In the third part of our four-part series on the best ghost stories in Western literature, we will be focusing on a uniquely dark and experimental era in the history of supernatural fiction. It is also – quite undeservedly – particularly overlooked and glossed over when compared to the Victorian, Edwardian, and Postmodern periods. While some of its luminaries (particularly the later work of M. R. James and Edith Wharton and the stories of Wakefield, Benson, de la Mare, and Onions) have retained their reputations, many of its brightest and most unique lights have been broadly forgotten.
The period we are examining is difficult to define, even to name, and so I will apply the title “Modernism” – one associated with the deconstructing, experimental literature that thrived between the two world wars – and locate it within the time-frame of 1914 to 1950. Admittedly, some of the stories during this era have very strong Edwardian – and even Victorian – elements (cf. James, Benson, Wharton) while others have distinctively postmodern flavors (cf. Wellman, Bowen, Noyes). But to me, this is highly indicative of the unstable nature of modernism as a literary school.
To briefly explain what modernism is, I find myself reminded of a central line from W. B. Yates’ “The Second Coming”: “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” This school of art – exemplified by the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Woolfe; Eliot, Stevens, Pound, and Yates – was known for probing reality in hopes of discovering a unifying, metaphysical truth to life (“the centre”), but ending up disappointed and existentially adrift (“things fall apart”). Modernists had not yet given up or turned to the black humor, nihilism, and irony which characterizes postmodernism, but their reports from the front are bleak and frightening – and they made damned scary ghost stories.
Modernist supernatural fiction was presaged in the hopelessness and existential terror of some of the Romantics (Hoffmann, Shelley, Poe), Victorians (Le Fanu, Dickens, Stevenson), and Edwardians (James, Hodgson, Machen), but their mood is uniquely emotionally disoriented by existential and moral vertigo. Their impressionistic plots often evade definition and end without comforting resolutions: hauntings can easily be explained away, or considered allegorical (see: de la Mare, Bowen, Onions). Dreams, obsessions, posttraumatic stress, wish-fulfillment, defense mechanisms, and mysticism feature extremely prominently, belying the increasing influence of psychoanalysis during the years following the Great War.
These stories are clearly mostly interested by human psychology and the psychological ghosts that haunt our hearts, imaginations, and egos.
Although many of these stories are first rate, most of them have been overlooked – perhaps as a result of a competing wing of speculative fiction that held sway during the same period. In the United States, weird fiction writers – helmed by Lovecraft, Howard, and Ashton Smith – were making big splashes between the two wars, and, as such, the ‘20s and ‘30s are largely associated with Lovecraftian aliens or Howardian fantasy worlds rather than ghosts (a genre which, to many, seems rooted in the 19th century). And yet, afficiandos of the ghost story will gleefully champion this span of time for its particularly creative and unnerving stories. So often typified by a sense of hopeless doom, commonly illustrated with the shocking, sudden death of a luminous young person, they have an uneasy aura of precognition, as if anticipating the second tsunami of horror that would flood the entire world with blood during the final decade of the Modernist Era. Read in this light, these edgy parables are always particularly tragic.
A quick word on the stories contained in this list: it is hardly exhaustive and I don’t claim it to be canonical – please feel free to type your own favorites down below (I may even shoe-horn them in as “Honorable Mention” in a future re-edit). It will also contain a mixture of time-honored, famous favorites and some niche choices, so neither should you expect it to only consist of the rarest of rare gems, nor the biggest of big names.
To be included, these stories had to fit five criteria:
They were specifically short tales of a supernatural haunting (a spiritual presence, message, or vision) written in English between 1914 and 1950.
They are very well-written (not overly purple or meandering) and engaging with quality prose, atmosphere, and characters
They have a memorable, often entirely unique, quality or plot point that makes them stand out from other contemporary stories
They are widely regarded enough by critics, editors, and the reading public to have been anthologized at least ten times (as can be ascertained on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database)
They have a particularly moving climax – either because of profound emotion (“All Souls”) or intense creepiness (“The Marble Hands”) that makes them linger in the imagination
If someone wanted to get the very best out of Modernist ghost stories, these would be my picks. Now, there are many, many, many unforgettable and irreplaceable tales which did not make this list (particularly those by lesser-known and lesser-anthologized writers) which I hope show up in the comments, but since this article (which is actually rather long as far as listicles go) will be limited to one for each day of an average-sized month (particularly those long nights in October and December), I am limited in how generous I can be to authors who deserve to be looked up. Unfortunately, there aren’t many anthologies dedicated solely to supernatural fiction from the Modernist era, but if you consult our Classic Horror Research Database, you can get a very capable guide to the very best writers and stories of this era beyond the present article.
