THE SUPERNATURAL OMNIBUS (118 page)

"Can a dog see with his nose? Do odors impress some olfactory centre with images of the thing emitting them?...

"Sept 2.—Looking at the stars last night as they rose above the crest of the ridge east of the house, I observed them successively disappear—from left to right. Each was eclipsed but an instant, and only a few at the same time, but along the entire length of the ridge all that were within a degree or two of the crest were blotted out. It was as if something had passed along between me and them; but I could not see it, and the stars were not thick enough to define its outline. Ugh! I don't like this...."

Several weeks' entries are missing, three leaves being torn from the book.

"Sept. 27.—It has been about here again—I find evidences of its presence every day. I watched again all of last night in the same cover, gun in hand, double-charged with buckshot. In the morning the fresh footprints were there, as before. Yet I would have sworn that I did not sleep—indeed, I hardly sleep at all. It is terrible, insupportable! If these amazing experiences are real I shall go mad; if they are fanciful I am mad already.

"Oct. 3.—I shall not go—it shall not drive me away. No, this is my house, my land. God hates a coward....

"Oct. 5.—I can stand it no longer; I have invited Harker to pass a few weeks with me—he has a level head. I can judge from his manner if he thinks me mad.

"Oct. 7.—I have the solution of the problem; it came to me last night—suddenly, as by revelation. How simple—how terribly simple!

"There are sounds that we can not hear. At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire treetop—the tops of several trees—and all in full song. Suddenly—in a moment—at absolutely the same instant—all spring into the air and fly away. How? They could not all see one another—whole treetops intervened. At no point could a leader have been visible to all. There must have been a signal of warning or command, high and shrill above the din, but by me unheard. I have observed, too, the same simultaneous flight when all were silent, among not only blackbirds, but other birds—quail, for example, widely separated by bushes—even on opposite sides of a hill.

"It is known to seamen that a school of whales basking or sporting on the surface of the ocean, miles apart, with the convexity of the earth between them, will sometimes dive at the same instant—all gone out of sight in a moment. The signal has been sounded—too grave for the ear of the sailor at the masthead and his comrades on the deck—who nevertheless feel its vibrations in the ship as the stones of a cathedral are stirred by the bass of the organ.

"As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as 'actinic' rays. They represent colors—integral colors in the composition of light—which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument; its range is but a few octaves of the real 'chromatic scale' I am not mad; there are colors that we can not see.

"And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!"

***

J. Sheridan Le Fanu

28 August 1814 - 7 February 1873

Irish writer and magazine editor (last name sometimes written Le Fanu), well-known for his supernaturalist and mystery fiction (famous examples of the latter being Uncle Silas and The Rose and the Key. One of the major figures of C19 supernaturalism, LeFanu helped move supernaturalist fiction away from the Gothic's emphasis on external sources of terror and toward a focus on the effects of terror, thus helping to create the psychological basis for supernaturalist and horror lit that continues today. 

E. (Edith) Nesbit

19 August 1858 - 4 May 1924

English poet, journalist, and short-story writer, perhaps now best-known for her children's books (the twice-filmed Five Children and It, The Railway Children and The Wouldbegoods) and the over-anthologized horror tale "Man-Size in Marble." She also published works under the joint pseudonym (with her husband) "Fabian Bland." In the anthology for some reason is named Evelyn.

Bram Stoker

8 November 1847 - 20 April 1912

Irish-born writer, theater critic, and manager for the famed late-C19 actor Henry Irving, Stoker is of course best known as the author of Dracula, the definitive vampire story. Stoker wrote a number of other novels and short stories, several of which (The Jewel of Seven Stars and Lair of the White Worm, to mention just a couple of the novels) also have major supernaturalist elements. 

Perceval Landon

1868 - 23 January 1927

British writer and newspaper correspondent, educated at Oxford and a lifelong friend of Rudyard Kipling. 

E. and H. Heron

Major Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard, DSO, MC, FRGS, FZS (17 November 1876 – 14 June 1922) was an explorer, adventurer, big-game hunter and marksman who made a significant contribution to sniping practice within the British Army during the First World War. Concerned not only with improving the quality of marksmanship, the measures he introduced to counter the threat of German snipers were credited by a contemporary with saving the lives of over 3,500 Allied soldiers.

