The Listener and Other Stories

First published in 1917 by Alfred A. Knopf, this collection of Algernon Blackwoods short stories includes some of his mostbeloved classics:The LISTENER:A reclusive, impoverished writer is delighted to find an inexpensive home in an old building at the heart of London; but in the course of three months living there, he comes to understand why its so cheap...MAX HENSIG:Bacteriologist and Murderer:A tabloid newspaper reporter is assigned to cover the trial of a frightful psychotic murderer, and earns his implacable enmity. Then the murderer is set free, and the deadly cat-and-mouse game begins....The WILLOWS:A pair of adventurers on a canoe trip down the Danube discover, after stopping for the evening on a small island covered with tiny willow trees, that they are trespassers at the gate of unknown and hostile forces from beyond the Earth—and they may never get off the island alive.The INSANITY of JONES:An mild-mannered clerk in a fire insurance office becomes convinced, through theintervention of the ghost of a deceased co-worker, that his manager was aalguacil of the Spanish Inquisition who tortured him to death in a past life — so he buys a gun.The DANCE of DEATH:A young man, just diagnosed with a weak heart and feeling despondent about it, goes to a dance, where he meets the woman of his dreams. But is she real, or a ghost? And if she is a ghost, what is he?The OLD MAN of VISIONS:The old man didnt talk much, but if one were allowed into his garret room, one could look out the window and see beyond the veils of the material world. But he was careful to warn: “Should you seek to explain me to another, you must lose me beyond recall.”MAY DAY EVE:A skeptical, materialistic physician, on the way to visit a dreamy folklore professor, strays from the road on May Day Eve and finds himself wandering helpless and lost as the wild English moors transform into a strange and terrifying spirit world.MISS SLUMBUBBLEand CLAUSTROPHOBIA:Miss Daphne Slumbubble, a forty-something unmarried lady with bird-like mannerisms and abiding fears of men, is on holiday when for no apparent reason a ghostly terror creeps into her soul; she panics and tries to leap from the train. She later learns she isn’t the first to do so.The WOMAN’S GHOST STORY:She was a psychic investigator on the job, trying to learn if a famous house was haunted or not. It was indeed haunted when she arrived … but the ghost had a very peculiar request.