1. All Hallows by Walter de la Mare
A scholar visits a seaside, country church, wanting to study the architecture, but finds himself studying its curious parishoners, who seem blighted and depressed. Their parish is lashed with storms and choked by fog most of the year, and the sea is rapidly eroding their coastline, and – worst of all – they are hounded by the recent, mysterious disappearance of one of their flock, a dean and prominent folklorist, who vanished during a service and was later found suffering from insanity and amnesia. Moody, poetic, and atmospheric, this restrained but Lovecraftian piece ponders “how close to the edge of things” we all are.
2. All Souls by Edith Wharton
One of Wharton’s final stories, this meditation on death follows a wealthy old woman who mysteriously awakens to find herself in an empty house cursed by heavy silence. Outside everything is covered in deep, inescapable snow, and she feels utterly isolated from humanity. To make matters worse, she breaks her ankle and can no longer walk: forced to drag herself from room to room, calling out for help, she fears the existential rather than the physical pain of death – “the inexorable and hostile silence.”
3. The Beast with Five Fingers by W. F. Harvey
A man named Eustace inherits his wealthy uncle's large estate, including a mysterious box containing his uncle’s severed, still-living hand, which is the titular "beast." This hand, seemingly possessing a sinister will of its own, begins to terrorize the household, causing strange occurrences and even deaths, as Eustace grapples with the unsettling reality of his uncle's macabre legacy. The story is characterized by a sense of dread and paranoia, fueled by the mysterious nature of the hand and its seemingly supernatural abilities.
4. Blind Man’s Bluff by H. R. Wakefield
A truly masterful story, which follows a level-headed, rationalistic man as he inspects an abandoned country house which he is considering renting. He shakes off the impression that the windows are watching him and forces his way through the old door, but cannot find a light to dispel the gloom. Worse still, he finds himself being followed around by what he takes to be a bat, and continues to bump into an old chair. Tired of stumbling around, he seeks the door, but cannot find it, by which point he finally realizes that he has become part of someone else’s hideous game – and that he is losing...
5. The Cat Jumps by Elizabeth Bowen
A rationalistic, enlightened married couple purchase a house with an evil reputation (a previous owner murdered his wife with an axe as she crawled away from him, dragging her blood all over the floor). Mocking the superstitious locals, they redecorate the home and host a housewarming party with another couple, two single women, and a bachelor. All seems well, but as the guest mingle and discuss the murder – seasoning the discussion with their own peculiar peccadillos, fears, and fetishes – their imaginations begin to overpower their ability to hold with the hosts’ high standards of modern, enlightened society.
