“Should the writer of the ghost story himself believe in ghosts?” asked Reverend Montague Summers in his introduction to The Supernatural Omnibus (the only other essay that is as brilliant an overview of Horror literature pre-1930 as HPL’s “The Supernatural Horror in Literature” (check both out at http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/omniintr.htm and http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/superhor.htm). Summers, being a believer both in God and the supernatural, feels they do. He mentions M. R. James, a borderline case who does the job well without full belief, but for the most part, Summers feels writers like Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Conan Doyle are better ghost story writers because they are Spiritualists.
I have to disagree with the good Reverend. I find Algernon Blackwood’s belief in Spiritualism crippling in much of his work. As for Conan Doyle, his best horror tales are those without ghosties, such as “The Terror of Blue John Gap” or “The Brazilian Cat”, and even a few of the Sherlock stories, such as “The Speckled Band” or “The Creeping Man”.
Read the rest:
