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The Black Reaper
Bernard Capes (1854–1918) was one of the most original and imaginative writers of his day, and yet within a decade of his death his work was virtually forgotten—in spite of critical praise from G.K. Chesterton, who approvingly pointed to Capes's ability to write a penny-dreadful "so as to make it worth a pound".
Capes's tales of terror show him at his best, and the stories revived by Hugh Lamb in this new selection will delight all connoisseurs of fantasy and the macabre. Here Capes conjures up a vision of the moon as a repository of lost souls; the soul of a dead glassblower trapped in a bottle; a werewolf priest in a grisly variation of Little Red Riding Hood; a prison cell haunted by a dead man who makes the dust swirl constantly; a wicked ancestor who steps down from his portrait...
Every story in this collection bears the stamp of Capes's fertile and deeply pessimistic imagination—from Napoleonic terrors and haunted typewriters to marble hands that come to life and plague-stricken villagers haunted by a scythe-wielding ghost—and taken together confirm Capes's standing as a first-rate master of the macabre.
Capes's tales of terror show him at his best, and the stories revived by Hugh Lamb in this new selection will delight all connoisseurs of fantasy and the macabre. Here Capes conjures up a vision of the moon as a repository of lost souls; the soul of a dead glassblower trapped in a bottle; a werewolf priest in a grisly variation of Little Red Riding Hood; a prison cell haunted by a dead man who makes the dust swirl constantly; a wicked ancestor who steps down from his portrait...
Every story in this collection bears the stamp of Capes's fertile and deeply pessimistic imagination—from Napoleonic terrors and haunted typewriters to marble hands that come to life and plague-stricken villagers haunted by a scythe-wielding ghost—and taken together confirm Capes's standing as a first-rate master of the macabre.
192 pages, Paperback
First published July 13, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 3, 2019
Full review at a later date.
July 1, 2017
Capes' fiction, as found in this collection, is at worst passable and at best genuinely singular. Considering how good his best stories can be, how prolific he was, or that he was praised by the likes of Chesterton (and, much later, by Robert Aickman) it is rather surprising that he is all but completely forgotten nowadays.
One recurring flaw, tho, is his prose style. While far from unreadable, it is oft cumbersome and overwritten. Sometimes, it works, for example accenting the decadent flair of "The Accursed Cordonnier". At other times, tho, it doesn't.
Titular tale might pose particular issue for some, but it is really a very different beast: here, deliberately archaic prose accents the feeling of authenticity, with story being presented as taken from a 17th century chronicle.
Prose aside, stories are extremely varied with some genuine gems. We have takes on classic tropes, such as werewolves like "The Thing in the Forest", here with a folkloric feel. expert ghost stories such as "William Tyrwhitt’s ‘Copy’" or "An Eddy on the Floor", Poe-inspired extravaganza of "The Accursed Cordonnier", darkly humorous tales of Napoleonic wars redolent of Potocki such as "Gallows-bird" and "The Sword of Corporal Lacoste"... and then we have truly original pieces of weird fiction such as "The Moon Stricken". This one has you expecting Blackwood-like mysticism, yet it goes into very different territory. This is another case where Capes's prose style works really well, be it the portentous descriptions of landscape or nightmarish imagery found in story's climax. Description of feverish nightmare from the opening of "The Sword of Corporal Lacoste" is another great example of this. Capes had quite a knack for conjuring grotesque imagery.
One recurring flaw, tho, is his prose style. While far from unreadable, it is oft cumbersome and overwritten. Sometimes, it works, for example accenting the decadent flair of "The Accursed Cordonnier". At other times, tho, it doesn't.
Titular tale might pose particular issue for some, but it is really a very different beast: here, deliberately archaic prose accents the feeling of authenticity, with story being presented as taken from a 17th century chronicle.
Prose aside, stories are extremely varied with some genuine gems. We have takes on classic tropes, such as werewolves like "The Thing in the Forest", here with a folkloric feel. expert ghost stories such as "William Tyrwhitt’s ‘Copy’" or "An Eddy on the Floor", Poe-inspired extravaganza of "The Accursed Cordonnier", darkly humorous tales of Napoleonic wars redolent of Potocki such as "Gallows-bird" and "The Sword of Corporal Lacoste"... and then we have truly original pieces of weird fiction such as "The Moon Stricken". This one has you expecting Blackwood-like mysticism, yet it goes into very different territory. This is another case where Capes's prose style works really well, be it the portentous descriptions of landscape or nightmarish imagery found in story's climax. Description of feverish nightmare from the opening of "The Sword of Corporal Lacoste" is another great example of this. Capes had quite a knack for conjuring grotesque imagery.
October 17, 2025
As an enormous fan of the literary ghost story, I often worry if I've already drank dry all the wells of the masters of the genre and there's nothing left to discover. Multiple times a year I get the itch to read the work of a new ghost story author in the off-chance they're the hidden gem I was looking for. They rarely are though. Most are perfectly fine. Some are bad. That's how I came to Bernard Capes, as another forgotten writer who maybe could scratch that itch.