6. The Clock by W. F. Harvey
Understated and mysterious (and famously a favorite of the comedian Patton Oswalt), this extremely brief story tells of how a girl was given the seemingly innocent task of recovering a wind-up clock from Mrs. Caleb’s summer house that has been locked up for two weeks. Mrs. Caleb has been unwell recently, and her servants have mysteriously quit, so she is happy to help. And yet – when she enters the dark room up the dark stairs – she is chilled to hear the clock ticking, as if recently wound. What’s worse is the indentation in the bed and the horrible sound of something hopping up the stairs to greet her…
7. The Cotillion by L. P. Hartley
Fickle flirt Marion has a bad habit of toying with her suitors hearts for her own amusement, but things turn much more serious when one of them blows his brains out and leaves her a suicide note promising to come back from the grave to expose her in front of her upper-class friends. However, she isn’t really worried until she attends a masked Christmas ball where she meets a compelling mystery man and the family become convinced that one of the revelers was not on the guest list…
8. Crewe by Walter de la Mare
A rail passenger finds himself stranded at the desolate rail station in Crewe – a foggy, unsettling byway – and is (unhelpfully) entertained by a ghoulish-looking local who tries to distract him from frightening speculations about a recently disappeared ship with his own unnerving story about something that happened to him when he was a young boy. He tells of how, when he and another boy were working for a vicar, they clashed with the gardener who hanged himself, and of how when, soon after, they found themselves stranded overnight in the very same rail station, they both notice a familiar-looking, raggedy scarecrow staring at them from an adjacent cornfield – a scarecrow that could move…
9. The Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen
In the gloomy midst of World War II, an English wife and mother finds a sinister letter (mysteriously left inside her house) from her former fiancé – a possessive man who went missing and was presumed killed during World War I – announcing his intention to return for her on a soon-approaching date (their planned-anniversary). She had been relieved when the cruel man was reported dead, and now – paranoid, terrified, and confused – she senses the walls closing in on her as their assignation approaches…
10. The Face by E. F. Benson
Since her childhood a woman has been haunted by a recurring dream: she walks through a desolate countryside up to a crumbling cemetery on the brow of a cliff overlooking the sea at dusk, and there she is taken by an ugly, leering man with an unforgettable face. Ultimately, these dreams wear down her health so much that her husband sends her on a seaside vacation. Things seem to settle for her until she recognizes the leering face in a local gallery, but the tension ramps up even further when she tries to clear her head by going on a seaside stroll… through a desolate countryside… up to a crumbling cemetery…
11. Feet Foremost by L. P. Hartley
An engaged couple throw a housewarming for their newly-purchased house – a manor which had been abandoned for over a century – during which the bride-to-be is told the legend of the house’s ghost: a murdered former mistress who can only gain access by being carried over the threshold, and who will then possess and murder the man who gives her access (he will leave the house feet first – a corpse). Unfortunately, her fiancé is not there to hear the story…
12. The Ghost by [Mrs. H. G.] Catherine Wells
A little girl is sick in her bed during a Christmas party at an old, English manor. What’s worse, her favorite, heartthrob stage actor is a guest downstairs! Aware that she is a fan, he stops by her sickbed and promises to cheer the patient up by appearing to her in disguise as a dreadful ghost. Not long after she settles down into bed, she spies him – suddenly troglodytic, leering, and grotesque – watching her from the shadows beyond the fireplace glow. She is mesmerized and horrified – and then comes the knock on the door: he’s finally ready to come in to scare her…
13. The Haunted Doll’s House by M. R. James
An antique collector finds a (suspiciously) stunning bargain in the form of a massive, 18th century dollhouse – complete with a (curiously grim) family made up of two spouses, two children, and a grandfather. He delights in his new acquisition until he is woken up in the middle of the night by its chiming clock tower (making the sound of a real iron bell) and sees that the dollhouse and its sinister inhabitants have come to life. Frozen in awe, he finds himself watching the dysfunctional dolls act out a savage pantomime of murder, resurrection, and revenge which exposes the toymaker’s dark past.
14. The Honey in the Wall by Oliver Onions
A cheery, modern young woman is worried about how she will save her family manor from being sold as their finances continue to sour. One day a twenty-two pound cache of honey is found in a cavity of one of their medieval walls – centuries old but still delicious – and she begins to find mystical inspiration in the strange recovery of this forgotten prize. Increasingly obsessed with her ancestors, she spends less time with her frivolous, flapper friends and more time wandering the neglected halls, even dressing in period costume, until the castle claims yet another sweet treat to be contained within its walls for centuries…
15. The Interruption by W. W. Jacobs
After murdering his overbearing wife, a weak-willed man thinks that he is finally free to enjoy life – until he finds himself blackmailed by his cold-blooded cook. This middle-class version of Rebecca also features vaguely supernatural elements which may be in his mind – or maybe not. Either way, he finds himself driven to murder again, but there is something, or someone, else in the house with them who has different plans. It is a thrilling battle of wills straight out of Hitchcock (cf. Suspicion, Strangers on a Train, Stage Fright, Rope, Rebecca), but one also uneasily menaced by a ghost out of Henry James.
