Customer Reviews

Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

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I love scary stories and was happy with this one. I recommend it for a quick read.

Algernon Blackwood's The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories is another series of one author collection of stories by Audio Realms. All read by the veteran himself Brian Holsopple this collection has a standard of real hits and real misses.

Now I understood that Blackwood is a legend with the Modern of Horror storytelling and I have finally got my hands in a few of his ghostly tales, at last. However Audio Realms had decided to release only 6 CDs and only released The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories as a celebration of Blackwood's first collection than renaming it The Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood and release instead with 6 discs, they should have released 10. I know that he had written more Ghost stories or other horrors including Wendigo and The Willows and others. But these series of his stories is quite good, though some are great, some are okay and some... well let's just say they needed to be skipped and replaced with something else entirely.

Now the first disc is The Empty House, it's one of the best in the series. Blackwood and Holsopple's performance has a strong atmosphere of dread, fear and the keeping sensation of being with the two characters as they explore a supposedly haunted house in the dead of night. The Empty House is a sort of conjure tale since it was Blackwood's first and the explanations of this one is carefully told by the narrator.

The Second tale is a total surprise and shows you how detailed Blackwood is on writing and the details of the character's nature and environment. The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York is a real hit, a really great story and it surrounds something that's probably a shape shifting spirit or a werewolf and the main character isn't going to be the next victim of his host's strange rituals.

Sadly a Suspicious Gift has no supernatural quality which is a shame since that most in history have declared it to be one of his bests works in his supernatural universe.

Smith: An Episode in a Lodging-House has a strange Lovecraftian nature towards it towards the forbidden arts and summoning something that no one has knowledge of knowing what it is. Of course it's a good story; still not very strong or showing a affect like his other creations.

Now in the other hand, Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp as well as even A Haunted Island are truly great and well dreaded. A Case of Eavesdropping is another weak story though it does have its good points, but still weak. Keeping His Promise is another stronger chilling tale and The Wood of The Dead does have its strengths and weaknesses. The Empty House has its strong points and a few weak ones as well but its still a great audio collection for anyone's library.

I'm not sure if I will even read this monstrosity. When I order a book I expect a professionally printed novel sized thing. This book is standard copy paper size and lo and behold looks like it was badly printed on computer paper. I'm sure its rife with spelling errors too. How disrespectful. DIY is great when it comes to hardcore punk NOT early Twentieth Century genre fiction. The "people" responsible for this should be very very ashamed of themselves. Really, I am simply horrified.

I think you got it backwards. Blackwood was one of the greats that Lovecraft admired, even quoting Blackwood in "The Call of Cthulu".

Lovecraft thought highly of Blackwood, once stating that he wished he could of left his writing legacy with something as great as Blackwood's "Incredible Adventures".

Alas, Blackwood did not return the compliment, claiming that young admirer's work (Lovecraft) lacked "spiritual terror", an element considered quite important in Blackwood's work.