher),  and in fact in his life had a status as a moral leader on a par with  Gandi.   He traveled to the west and met William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound and other notable literary figures.    He is considered prior to WWII and perhaps even now the most widely read Indian author both in the west and in India.   


"Living or Dead?"  (it is translated from Bengali-not a real good translation I think and in my reading source there is no translator credit given) begins in the home of a childless widow with no relatives of her own.   She has adopted a foster child who when the story opens is on her deathbed.   The child's age is not real clear but it seems to be middle or early teens based on the fact that she is considered beautiful and is still unmarried.    The widow has been left financially comfortable   Tragically  the foster daughter Kadambini dies.    As required by custom, immediate arrangements are made to burn the body.   Four funeral porters are called to take her to the place where her body will be burned.   When the porters get her body to the spot, they see the wood that was supposed to be there is not.   Two of the porters take off to get wood.    Two hours go by and the other two porters get bored and go in search of their coworkers.   When the come back the body is gone.   At first they think maybe a jackal carried her away but there are no signs of that.   They run in terror concluding she is now a ghost.    


It appears that Kadambini was not really dead at all but went into and has now come out of a coma.   She thinks she is dead.   She begins to hide in the shadows, caking herself in filth.   When people who knew her when she was thought to be living,  see her, they run from her and treat her as if she were a ghost.    She begins to fear herself.   At first she lived in the ruins of an old temple living from the offerings of temple goers but longed for a home.   She went to the house of an old friend who is shocked by her appearance but with the approval of her husband, takes her in.   (Tagore is  deservedly famous for his sympathetic  treatment of women and his portrayal of marriages and there are some great scenes   in this story showing the relationship of the friend and her husband.)    Slowly they come to see something is very wrong with Kadambini when they find out from others that she was said to be dead.   

She ends up back in her old house.  No one notices her as she enters the house.   She sees that she is being nursed.   Suddenly she awakes.  It seems this whole experience may have been a long nightmare brought on by high fever.   She begins to walk around the house but still no one can see her.  (Spoiler alert).   She runs in terror from the house and in an effort to prove herself alive, she jumps into a well and dies.

Like a lot of good ghost stories, you are left a bit in doubt as to what happened in "Living or Dead?".   There is a good bit to be learned about life in India in 1916 from this story also.   


You can read it online Here (along with a number of his other works).


"The Living and The Dead" is a first rate well told story that most people will like.    I think a better translation would do wonders for this story.


Mel u

Dickens, Saki and Algernon Blackwood-An All English Paranormal Day

"Keeping His Promise" by Algernon Blackwood (1914, 8 pages)
"The Trial for Murder" by Charles Dickens (1866, 11 pages)
"Srendi Vashtar" by Saki (1910, 5 pages)

An All English Paranormal Short Story Day

Can Saki Really Triumph Over

Charles Dickens and Algernon Blackwell?

I am having great fun participating in Carl V's RIP 6 reading event (Sept 1 to Oct 31)  devoted to horror, Gothic, and paranormal literary works.   (The rules are on the RIP 6 web page.  Carl has made it easy and fun for all to join in and does a great job as a host.)   Today will be an all England paranormal read off with a visitor from Mount Parnassus, Charles Dickens being taken on by one very odd (and scary looking) gentleman, Algernon Blackwood, and  our own gently witty   Saki.   

Algernon Blackwood  (1869 to 1951-UK) is one of the founding fathers of the "Weird Story" genre, along with Arthur Machen and H  P Lovecraft.    He wrote hundreds of short stories,  twelve novels, and numerous plays in addition to a vast amount of journalism.   He is best know for his collection of paranormal short stories, Incredible Adventures (1914), which  is considered by many the best collection of weird stories ever published by a single writer.    His most famous work is, I think, a long short story, "The Willows".    (There is a good story about his interesting life and his work here).    Waite, like Machen was interested in the occult and was influenced by The Order of the Golden Dawn lead by A. E. Waite. (I think when the dust over the history of occult literature in the late 19th and early 20th century settles this order  will be seen as huge "background influence".   If you look hard enough you can see it in even as a strong influence on Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.)    Blackwood was also a TV and stage actor.   

This morning  I checked  Americanlit.com to see what their short story of the day was and when I saw it was a story by a famous paranormal and new to me writer, Algernon Blackwood, I took it as an omen and I read "Keeping His Promise" right away.   I am glad I did as it was fun if not real scary story.   The story begins in the college rooms of a young man studying for the finals in medical school.   He is not the best of students but he is not the worst either.    He has been cramming for two weeks now and all his friends know to leave him alone as he must pass these exams or he is out of school.   He hears a knock at his door and he wonders who it could be.    He is so shocked to see an old once very close friend he has not seen in seven years at his door.   He is even more shocked when he sees his once well off friend now dressed in rags and looking very unhealthy with his skin a clammy white.   He sees his friend looks like he is starving and he feeds him.   He looks exhausted so he puts him in his spare bedroom.    He  wonders why his friend never spoke to him.   He hears his heavy breathing and goes in the room to check on him.   He cannot find him but the heavy breathing can be heard anywhere in his apartment.    A neighbor in the dorm rooming house stops over and he asks what is that noise.   Fearing he is going mad, the narrator tells him to go in the bedroom to see the man but he still cannot be found.   Then his neighbor notices blood coming from the wrist of the narrator.   Upon closer examination under the new cut on his wrist is an old scar.    Now he recalls seven years ago he and his strange visitor became blood brothers through cuts in their wrists.   Things turn weird now and I do not want to spoil it for new readers but when he writes his old friends sister to find out how he is doing, she tells him he killed himself years ago in a fit of despair.  

"Keeping His Promise" is a good story, not a great one, entertaining and well written.   

About twelve or so years ago I read all of Dicken's novels in publication date order.   It was one of the great reading projects of my life.   I have revisited him twice on my blog in posts on Oliver Twist and Sketches by Boz.   "Trial By Murder" is a pretty simple story (there will be links to read all the stories at the end of the post).     A man is called to jury duty on a murder case and he begins to see the murder victim in the court room.   (It does sound sort of like a Ghost Stories plot.)    Dickens does a great job of describing the mix of people on the jury.   The trial lasted ten days and the jury (all men of course) slept on the tables at an inn with a guard to make sure they did not leave.   This is kind of a two note story.   The first note is the appearance of the ghost of the murder victim.   The second note comes in a pretty good twist at the end and I will leave it unspoiled.   This is a very much an OK story but not great at all.   Algernon Blackwood's story is better done (I think I can say this as I totally love Dickens).

I really enjoy reading the short stories of Saki.    Yesterday I read and posted on my first Saki (1870 to 1916) short story with a paranormal element, "The Cobweb".   Yesterday Tom Conoboy suggested I read Saki's "Srendi Vashtar".   I did and it is the best Saki short story I have ever read (out of 30 or so-270 or so to go!).   It is just perfect and a great paranormal story.   The best paranormal writers often leave it up to decide what happens in the story and Saki does just that.   There are two lead characters in the story, a boy of maybe 10 to 14.  and his adult female cousin who tries to run his life.   The boy pretty much hates her.  Saki has been called a "malicious boy delighting in being in smarter than the real adults" and I guess that is accurate.

The boy gets a pet ferret.   He begins to worship ferret as a god, calling him "Srendi Vashtar".   As the story goes on it seems the boy really does begin to worship the ferret.  His female cousin does not know about the ferret and would make him get rid of him so he keeps him locked in a tool shed and hides the key in his own room.    Every day he begins to pray, "Great Srendi Vashtar grant me one wish".   The boy clearly believes the ferret is a god.   One day the cousin finds the key and opens the took shed.    When he hears a horrible scream from his cousin and sees the ferret has blood on his mouth and is running to the woods he is very happy.   When the family maid announces the cousin is dead on floor the boy knows the ferret god has granted his wish and will now return to the woods, having fulfilled his mission

Saki's story is way better than  those of Dickens and Blackwood.   

Link to "Srendi Vashtar"-best Saki story I have read so far

Link to "Keeping His Promise" by Algernon Blackwood-decent Gothic horror short story.

Link to "Trial by Murder" by Charles Dickens-read it because of who wrote it and it does give us a look at jury duty in England in the 1860s that I found interesting.

I hope to read Blackwood's most famous work "The Willows" before October 31.  

Mel u

"The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen

"The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen (1890, revised 1894, 35 pages)

"One of the Best Horror Stories"-Stephen King

A True Classic of the Paranormal Fiction

I am having a lot of fun reading short stories for Carl V's R I P reading event (Sept 1 to Oct 31).   The rules are on his blog but he has made it fun an easy for all to join in this great community building activity.   So far I have posted on Japanese, Irish and English paranormal short stories.   Today I read one of the true classic short stories of the paranormal and the occult, "The Great God Pan".   

I first learned of Machen (1863 to 1947-Wales in the UK) when I did a bit of research for my post on a much better known writer in this genre, P. K. Lovecraft. Machen was one of  the writers that inspired Lovecraft who in turn was hugely influential among paranormal writers.   

