The Lure of the Unknown: Essays on the Strange

by Algernon Blackwood, Mike Ashley (Introduction)

The Lure of the Unknown is a collection of Algernon Blackwood’s essays, talks, reviews and anecdotes exploring encounters with the strange and unusual or, in Blackwood’s preferred word, the “odd”. They include his first attempts to investigate alleged haunted houses, his association with such luminaries as W. B. Yeats, “A.E.”, and Gurdjieff; his thoughts on telepathy, reincarnation, elemental spirits, other dimensions, and his beliefs in what lies beyond our normal perceptions. These writings reveal not only Blackwood’s diverse experiences, but his depth of reading and analysis of the unexplained. Few of these essays have been reprinted beyond their first publication or their broadcast on radio and television. They provide another dimension to an understanding of one of the great writers of the supernatural.

Contents

"Hidden Thoughts" by Mike Ashley
"Looking Back at Christmas"
"I Speak for Myself"
"How I Became Interested in Ghosts"
"The Midnight Hour"
"Minor Memories"
"My Strangest Christmas"
"The Little People & Co."
"The Birth of an Idea"
"Our Former Lives"
"The Fire Bodies"
"Passport to the Next Dimension"
"Adventures in Thought-Transference"
"Oddities"
"Gooseflesh"
"Along Came a Spider"
"The Fear of Heights"
"Superstition and the Magic 'Curse'"
"The Psychology of Places"
"Dreams and Fairies"
"Explorers’ Ghost Stories"
"The Lure of the Unknown"
"Queer Stories"
"Sources"

Genres: Occult

189 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2022

About the author

Algernon Henry Blackwood (1869–1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".

Blackwood was born in Shooter's Hill (today part of south-east London, but then part of northwest Kent) and educated at Wellington College. His father was a Post Office administrator who, according to Peter Penzoldt, "though not devoid of genuine good-heartedness, had appallingly narrow religious ideas." Blackwood had a varied career, farming in Canada, operating a hotel, as a newspaper reporter in New York City, and, throughout his adult life, an occasional essayist for various periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was very successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and eventually appearing on both radio and television to tell them. He also wrote fourteen novels, several children's books, and a number of plays, most of which were produced but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, and many of his stories reflect this.

H.P. Lovecraft wrote of Blackwood: "He is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere." His powerful story "The Willows," which effectively describes another dimension impinging upon our own, was reckoned by Lovecraft to be not only "foremost of all" Blackwood's tales but the best "weird tale" of all time.

Among his thirty-odd books, Blackwood wrote a series of stories and short novels published as John Silence, Physician Extraordinary (1908), which featured a "psychic detective" who combined the skills of a Sherlock Holmes and a psychic medium. Blackwood also wrote light fantasy and juvenile books.

Reviews

[John Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN, a collection of essays and talks by Algernon Blackwood, was far more delightful than I'd expected. Blackwood's weird stories are among my favorites. But not all of his tales are "ghost stories" or "weird" or "queer" (in the old-fashioned sense) tales. He also wrote children's stories, and novels dealing with more spiritual, mystical, and psychic themes. But I formerly had the impression that he was a strong believer in these mystical and psychic phenomena.

The Blackwood essays expertly gathered by Mike Ashley in THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN present a different picture. While it's true he was quite interested in psychic phenomena, the unexplained, and the unknown - all his long life - in these essays he comes across as a knowing and active skeptic. He wanted to see ghosts, yes. He wanted to see proof of other worlds invisible to our limited senses, yes. He wanted to experience the inexplicable, yes. But ... he never really did, and he admits this.

He patiently listened to other people who wanted to share their queer stories with him, and he told quite a few himself - many of which he recounts in these essays and talks. But apparently, aside from his fiction (which is obviously fiction), he would usually report these inexplicable tales "for what they're worth" and leave it to the reader to judge. He also posits logical explanations, such as the intrusion of the subconscious or dream states into our conscious lives.

This revelation (to me, at least) from reading THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN raises Algernon Blackwood even higher in my esteem. I, too, am interested in the uncanny, but I'm not any kind of believer. I like weird fiction (er, I love weird fiction), but I recognize it as fiction. Even though Blackwood actively spent his life in pursuit of esoteric knowledge, I respect him all the more having read this superb collection. It allows me to respect him as a logical thinker and an active explorer (mental and physical), rather than as someone more credulous and naïve. Blackwood was not naïve at all. He was a man of great learning and life experience. But he liked to keep his eyes and ears open at all times, and he kept his mind open till the end of his life.

I'm so glad I read this book. Now I'll be going back and re-reading his best tales and catching up on some of his work I've never read before. I'll be reading them with new eyes.

(BTW, everyone knows Algernon Blackwood's masterpieces "The Willows" and "The Wendigo", and they're among my favorites as well. But in addition to those, I have 3 other favorite Blackwood tales: "The Man Whom the Trees Loved", "The Glamour of the Snow", and "Max Hensig". But all of his stories are beautifully written. I love him very much.)

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can almost entirely get the measure of a weird fiction writer by their writing about the supernatural or the construction of fiction itself. Stephen King is thoughtful, enthusiastic, a bit rambling; MR James is considered and pithy, like a good lesson by a teacher; Lovecraft is rambling and excitable and as full of overreach as he is insight. And now there’s this, a series of essays, articles and transcripts of Blackwood at his most entertaining and witty. Some of the essays are very slight, others are fictionalised versions of autobiographical experiences (Ashley does a sterling job with this) and some show the wide range of the man’s reading. Elements from these pop up regularly in his fiction, but there’s something particularly charming about the idea of him telling us these stories verbatim (you can find some of these on YouTube and they’re particularly wonderful) so it ends up being as close to him as storyteller at a wintry fireside as you’re going to get. A delight

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, somewhat eclectic collection of essays about odd things. Real-life ghost stories? Unexplainable happenings? Though transference? As the subtitle asserts, these are indeed essays on the strange.