Showing results by author "Arthur Machen" in All Categories

Authors writing for the horror genre succeed in creating an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the listener. While the featured horror is often supernatural, it may spring from a very real origin. Several classic horror stories have become icons of the horror genre. They inspire modern retellings throughout print, on stage, and on film. This collection gathers the best of the supernatural and frightening stories spun by expert storytellers.

An excellent collection of creepy ghost stories from some of the most notable names of early horror fiction, including: “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood, “The Shadows On The Wall” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, “The Messenger” by Robert W.Chambers, “Lazarus” by Leonid Andreyev, “The Beast With Five Fingers” by W.F. Harvey, “The Mass Of Shadows” by Anatole France, “What Was It” by Fitz-James O’brien, “The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot” by Ambrose Bierce, “The Shell Of Sense” by Olivia Howard Dunbar, and more!

On publication, it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its implied sexual content, and the novella hurt Machen's reputation as an author. Beginning in the 1920s, Machen's work was critically re-evaluated and The Great God Pan has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. 

Dubbed the greatest horror story in English by Stephen King, The Great God Pan is an eerie and otherworldly mystery about a diabolical operation and its terrifying repercussions. After rescuing a young woman from the streets of London, Dr. Raymond uses her as a test subject for brain surgery aimed at "lifting the veil" of reality, to see the supernatural and the "great god Pan". The operation is a disaster and leaves the subject lobotomized. Years later, London becomes afflicted with a strange series of male suicides connected to a beautiful but sinister woman.

Machen's novella The Great God Pan is often cited as one of Lovecraft's most notable influences. In it, Dr. Raymond's ultimate goal is to devise a way to open the mind of man so that he may experience all the world has to offer. He calls this "seeing the great god Pan". After much study of the human mind, he devises an experiment that involves minor brain surgery. He performs this experiment on a young woman named Mary, but when she awakens she is terrified and mentally crippled.

Arthur Machen’s novella explores the disturbing consequences of toying with the line between the earthly world and the spiritual realm. The Great God Pan centers around an ominous woman named Helen, who lives in the woods and invites morbid happenings. The book faced harsh censure upon its publication in 1894 for its explicit content, but today it is considered a hallmark of horror fiction. Stephen King himself called it “one of the best horror stories ever written”, making it essential reading for any dedicated fans of the genre.

The Green Book is a precious artefact procured from the possessions of a dead woman, and carefully kept in secret by the aged and studious Ambrose. Cotgrave is loaned the Green Book to further his understanding of the occult secrets that Ambrose is so reluctant to talk about. FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of this supernatural classic that's often cited as an inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft.

Volume 7 starts off with Edgar Allan Poe's story of a gifted boy hounded by his shadow, "William Wilson". We take to the sky's with a pilots investigation into unexplainable events thousands of feet above ground in Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Horror of the Heights". Next up, Ambrose Bierce plays with time in "The Suitable Surroundings".

Woods play a crucial and recurring role in horror, fantasy, the gothic, and the weird. They are places in which strange things happen, where it is easy to lose your way. Supernatural creatures thrive in the thickets. Trees reach into underworlds of pagan myth and magic. Forests are full of ghosts. Lining the path through this realm of folklore and fear are 12 stories from across Britain, telling tales of whispering voices and maddening sights from deep in the Yorkshire Dales to the ancient hills of Gwent and the eerie quiet of the forests of Dartmoor. 

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time, the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form.... 

Lucian Taylor dreams of becoming an author, but not just any author, the best of authors. Obsession with perfection drives him to extremes of self-deprivation, which leaves him in a state where reality and fantasy blend. FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of the classic tale of writing and obsession that Lord Dunsany rightly admired. Indeed the text itself appears to almost reach the perfection sought by its protagonist in word choice and pacing.

Lucian Taylor, the hero, is damned either through contact with an erotically pagan "other" world or through something degenerate in his own nature, which he thinks of as a "faun". He becomes a writer, and when he moves to London he becomes trapped by the increasing reality of the dark imaginings of this creature within him, which become increasingly real. One of the first explorations in fiction of the figure of the doomed artist, who is biographically so much a part of the decadent 1890s.

A masterpiece of Gothic horror and suspense that inspired such writers as H. P. Lovecraft, The Three Impostors is Machen’s famous collection of “weird tales” - a string of shocking short stories woven together with a fine narrative thread. The three impostors of the title are members of a secret society devoted to debauched pagan rites who weave a web of deception in the streets of London as they search for a missing Roman coin commemorating an infamous orgy by the Emperor Tiberius and close in on their prey: “the young man with spectacles”.

The Three Impostors (1895) by Arthur Machen is a combination of horror story and mystery novel. It features the likable detective, Dyson, who is somewhat pretentious and mostly ineffectual. The work is separated into a number of episodes, from "The Adventure of the Gold Tiberius" to "The Adventure of the Deserted Residence".

The tale begins with an experiment to enable a woman named Mary to experience the supernatural realm, which turns her into an idiot. Then follows an account of a series of mysterious occurrences and deaths surrounding a sinister woman named Helen Vaughan. The protagonists eventually confront Helen and forces her to kill herself. Before dying, she undergoes a series of spooky transformations that reveals her to be the daughter of the ill-fated Mary and the god Pan. 

A wonderful collection of 50 phenomenal stories by the world’s great short story writers. 

In the remote hills of deepest old England, Vaughn is worried when he discovers inexplicable changing symbols next to his home. With no one else to ask for help, he seeks out his old friend and investigator Dyson. Together they work to uncover the mysterious truth about the changing symbols. 

I collect snippets from newspapers, special interesting snippets. The unusual, the weird, the unexplained. These things have always interested me. Yet when I found my old hometown was the subject of a sudden rush of strange and inexplicable events, I felt I was being drawn back.... 

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh author and mystic, best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction. The Red Hand is a mysterious horror story which tells the peculiar tale of the strange murder of Sir Thomas Vivian, the famous heart surgeon. Why was he murdered with an ancient flint weapon when there was an unused, brand-new knife at the scene? What was the meaning of the bizarre letter in the dead man's pocket, written in a very strange hand? And what could be the meaning of the peculiar symbol of a red hand chalked on the wall above the corpse?

Stranded in London during the summer vacation period and caught up in a sudden rain shower, two friends sought shelter in an archway. One of them vaguely remembered having heard that there was a club down this alleyway. From this point events become very strange. A mutual friend appears, who is able to introduce the two into the mysterious club. All the members are well known figures in London society...and they are all there for a bizarre and terrifying ceremony. Each member must open an old book, and whoever turns up the black page will face an unknown and horrifying fate.