Showing results by author "Arthur Machen" in All Categories

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads "The Monstrance" from The Angels of Mons by Arthur Machen, detailing the agony of a German soldier driven mad by the vision of an atrocity he committed earlier in the war. WWI was going badly for the English, and Machen’s tales of a supernatural power on the side of the embattled British troops brought hope to the nation.

An entrancing collection of 50 great short stories by leading classic writers.

'The Bowmen' is perhaps the most famous of Machen's tales. It is the iconic story of an incident from the First World War trenches. Faced with inevitable death and defeat, a battalion of English soldiers is saved by the mysterious and miraculous intervention of Saint George and a company of English bowmen who had last fought at Agincourt.

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh author and mystic, best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. 'The Ceremony' is the eerie tale of a standing stone which exerts a supernatural pull towards young females and draws them fearfully to make offerings there. Strange and mysterious offerings, at secret erotic ceremonies.

'A Double Return' is a classic doppelganger tale. A successful artist, Hallswell, is returning by train from a painting trip in the southwest of England. As the down train passes him at a junction, he imagines he catches a glimpse of his own face in the train rushing past his window. When he reaches home, a strange and sinister mystery awaits him....

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh author and mystic, best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction. 'Torture' is a horror story about a schoolboy with a dangerous secret fantasy.

An influential writer of supernatural fiction, Arthur Machen was born in Wales, in 1863. Many modern writers, such as Stephen King, have cited him as an inspiration. Perhaps most notably, though, was H.P. Lovecraft, who cites Machen as what led him down the road to eventually creating the Cthulhu Mythos. Presented here are two short stories and two novellas: "The Inmost Light", "A Fragment of Life", "The Shining Pyramid", and "The Terror."

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of Arthur Machen's story, The Inmost Light. The streets of the city are dark and wet, and when a sheltering archway leads to a chance encounter it starts a haunting mystery of undiscovered occult horror.

Machen's novella The Great God Pan is often cited as one of Lovecraft's most notable influences. In it, Dr. Raymond's ultimate goal is to devise a way to open the mind of man so that he may experience all the world has to offer. He calls this "seeing the great god Pan". After much study of the human mind, he devises an experiment that involves minor brain surgery. He performs this experiment on a young woman named Mary, but when she awakens she is terrified and mentally crippled.

Arthur Machen has been cited as an influence to many writers of supernatural horror. He was also a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This story, originally from 1888, is about a monk, in charge of the wine cellar at his abbey, who finds a strange jar and decides to take a drink.

A young woman, Helen Leicester, becomes concerned about her brother Francis when he begins spending all of his time locked in his room studying. At first Francis insists that he is fine, but eventually admits that he is not feeling well and agrees to see the family physician. The doctor prescribes a medication - a white powder which is mixed with water - and Francis begins to feel better. However, this "cure" doesn't last very long and Francis begins exhibiting peculiar and disturbing behavior.

Volume 7 starts off with Edgar Allan Poe's story of a gifted boy hounded by his shadow, "William Wilson". We take to the sky's with a pilots investigation into unexplainable events thousands of feet above ground in Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Horror of the Heights". Next up, Ambrose Bierce plays with time in "The Suitable Surroundings".

The short stories written during and about World War I are often overshadowed by the excellent verse of the War Poets. Yet the short story is perhaps their equal in other ways. Within these succinct little time capsules of words are captured ideas, attitudes, feelings and life that are expressed in a few minutes just as movingly, imaginatively and tellingly as in any other form. Some of these stories will be familiar, but some may not. From Virginia Woolf to Katharine Mansfield and John Buchan to C. E. Montague, various writing styles try to make sense of this world at war.

Lucian Taylor, the hero, is damned either through contact with an erotically pagan "other" world or through something degenerate in his own nature, which he thinks of as a "faun". He becomes a writer, and when he moves to London he becomes trapped by the increasing reality of the dark imaginings of this creature within him, which become increasingly real. One of the first explorations in fiction of the figure of the doomed artist, who is biographically so much a part of the decadent 1890s.

On publication, it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its implied sexual content, and the novella hurt Machen's reputation as an author. Beginning in the 1920s, Machen's work was critically re-evaluated and The Great God Pan has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror.

A masterpiece of Gothic horror and suspense that inspired such writers as H. P. Lovecraft, The Three Impostors is Machen’s famous collection of “weird tales” - a string of shocking short stories woven together with a fine narrative thread. The three impostors of the title are members of a secret society devoted to debauched pagan rites who weave a web of deception in the streets of London as they search for a missing Roman coin commemorating an infamous orgy by the Emperor Tiberius and close in on their prey: “the young man with spectacles”.

Inspired by a trip to a graveyard in Wales, the novella was originally not well received. The Great God Pan is now considered an excellent example of Gothic fiction, and has influenced such writers as Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this volume we come up against the definition of Northern Europe. There are many, each with plausibility and each so obvious. So, here’s ours.

Arthur Machen, born March 3, 1863, in Caerleon, Monmouthshire, Wales, The United Kingdom, was a leading author of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. "The Great God Pan," published in 1894 made him famous and controversial in his lifetime.

Tauchen Sie ein in die unheimliche Geschichte Das innerste Licht von Arthur Machen, in neuer Übersetzung und packend gelesen von Benjamin Werner. In dieser Erzählung führen private Ermittlungen zu einem mysteriösen Wissenschaftler, namens Dr. Black, der ein düsteres Experiment durchführt und dabei die Grenzen von Wissen, Moral und dem Übernatürlichen überschreitet - und die Folgen sind katastrophal. Perfekt für Liebhaber von düsteren Geschichten und Schauerliteratur.