About the time of this story there was a lot of interest in the Occult in England.    Much of the interest was centered in various mystical orders such as The Golden Dawn.   These orders were frequented by true believers and charlatans and those just seeking an alternative faith.   Many of the "Gurus" of the period styled themselves as in possession of occult lore going back through Elite Masonic groups back to ancient Egypt.     Machen began to develop an interest in the occult when his wife died of cancer.

As the story  opens a surgeon is about to do for the first time an experimental brain surgery procedure that will allow his ward Mary to see the great God Pan (by which he means the reality under the world  of illusion.)   Here is what happened when Mary comes out of the ether (I want to quote a bit as it is the wonderful atmosphere created by the magic prose of Machen that makes this story work.

Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenly did the colour that had vanished
return to the girl's cheeks, and suddenly her eyes opened. Clarke quailed before them. They shone with an
awful light, looking far away, and a great wonder fell upon her face, and her hands stretched out as if to touch
what was invisible; but in an instant the wonder faded, and gave place to the most awful terror. The muscles
of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering
within the house of flesh. It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, as she fell shrieking to the floor.
Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lying wide-awake, rolling her head from
side to side, and grinning vacantly.
"Yes," said the doctor, still quite cool, "it is a great pity; she is a hopeless idiot. However, it could not be
helped; and, after all, she has seen the Great God Pan."

This is really a densely written work that really should just be boiled down but here goes.   Mary has a child who the doctor sends to a family to be taken care off while providing a generous allowance for her.   She begins to do terrible things then at about age 16 she disappears.   One of the "characters" in this story is the city of London.   Machen takes us to places the respectable never see in the company of one of the man characters in the story who is kind of a connoisseur of the darker side of London.

We meet Helen Vendler.   If you have read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier you have met a beautiful woman with a strange sinister past and for sure Helen Vendler is in that mode.    Suicides, murder, occult signs,  house where unspeakable things are done, and a once very wealthy man found wandering the streets as a beggar are just a few of the things that happen in "The Great God Pan".

Here are the final words of  the story:

"Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen. The burden of it was too heavy for me to
bear alone, and yet I could tell it to none but you. Villiers, who was with me at the last, knows nothing of that
awful secret of the wood, of how what we both saw die, lay upon the smooth, sweet turf amidst the summer
flowers, half in sun and half in shadow, and holding the girl Rachel's hand, called and summoned those
companions, and shaped in solid form, upon the earth we tread upon, the horror which we can but hint at,
which we can only name under a figure."

To really sum up the plot would take long  a post.   This is a fun scary story that is a classic horror/weird tales work.    It is said to have influenced R. L. Stephenson in the his "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and I can for sure see that.

You download "The Great God Pan" in numerous formats here.

Mel u

Two Edwardian Englishmen take on Haruki Murakami in a Paranormal Short Story Match

"The Cobweb" by Saki (5 pages, 1902
"The Bowman" by Arthur Machen (4 pages, 1917)
"The Elephant Vanishes" by Huruki Murakami (1987, 17 pages)

Can Two Odd Englishmen from the 1910s

Really Stand up to Huruki Murakami

A Paranormal Contest

I am really enjoying participating in Carl V's R I P reading event devoted to Horror and Paranormal Literature.   My last post for it was devoted to short stories by two American authors, O Henry and Sherwood Anderson, and the world's second best short story writer, Guy de Maupassant from France.   

Today I plan to look at two short stories written during the early years of the 20th century by Englishmen and one from the towering Japanese writer Huruki Murakami.   Can two maybe a bit odd Englishmen stand up to one of the world's greatest living authors.

I have posted extensively on Saki and Huruki Murakami in the past (I think I have more posts on Saki than any other book blog) so I will  focus first on Arthur Machen.

"The Bowman" by Arthur Machen

"The Bowman" by Arthur Machen was totally loved by the English reading public on its first publication.   It has to be one of very best uses ever of the short story as  a device for raising public morale during a war.   

Machen (UK-Wales-1863 to 1947) had a huge influence on paranormal writing.   He is best known for his novella The Great God Pan which Stephen King has called possibly the best horror story ever written.   He was a strong influence on P. K. Lovecraft and almost every writer who published in the pulp magazines where horror and paranormal stories got there start.   His life is interesting.  It seems he first developed an interest in the occult when his wife died of cancer.  He was for a time involved with The Order of the Golden Dawn headed by A. E. Waite.   He had a life time belief in "little people" only some can see.  (There is a very good article on his life, background and influence here.)

