H. R. WAKEFIELD

Herbert Russell Wakefield was born in 1888 in Kent, England. He was educated at Marlborough College and later University College, Oxford where he took second-class honors in modern history. He served in the British army during World War I, eventually attaining the rank of captain. He went on to become chief editor for book publisher […]

13 Haunting Tales by E.F. Benson

Edward Frederic Benson, the son the Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in 1867, in Wokingham, Berkshire. He attended Marlborough and King’s College, Cambridge and spent three years studying archeology abroad in Greece and Egypt. He enjoyed immediate success with his first society novel, DODO (1893) and ended up writing over a hundred published pieces in […]

L.P. HARTLEY

Leslie Poles Hartley (a favorite of mine) was born in Whittlesea, Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1895. He joined the British Army in 1919, but was sent home after a short stint due to medical problems. He started his writing career as a fiction reviewer for several magazines, continuing at it for thirty years. […]

GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Guy de Maupassant was born in France in 1850. He studied under French novelist Gustave Flaubert before enlisting in the military during The Franco-Prussian War. He wrote numerous short stories during his life and is widely regarded as a master of the form. In his twenties, he began suffering from syphilis. Years of dealing with […]

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON

William Hope Hodgson was born in Blackmore End, Essex in 1877. He ran away from boarding school at the age of thirteen to work at sea, eventually becoming a lieutenant in the merchant marine. Being a short man, Hodgson began a rigorous workout regiment in order to protect himself from bullying by other sailors. He […]

M.R. James: The Grandmaster of Horror

An antiquary is either an expert on, or collector of antiques, or both. The protagonists in GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY by M.R. James generally hale from this studious bunch, who tend to come into contact with some hideous spectral entity as a result of their antiquarian quests. Montague Rhodes James was born on August […]

THE ADVENTURES OF CARNACKI THE GHOST FINDER

Paranormal super-sleuth Carnacki the Ghost Finder was the creation by William Hope Hodgson. Carnacki would recite details from each case to a group of friends who gathered at his house. During his investigations he’d employ pseudo-science along with arcane magic rituals, often mixing the two, to identify and combat these forces. Some cases turned out […]

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

Robert W. Chambers was born Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1865. He became a successful artist, selling work to several magazines and publications. He later turned to writing, publishing his first novel (In the Quarter) in 1887. Chambers wrote in multiple genres, but his biggest success was his weird fiction collected in “The King in Yellow” (1895). […]

W.F. HARVEY

W.F. HARVEY William Fryer Harvey was born in 1885, in Yorkshire, England to a well-to-do Quaker family. He was educated at Balliol College Oxford where he eventually obtained a medical degree. After traveling abroad to recover from bad health, he published his first book of short stories entitled MIDNIGHT HOUSE (1910). Serving as a surgeon-lieutenant […]

ALEXANDER W. DRAKE

Alexander W. Drake was born in New Jersey in 1843. He was a successful wood engraver, art collector and director of the art department for Scribner’s and Century Magazine. Here we’ll be focusing on the three weird tales he wrote. These were collected by friends to memorialize him following his death in 1916. The collection […]