I was incredibly impressed, frankly blown away. I'd heard that Robert Aickman was a big fan of Bernard Capes which makes perfect sense. Many of Capes' stories remind of Aickman. But more he feels like the lost link between a writer like M.R. James and a writer like Walter de la Mare. The incredible thing is that he came before both of them (in fact his story "A Queer Picture" bears a worrisome amount of similarities with James' "The Mezzotint"). It's fitting though, his plots seem very ahead of their time and certainly incredibly different from his fellow Victorians. It's not just that they're darker or more sordid, they feel much more creative and almost deranged. Like in Walter De La Mare's tales, crucial events happen incredibly quickly and with very little explanation and you're often left in the dark about what actually happened. There's magic to that when it's done well and in Capes' work I think it is. Capes' plots feel like they came from a writer living half a decade later.
Which makes his writing style more interesting. If his plots are ahead of his time, his writing style certainly is not. He has this incredibly strange, over-wrought, verbose style. Bordering on purple. But Capes does it well and I absolutely loved it. You feel cocooned in this cozy strange world of nice words and lovely descriptions in the stories' beginnings which is a perfect contrast to the ghoulish events that unfold. Just take this sentence from "William Tyrwhitt's Copy:"
"the air and the sea were so still that one could hear the oysters snoring in their beds; and the little frizzle of surf on the beach was like to the sound of dreaming ears of bacon frying in the kitchens of the blest."
Aickman writes that Capes wrote "as if he were writing under the influence of drink." Seems harsh but the more I read the more I got it. It's this odd mix of pompous and antiquated but demented and ghoulish. Events unfold like they are engineered by a madman but everything exists in this verbose world of long-winded and beautiful writing. I think Capes might be a new favorite of mine. And I feel incredibly cheated that he is so hard to find and forgotten. I'm excited to champion him to anybody who will listen though.
None of the stories are too long. There are a mix of 20-ish page stories alternated with very short conte cruel pieces that are a handful of pages or less. Even if they are definitely more minor works, I thoroughly enjoyed many of the extremely short stories like "The Shadow Dance," "The Apothecary's Revenge," and "The Vanishing House." I didn't really enjoy the title story, which is written in a tiresome 15th century pastiche style. Two of the longer stories, "An Accursed Cordonnier" and "A Gallow's Bird," didn't wow me despite original ideas. Stories I liked are: "Dark Dignum," "The White Hare," and "The Green Bottle." There were definitely stories I loved though. Here they are:
William Tyrwhitt's Copy - Bad title, incredible story. Two rather anemic editor characters go to the seaside to rest their nerves and stumble across a strange house with a life-size model pirate ship cabin in its basement. Things go south when they meet the bizarre' rooms owner. Beautiful prose, horribly creepy denouement. Perhaps one of my favorite ghost stories I've read in years.
The Sword of Colonel Lacoste - An awesome historical werewolf story. Fantastic atmosphere and characters, the intro pages especially are amazing.
Poor Lucy Rivers - A story of a haunted type-writer and its owner. This is an example of a story featuring a ghost that is meant to be sympathetic but is still genuinely scary. The end is incredibly sad and haunting and affecting.
The Marble Hands - A short and incredibly icky story. A notorious and prominent local woman has two marble hands build coming out of the ground directly ahead of her gravestone.
The Mask - My favorite "haunted portrait" story I've ever read. Fantastic, creeping atmosphere with a truly horrific villain that feels out of M.R. James. Though the surreal, bewitching prose does not.
The Moon Stricken - When I say Capes is ahead of his time, I mean stories like this. Just read it. I don't want to give anything away. But this piece of proto weird fiction deserves to be beloved and anthologized everywhere in the same was as Blackwood's "The Willows." Such a great story.
An Eddy on the Floor - Probably the most famous of these stories (which doesn't mean much because its Capes) and definitely the longest. A man becomes a doctor at a prison ran by a beloved and humanistic prison reformer. There, he becomes troubled by a forbidden empty cell and what he sees inside. A twisted story of revenge and bitterness that asks disturbing questions about when a "good" man must wrestle with his past mistakes. It really reminds me of a De La Mare story in how nightmarish and purposefully obfuscated many of the story's scariest moments are, though things are neatly tied up with a particularly horrible anecdote at the end. A ghost story classic that deserves its roses.
Capes is awesome and is proof that I need to keep up my impossible quest of looking through forgotten horror writers to find buried treasure. I want to read more by him, but am troubled it wont be as good as this.
October 2025 Haunted Library 3/8
I was incredibly impressed, frankly blown away. I'd heard that Robert Aickman was a big fan of Bernard Capes which makes perfect sense. Many of Capes' stories remind of Aickman. But more he feels like the lost link between a writer like M.R. James and a writer like Walter de la Mare. The incredible thing is that he came before both of them (in fact his story "A Queer Picture" bears a worrisome amount of similarities with James' "The Mezzotint"). It's fitting though, his plots seem very ahead of their time and certainly incredibly different from his fellow Victorians. It's not just that they're darker or more sordid, they feel much more creative and almost deranged. Like in Walter De La Mare's tales, crucial events happen incredibly quickly and with very little explanation and you're often left in the dark about what actually happened. There's magic to that when it's done well and in Capes' work I think it is. Capes' plots feel like they came from a writer living half a decade later.