16. The Marble Hands by Bernard Capes
Profoundly short and profoundly disturbing, this slip of a story tells of a boy visiting the grave a pretty woman he knew, a friend of his aunt’s, who was deeply vain about her shapely hands. She was a “little pretty thing, frivolous and shallow; but truly I know now with an abominable side to her,” and just before she died, she modelled for a pair of marble hands as her grave-marker. Her husband’s second wife loathed the white hands and had them removed, but one day the boy sees that they have been returned, and reaches out in almost erotic curiosity to touch them – with unwholesome results…
17. Old Man’s Beard by H. R. Wakefield
A practical father is distressed by his lovely daughter’s pattern of falling in love with worthless cads until she becomes engaged to a poor man who has inherited a fortune. Hopeful that he will become a good provider, he invites them to a seaside resort, but things take a dark turn when his daughter begins experiencing recurring nightmares about a lecherous old man in a coffin who pursues and smothers her with the nasty hair of his long beard. A psychologist is consulted and things seem to clear up until the day she fails to return from a walk on the beach…
18. Midnight Express by Alfred Noyes
As a child, our middle-aged protagonist found himself engrossed by a fascinating and sinister book called The Midnight Express. It told the story of a little boy who was obsessed with a book called The Midnight Express and followed him through adulthood up to a middle-age where he finds himself waiting for a train at night. This is where the protagonist always stopped reading – he couldn’t go further – until the night when he finds himself on the very same train station, and – overcome with terror and curiosity – decides to run far from the tracks, out into the country, up to a lonely house, where he finds a bandaged stranger reading The Midnight Express…
19. One Who Saw by A. M. Burrage
One of the more chilling ghost stories I know of – a savage masterpiece. A sensitive Englishman is visiting Rouen while researching Joan of Arc when he becomes obsessed with an ephemeral woman whom he regularly spies weeping in his hotel’s isolated courtyard. He longs to find and comfort her, but is advised against it by the locals. More than anything, though, he desperately wants to see the face she is always hiding with her hands. Finally, he forces his way down to the courtyard, and presents himself as an understanding champion to this pathetic damsel in distress. And then she shows him her face…
20. Out of the Deep by Walter de la Mare
After inheriting his uncle’s manor, our protagonist is reluctant to move into it due to the horrible childhood trauma he suffered there from an abusive butler. When he does give in, he is disturbed by the recurring sight of ghostly servants, whom he refers to has the “Night Staff,” and who predictably arrive whenever he tugs the disused bellpull – a habit that slowly drives him insane. Equal parts “The Turn of the Screw” and “The Judge’s House” told in the disorienting style of Robert Aickman or Shirley Jackson.
21. The Red Lodge by H. R. Wakefield
Another absolute classic that has long stuck with me. A painter, his wife, and young son rent Red Lodge – an old, riverside English manor – where they hope to spend a tranquil summer. But something is terribly wrong with their new home: psychological manipulations begin to hound the painter, who feels increasingly encouraged to drown himself in the river, and his son is mortified by an imaginary friend called the “green monkey” who slithers out of the water to play with him. It is a slow-boiling, psychological thriller that presages The Haunting of Hill House and The Shinning.
22. The Rope in the Rafters by Oliver Onions
Inspired by an actual supernatural encounter suffered by his son, Onions tells the compelling and tragic story of a facially disfigured World War I veteran who rents a rambling house in order to hide himself away from the leering world. As he begins to settle into his new environment, and finds himself more and more spiteful of the outside world, he starts to wonder at what point he became a ghost – while still living – and at what point he will inevitably choose to go all in on death, responding to the call of the rope hanging from the rafters. When does the haunted become the haunter?
23. The Rosewood Door by Oliver Onions
A Medieval, rosewood door is discovered during renovations of an English manor, and young friend of the family Agatha requests that it be hung on the entrance of the guest room where she traditionally stays. One night she dreams that she is visited by a dashing but sinister stranger who leaves her a sword – one which remains when she wakes up in the morning. Soon after, another family friend – who had gone MIA in World War I – mysteriously shows up, walking through the rosewood door, and becomes hastily engaged to Agatha. Things begin to grow darker as Agatha now fears the door, insists that her fiancé never walk through it a second time, and dreads what new visitors it might send her way…
24. School of the Unspeakable by Manly Wade Wellman
Bart, a young man who had been sent off to boarding school returns home by train where – upon disembarking at the station – he is reunited with an old schoolmate who has been sent to escort him to a new school which, we learn, is to be his new home for the next eight months. Things certainly seem a bit off, but they become downright frightening as Bart is introduced to his fellow students – strange boys who brutally initiate him into his new setting before introducing him to their terrifying schoolmaster.
