The Empty House Ghost Stories

Get in mood for Halloween with some ghosts vampires monsters and Strange Events

The Empty House : A standard haunted house story involving an adventurous Aunt and her nephew who attempt to spend a single night in a reputedly ill-omened house... The story is likely based on Blackwood's early haunted house investigations with the Psychical Research Society.

A Haunted Island : A supernatural vision on an Island, in which a man encounters a group of natives with particularly ill intent.

A Case of Eavesdropping : A man residing in a New York apartment hears conversations from the room next door that turn out to be supernatural in origin. Based on Blackwood's time living in New York.

Keeping His Promise : Possibly a re-telling of a tale Blackwood came across during his years as an undergraduate in Edinburgh. An old agreement between two old friends, in effort to prove the existence of the supernatural, is realised in terrible circumstances.

With Intent to Steal : A barn is haunted by a spirit with the power to possess the living. Another tale possibly based on Blackwood's own experiences researching haunted properties.

The Wood of the Dead : A visitor to the West Country comes upon the ghost of an old man, whose appearance is an omen of death, which spells doom for the residents of a small mountain village.

Smith: An Episode in a Lodging House : A man's neighbour in an apartment appears to be dabbling in the black arts. Another story inspired by Blackwood's time in New York. The events depicted are likely based on Blackwood's learning whilst a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

A Suspicious Gift : A crime story in which the gift of an immense sum of money turns out to be not as beneficent as hoped.

The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York : A highly Gothic story of a Butler, a reporter, and a mad would-be chemist, who may also be lycanthropic... One of the more humorous tales in Blackwood's ouvre.

Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp : A crime story set in the Canadian outback.

The empty house and other ghost stories. These Short Ghost Stories were written by Algernon Henry Blackwood. He was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writer of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and 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 (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".