The story begins on a WWI battleground in France.   The English are being slaughtered in the 1000s by a much larger German army. (This work is understandably very anti-German).   Thousands of brave Englishmen are being cut down by German machine guns and canons.   A highly educated Englishmen recalls the very famous battle of Agincourt in France in 1415 when a greatly outnumber army of English men destroyed a much larger and better equipped French army through the use of long bows.   Every soldier had learned of this battle in school and it is great source of pride to the English.   Suddenly this man calls out, in Latin,  to St George (the patron saint of England) for the help of the Welsh and English archers from this battle just as all seem doomed to a certain death.   Suddenly thousands of what are described as "shadowy" archers appear among the English.   The air darkens completely as millions of arrows are launched at the Germans.   Everywhere on the battle ground we here shouts of "The Archers are here" and "St George has saved us".  The English soldiers were saved.   The German soldiers attempt to retreat but their officers begin to shoot their own men in mass for cowardice but soon the all  the Germans run from the battlefield.  Hundreds of thousands of Germans are found dead on the battlefield but none has a mark on their bodies.   The German  authorities attempt to claim it was a gas attack.    

I think  "The Bowman" was in its place and hour of need, a work of genius.   I think even now anyone who feels he is of English inheritance at all will be moved by this story.  I can see how one could say it is jingoistic but that is what was needed.   I will take a look very soon at Machen's most famous work, The Great God Pan.     My guess, forgetting who is a better writer, that Machen's story will be read widely long after Saki and Murakami are read only by specialists in ancient literature.   

"The Cobweb" by Saki

I really like Saki (Hector Munro 1870 to 1916-UK) a lot.   He wrote a lot of short stories, pretty most all with surprise endings.    Most of the stories are set among the upper crust of society in England in the early years of the 20th century.   His works tend to be gentle satires.   His prose style is very mannered and he may seem effete to some but I love his stories.   He was over the draft age for WWI (43) but he volunteered for service and was killed during the war.   One thing nobody associated him with, including me until I read "The Cobweb", was the paranormal.   One of the unfortunate associations in paranormal/Gothic/occult stories is the assumption that quite old unattractive women are sinister.   "The Cobweb" takes place on a remote farm.   It has passed from hand to hand in a family as people die off.  The only fixture is an old woman who works there.   No living person  can be found who knows how she got to the farm.  It just seems like she has always been there.   The atmosphere of the story is very Gothic.   The woman begins to see traditional occult images of coming death.  Everyone just takes it for granted she is seeing signs of her own death.    This Saki and there is a twist but unlike all of his other stories, it will not make you smile.   This is a story for Saki fans and those who want to read a story of the occult from England in 1902.   

"The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami (1947-Japan) is by far the most read Japanese writer in the world today.   Some see him as one day the 3rd Japanese Nobel Prize winner for Literature.    I think his forthcoming IQ84 (October 2011) will be one of the most blogged on books for the rest of the year.     (There is additional background information on him in my prior posts on his work.)

"The Elephant Vanishes" (translated by Jay Rubin) is a very well done and set up story.    To compress things, an old elephant is given to a town by the owners of a local zoo when the land the zoo  is on was sold to developers.   At first the town leaders did not know what to do with the elephant.   No zoo will take him as he is old and they all already have elephants.    To kill him is out of the question so they set up a house for him with airtight security.     He is taken care of by the same elderly man who cared for him many years at the zoo.    One day the elephant just disappears (he was also chained up by his leg with a key only the city leaders had).   Everyone assumes somehow the keeper stole him but it just seems impossible.     The narrator of the story develops an obsession with trying to figure out how the elephant disappeared.   Murakami does his normal great job with the characters in the story.   There is even a failed romance.      I want to leave the ending of this story unspoiled.   Murakami makes use of magic-realism to explain how the elephant disappeared and I found this ending a little forced.

OK how does the dust settle in this read off?

For sure I think "The Bowman" has had and will continue to have the most readers.  Of this story many of its readers love it and that includes new readers.   It has been and will continued to be read by people who see Saki as a bit silly (OK sorry for that) and Murakami as over their head.   (It will probably never be taught in German High Schools!)   People will like the stories by Saki and Murakami but they will not love them they will not tell others about them.   As I said, "The Bowman" is a war time story and it screams that out to us.    Murakami's  story is the best plotted and the only one with any real character development.   The Saki story is clever and well written but no more.

You can read "The Bowman" and "The Cobweb" at East of the Web:  Short Stories.   There a lot of short stories that would be perfect for the R I P challenge.

I read "The Elephant Vanishes" in The Oxford Book of Short Stories and it also is included in other collections.  

Has any one any experience with Arthur Machen to share with us?  

Mel u