25. Seaton’s Aunt by Walter de la Mare
A schoolboy befriends young Seaton – a bullied outsider – who lives with his domineering aunt in a creepy, Victorian mansion. The old woman gives the narrator the chills, but he doesn’t believe Seaton when he tries to convince him that she is a witch of some kind – one who regularly communes with ghosts and spirits. When they grow up, however, two uncomfortable visits to the Seatons – the second following a death – challenges the narrator’s skepticism. Typical de la Mare, this is a subtle and poetic story focused more on weaving a tapestry of existential unease than on gory jump-scares.
26. Smee by A. M. Burrage
A classic Christmas ghost story which is told to explain why the narrator refuses to play a game of hide-and-seek at a Yuletide gathering. It seems that the last time he played such a game – at another December gathering – it was “Smee” (the players hide, and one of them is secretly “it,” whose job is to find and collect the others by staying silent when greeted with the call “it’s me!” or “’s me”). In this instance, there were eleven players who scattered about the dark of a rambling English manor, but after a few rounds, they realize that they have been joined by a twelfth person – one whose silence is all the more chilling…
27. A View from a Hill by M. R. James
While on a holiday at his friend’s house, a milquetoast, bicycling scholar decides to explore the local woodlands where a number of ruins are said to exist. To aid his research, he borrows an antique pair of binoculars, but imagine his surprise when he begins to see things through the glasses – a gibbet with a dangling victim, a restored cathedral, etc. – which no longer exist. On his way home that night, however, the woods seem to turn on him (scratching him all over, flatting his tire, snagging his clothes), and he finds himself unwilling to go near the spot where the old gallows once stood. Later, when he learns who made the binoculars and how, he realizes that his timidity likely saved his life.
28. A Visitor from Down Under L. P. Hartley
An Australian traveler is fleeing someone or something he had hoped to leave behind. And yet, he cannot quite shake this pursuer from Down Under (a casual-enough phrase which is given a sinister, Tartarean double meaning here). He is on a train ride, rattling away from his problems, but – as the conductor’s unnerving conversation with his unwavering antagonist proves – he is far from being free of problems. Told in a delightfully Jamesian style, this tale of supernatural revenge is made all the creepier for its use of uncanny circumstances, bizarre dreams, and chilling nursery rhymes.
29. Wailing Well by M. R. James
Written to be told to a local Boy Scout troop, this summer campfire stories follows a delinquent Scout and his friends as he breaks the rules on the camping trip to go exploring an abandoned well in a dank-looking copse of trees on a sweltering summer day. He disregards the warnings of a local shepherd that the well is haunted by the shambling spirits of a man and three women, but he desperately repents of his arrogance when the four figures – zombie-like skeletons with long teeth – gleefully encircle him with the aim of adding yet another resident to the population of Wailing Well.
30. A Warning to the Curious by M. R. James
James’ late-in-life masterpiece tells of poor Parkins, a well-meaning scholar who researches and unearths the location of one of the three fabled Saxon crowns of East Anglia. However, as soon as he recovers the relic, he finds that its latest guardian – a tubercular peasant who died a couple years earlier – has not abandoned his post. Worse, since the country is currently embroiled in war, and since the crown’s burial was intended to stave off invasion, Parkins finds himself guilty of treason, and he and his wheezing pursuer both know all too well what the penalty for treason is…
31. Where Angels Fear… by Manly Wade Wellman
An adventurous couple take on the thrill of their lifetime when they break into a local haunted house in spite of its evil history of driving its residents to suicide. The gung-ho gal and her level-headed male companion work their way up to the room where the bodies have traditionally been found and settle down for a spooky-but-fun vigil. They seem funny, sweet, and brave – a likable pair whom we think would make a cute couple – if they can just make it home. And yet, things begin to grow perceptibly darker as their watch waxes on, and their good humor begins to fail as things change around them – and in them…