Which makes his writing style more interesting. If his plots are ahead of his time, his writing style certainly is not. He has this incredibly strange, over-wrought, verbose style. Bordering on purple. But Capes does it well and I absolutely loved it. You feel cocooned in this cozy strange world of nice words and lovely descriptions in the stories' beginnings which is a perfect contrast to the ghoulish events that unfold. Just take this sentence from "William Tyrwhitt's Copy:"
"the air and the sea were so still that one could hear the oysters snoring in their beds; and the little frizzle of surf on the beach was like to the sound of dreaming ears of bacon frying in the kitchens of the blest."
Aickman writes that Capes wrote "as if he were writing under the influence of drink." Seems harsh but the more I read the more I got it. It's this odd mix of pompous and antiquated but demented and ghoulish. Events unfold like they are engineered by a madman but everything exists in this verbose world of long-winded and beautiful writing. I think Capes might be a new favorite of mine. And I feel incredibly cheated that he is so hard to find and forgotten. I'm excited to champion him to anybody who will listen though.
None of the stories are too long. There are a mix of 20-ish page stories alternated with very short conte cruel pieces that are a handful of pages or less. Even if they are definitely more minor works, I thoroughly enjoyed many of the extremely short stories like "The Shadow Dance," "The Apothecary's Revenge," and "The Vanishing House." I didn't really enjoy the title story, which is written in a tiresome 15th century pastiche style. Two of the longer stories, "An Accursed Cordonnier" and "A Gallow's Bird," didn't wow me despite original ideas. Stories I liked are: "Dark Dignum," "The White Hare," and "The Green Bottle." There were definitely stories I loved though. Here they are:
William Tyrwhitt's Copy - Bad title, incredible story. Two rather anemic editor characters go to the seaside to rest their nerves and stumble across a strange house with a life-size model pirate ship cabin in its basement. Things go south when they meet the bizarre' rooms owner. Beautiful prose, horribly creepy denouement. Perhaps one of my favorite ghost stories I've read in years.
The Sword of Colonel Lacoste - An awesome historical werewolf story. Fantastic atmosphere and characters, the intro pages especially are amazing.
Poor Lucy Rivers - A story of a haunted type-writer and its owner. This is an example of a story featuring a ghost that is meant to be sympathetic but is still genuinely scary. The end is incredibly sad and haunting and affecting.
The Marble Hands - A short and incredibly icky story. A notorious and prominent local woman has two marble hands build coming out of the ground directly ahead of her gravestone.
The Mask - My favorite "haunted portrait" story I've ever read. Fantastic, creeping atmosphere with a truly horrific villain that feels out of M.R. James. Though the surreal, bewitching prose does not.
The Moon Stricken - When I say Capes is ahead of his time, I mean stories like this. Just read it. I don't want to give anything away. But this piece of proto weird fiction deserves to be beloved and anthologized everywhere in the same was as Blackwood's "The Willows." Such a great story.
An Eddy on the Floor - Probably the most famous of these stories (which doesn't mean much because its Capes) and definitely the longest. A man becomes a doctor at a prison ran by a beloved and humanistic prison reformer. There, he becomes troubled by a forbidden empty cell and what he sees inside. A twisted story of revenge and bitterness that asks disturbing questions about when a "good" man must wrestle with his past mistakes. It really reminds me of a De La Mare story in how nightmarish and purposefully obfuscated many of the story's scariest moments are, though things are neatly tied up with a particularly horrible anecdote at the end. A ghost story classic that deserves its roses.
Capes is awesome and is proof that I need to keep up my impossible quest of looking through forgotten horror writers to find buried treasure. I want to read more by him, but am troubled it wont be as good as this.
October 2025 Haunted Library 3/8
Want to read
April 19, 2025Read so far:
*The Black Reaper
*The Thing in the Forest
*The Accursed Cordonnier
A Queer Cicerone
A Gallows-Bird
The Sword of Corporal Lacoste
Poor Lucy Rivers
The Green Bottle
*The Marble Hands
The Moon Stricken
The Mask
*An Eddy on the Floor
***
Dark Dingum
A Ghost Child
The Vanishing House
*The Black Reaper
*The Thing in the Forest
*The Accursed Cordonnier
A Queer Cicerone
A Gallows-Bird
The Sword of Corporal Lacoste
Poor Lucy Rivers
The Green Bottle
*The Marble Hands
The Moon Stricken
The Mask
*An Eddy on the Floor
***
Dark Dingum
A Ghost Child
The Vanishing House
May 12, 2020
An amazing collection of dark and mysterious tales! Not horror but definitely creepy.
There are also two other books in the bigger collection and I love all of them!
There are also two other books in the bigger collection and I love all of them!
October 31, 2024
Entry for the stories The Black Reaper and The Thing in the Forest
Currently reading
October 22, 2024The Thing in the Forest is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror
William Tyrwhitt's "Copy" is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror
William Tyrwhitt's "Copy" is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror
December 16, 2024
The dark compartment- 3 stars
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