During his lifetime, he also explored territory never seen before by white man, played cricket at first-class level, including on overseas tours, wrote short stories and novels (one of which was turned into a Douglas Fairbanks film) and was a successful newspaper correspondent and travel writer. His many activities brought him into the highest social and professional circles. Despite a lifetime's passion for shooting, he was an active campaigner for animal welfare and succeeded in seeing legal measures introduced for their protection.

He and his mother wrote together under the pseudonyms "H. Heron" and "E. Heron", and saw publication in several journals, including Cornhill Magazine

Amelia B. Edwards

7 June 1831 - 15 April 1892

English poet, novelist, suffragette, and Egyptologist. A friend of Charles Dickens, she published a number of her short stories in his magazines, especially the Christmas annuals. The multiple titles of a number of her works is a consequence of periodical publication/re-publication.

Amyas Northcote

(1864–1923)

Was an English writer. He was the seventh son of the First Earl of Iddesleigh (the Chancellor of the Exchequer under Disraeli) and was for several years a Justice of the Peace in Buckinghamshire. He wrote ghost stories in the line of those of M. R. James, which were compiled in his only book, In Ghostly Company

Miss Braddon (Mary Elizabeth Braddon)

4 October 1835 - 4 February 1915

Extremely successful and prolific British "sensation" novelist (best known for Lady Audley's Secret), dramatist, short-story writer, and editor, as well as actress. 

Rosa Mulholland

(1841-1921)

born 1841, Belfast, Co. Antrim. The family was Catholic, and most of the men were physicians. At first she intended to be a painter, but she met Charles Dickens, who was impressed with her writing and persuaded her to concentrate on it. He published her story ‘Not to be taken at Bed-time' in All the Year Round, and wrote 'To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt' as a companion piece. After a period helping her husband's researches and raising a family, she produced several popular 'social' novels: Mulholland married Sir John Gilbert, the antiquary and historian of Dublin, and much of the work they did together on Irish folk-lore finds its way into her books. Her sister married Lord Charles Russell of Killowen, the first catholic Attorney-General of England in 300 years. Mulholland's constant theme is the emergence of a Catholic Irish gentry, as good as — and differing little from — the Protestant Anglo-Irish sort. Her attitude might be summed up as "We are Victorian gentlefolk of Irish persuasion." Allied to this is her protrayal of the Irish as merely another variety of Englishmen, quaint perhaps, but no more so than Yorkshiremen. She has a strong sense of the Celtic past as something to be expiated and tamed, though not altogether lost. Perhaps the logic of this position, developed over the years, was why in the end she seemed to abandon hope in this English connection and approach nationalism (when it became fashionable in society) — if "we" are as good as "they" are, then "they" are no better than "we" are. She died in 1921, during the War of Independence. Mulholland is strongly influenced by J. S. LeFanu and William Carleton, as well as by Dickens; she has more than a touch of Gaskell about her. Although "Not to be taken at Bed-time" surfaces in anthologies from time to time, she is little read today. 

Charles Dickens

7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870

Does this man really need an introduction? One of the best-known C19 English novelists, particularly famous today for helping to shape Christmas as we know it — and for contributing significantly to the tradition of the Christmas ghost story. While primarily a writer of realist novels characterized by his trademark concern with issues of social inequality and injustice, Dickens wrote a number of shorter ghostly pieces, many of which share the social and humanitarian concerns of his novels, and his role as a magazine editor and owner put him in a position to help shape the market for supernaturalist fiction. 

Charles Collins

(1828 - 1873)

British painter, illustrator, and writer, brother of Wilkie Collins and son-in-law of Charles Dickens, for whose final (and unfinished) novel, Edwin Drood, Collins produced the cover illustration.

