Author Biography – Walter Hubbell
Though not an author by profession, Walter Hubbell did write a book detailing his experiences in what was claimed to be a “true and real haunting”.
The Great Amherst Mystery (also known as The Haunted House : A True Ghost Story) written by Walter Hubbell, claimed to be a true account of a notorious case of reported poltergeist activity in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada between 1878 and 1879. It was the subject of an investigation by Walter Hubbell, an actor with an interest in psychic phenomena, who kept what he claimed was a diary of events in the house, later expanded into a popular book.
Walter Hubbell’s book was published in 1888 and proved popular, selling at least 55,000 copies. The Amherst case was also investigated by the British paranormal researcher Hereward Carrington, who took statements from suriving witnesses of the events in 1907 and published them, along with a detailed account of the case, in 1913. Other researchers looked at the case more critically than Walter Hubbell: in particular, Dr Walter F. Prince in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research (Vol XIII, 1919) made a detailed case for trickery by Esther Cox while in a dissociative state.
It has been suggested that certain aspects of the alleged paranormal events at Borley Rectory, sometimes dubbed “the most haunted house in England”, may be linked to the Amherst case. The experiences of the Foyster family there in the early 1930s – in particular claims that writing appeared mysteriously on the wall – resemble events in the Teed household. Rev. Foyster had previously lived at Sackville, New Brunswick, and may well have been aware of the case of Esther Cox.
Events Surrounding the Work of Walter Hubbell
The Amherst Mystery centred around Esther Cox, who lived in a small house with her married sister Olive Teed, Olive’s husband Daniel, and their two young children. A brother and sister of Esther and Olive also lived in the house, as did Daniel’s brother John Teed.
According to Walter Hubbell’s account, events began at the end of August 1878, after Esther Cox, then aged 18, was subjected to an attempted sexual assault by a male friend. This left her in great distress, and shortly after this the physical phenomena began. There were knockings, bangings and rustlings in the night, and Esther herself began to suffer seizures, in which her body visibly swelled and she was feverish and chilled by turns. Then objects in the house started to be thrown around.
The frightened family called in a doctor. During his visit, bedclothes moved, scratching noises were heard, and the words “Esther Cox, you are mine to kill” appeared on the wall by the head of Esther’s bed.
Tags: A Haunting in 1879, Ghostly Encounters, The Unexplained, True Ghost Stories, Walter Hubbell
Author Biography – Algernon Blackwood
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Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 – 10 December 1951) was an English writer of fiction dealing with the supernatural, who was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator.
S. T. Joshi has stated that “his work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s” and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures “may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century”. H. P. Lovecraft included Blackwood as one of the “Modern Masters” in the chapter of that name in Supernatural Horror in Literature. Peter Penzoldt devotes the final chapter of The Supernatural in Fiction (1952) to an analysis of Blackwood’s work, and the book is dedicated “with deep admiration and gratitude, to Algernon Blackwood, the greatest of them all”. |
The Life of Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Henry 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”. Algernon Henry 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. Algernon Henry Blackwood was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, and many of his stories reflect this.
According to many critics, his two best known stories are probably “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”. Algernon Henry Blackwood would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Algernon Henry Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which climaxes with a traveller’s sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution in human consciousness. In correspondence with Peter Penzoldt, Algernon Henry Blackwood wrote:
” My fundamental interest, I suppose, is signs and proofs of other powers that lie hidden in us all; the extension, in other words, of human faculty. So many of my stories, therefore, deal with extension of consciousness; speculative and imaginative treatment of possibilities outside our normal range of consciousness. … Also, all that happens in our universe is natural; under Law; but an extension of our so limited normal consciousness can reveal new, extra-ordinary powers etc., and the word “supernatural” seems the best word for treating these in fiction.
Tags: Algernon Blackwood, Bizzare Tales, Fiction Writer, Ghostly Encounters, The Unexplained
The Glamour of the Snow – Chapter 7
A note to the reader: This story first appeared in ‘Pan’s Garden’ in 1912
They say that men who know the sleep of exhaustion in the snow find no awakening on the hither side of death…. The hours passed and the moon sank down below the white world’s rim. Then, suddenly, there came a little crash upon his breast and neck, and Hibbert—woke.
He slowly turned bewildered, heavy eyes upon the desolate mountains, stared dizzily about him, tried to rise. At first his muscles would not act; a numbing, aching pain possessed him. He uttered a long, thin cry for help, and heard its faintness swallowed by the wind. And then he understood vaguely why he was only warm—not dead. For this very wind that took his cry had built up a sheltering mound of driven snow against his body while he slept. Like a curving wave it ran beside him. It was the breaking of its over-toppling edge that caused the crash, and the coldness of the mass against his neck that woke him.
Dawn kissed the eastern sky; pale gleams of gold shot every peak with splendour; but ice was in the air, and the dry and frozen snow blew like powder from the surface of the slopes. He saw the points of his ski projecting just below him. Then he—remembered. It seems he had just strength enough to realise that, could he but rise and stand, he might fly with terrific impetus towards the woods and village far beneath. The ski would carry him. But if he failed and fell …!
How he contrived it Hibbert never knew; this fear of death somehow called out his whole available reserve force. He rose slowly, balanced a moment, then, taking the angle of an immense zigzag, started down the awful slopes like an arrow from a bow. And automatically the splendid muscles of the practised ski-er and athlete saved and guided him, for he was hardly conscious of controlling either speed or direction. The snow stung face and eyes like fine steel shot; ridge after ridge flew past; the summits raced across the sky; the valley leaped up with bounds to meet him. He scarcely felt the ground beneath his feet as the huge slopes and distance melted before the lightning speed of that descent from death to life.
He took it in four mile-long zigzags, and it was the turning at each corner that nearly finished him, for then the strain of balancing taxed to the verge of collapse the remnants of his strength.
Slopes that have taken hours to climb can be descended in a short half-hour on ski, but Hibbert had lost all count of time. Quite other thoughts and feelings mastered him in that wild, swift dropping through the air that was like the flight of a bird. For ever close upon his heels came following forms and voices with the whirling snow-dust. He heard that little silvery voice of death and laughter at his back. Shrill and wild, with the whistling of the wind past his ears, he caught its pursuing tones; but in anger now, no longer soft and coaxing. And it was accompanied; she did not follow alone. It seemed a host of these flying figures of the snow chased madly just behind him. He felt them furiously smite his neck and cheeks, snatch at his hands and try to entangle his feet and ski in drifts. His eyes they blinded, and they caught his breath away.
Tags: Algernon Blackwood, Bizzare Tales, Ghostly Encounters, The Glamour of the Snow, The Unexplained
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