Vincent O'Sullivan

November 28, 1868–July 18, 1940

American-born short story writer, poet and critic. Born in New York City to Eugene and Christine O'Sullivan, he began his education in the New York public school system and completed it in Britain.[1] he lived comfortably in London, travelling often to France, until in 1909 he lost his income from the family coffee business when his brother Percy made a spectacularly mistimed futures gamble at the New York Coffee Exchange. The entire family was ruined, and Vincent was destitute for the remaining years of his life. His works dealt with the morbid and decadent. He was a friend of Oscar Wilde (to whom in his disgrace he was often generous), Leonard Smithers, Aubrey Beardsley and other fin-de-siècle figures.

Vernon Lee

14 October 1865 - 13 February 1935

British writer, author of novels, essays, literary criticism, travelogues and, of course, ghost stories. Pseudonym of Violet Paget.

Roger Pater

(1873-1936)

Mystic Voices (1923) and My Cousin Philip (1924) both claim to relate the experiences of Philip Roger Pater who is haunted by ghostly voices. They were actually written by Dom Gilbert Roger Hudlestone.

Wilkie Collins

8 January 1824 - 23 September 1889 

British writer of novels, short fiction, and drama, Collins (a good friend of Charles Dickens) is best known for his mystery/suspense novels, particularly The Woman in White [1860] and The Moonstone [1868], works which make very effective use of post-Gothic atmospherics and tropes (insanity, mistaken identity, drugs, imprisonment, stolen inheritance, family intrigues and vengeance, among others); the latter work is often regarded as the first true detective novel, though of course Edgar Allan Poe created the genre with his tales of ratiocination. Collins, whose popularity waxed and waned during his lifetime and who, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, struggled with addiction to laudanum, also wrote a number of good supernaturalist tales, usually featuring his enduring interest in fate. Although in most respects a "typical" Victorian - and one whose works clearly spoke to a large swath of mainstream Victorian society - Collins was atypically Victorian in his domestic arrangments: in addition to what you'll learn from my note to "Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman" below, it's also the case that Collins had a second mistress, with whom he fathered three children. His first mistress, who left him to marry another man when Collins refused to marry her, later rejoined the Collins household. Collins was the son of the well-known painter William Collins (of whom he wrote a biography), and dabbled in painting himself; he was also a lawyer, although he never practiced. 

Richard Harris Barham

6 December 1788 – 17 June 1845

English cleric of the Church of England, novelist, and humorous poet. He was known better by his nom de plume Thomas Ingoldsby.

Frederick Marryat

10 July 1792 – 9 August 1848

English Royal Navy officer, novelist, and a contemporary and acquaintance of Charles Dickens, noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story. He is now known particularly for the semi-autobiographical novel Mr Midshipman Easy and his children's novel The Children of the New Forest, and for a widely used system of maritime flag signalling, known as Marryat's Code.

John Guinan

(1874-1945)

John Guinan was an Irish playwright and civil servant who wrote four plays for the Abbey Theatre, “The Cuckoo's Nest” (1913), “The Plough Lifters” (1916), “Black Oliver” (1927), and “The Rune of Healing” (1931). He also wrote short stories for Irish newspapers, but these were never collected.  His story "The Watcher o' the Dead" (Cornhill Magazine, June 1929), concerning a curious custom associated with the cemetery Gort na Marbh, was reprinted by Montague Summers in The Supernatural Omnibus (1931), and thus Guinan rates mention here. One other folklorish and borderline weird story is “The Scythe Bearer” (Blackwood’s Magazine, November 1933).  His books include his first play, The Cuckoo’s Nest: A Comedy in Three Acts (1933), an Irish edition of “Black Oliver” as Oilibhéar Dubh: Cluiche aon Ghníomh (1935), and the posthumous The Wonderful Wedding: A  Play in Three Acts (written between 1906 and 1908, but not published until 1978), written in collaboration with George Fitzmaurice (1877-1963). 

W. B. Seabrook

February 22, 1884 – September 20, 1945

William Buehler Seabrook (February 22, 1884 – September 20, 1945) was an American Lost Generation occultist, explorer, traveller, cannibal, and journalist, born in Westminster, Maryland. He began his career as a reporter and City Editor of the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia. He later became a partner in an advertising agency in Atlanta.