The Lure of the Unknown

“This is an essential book for any Blackwood fan.” – Michael Dirda, Washington Post

“A beautifully designed edition . . . a fascinating glimpse of Blackwood’s ideas.” – Fortean Times

“An excellent collection of occasional writings by one of the most gifted and charming authors of supernatural fiction.” – Supernatural Tales

The Lure of the Unknown: Essays on the Strange by Algernon Blackwood; cover image by Chloe Cumming; cover design by Meggan Kehrli; selected and introduced by Mike Ashley; edited by Brian J. Showers and Jim Rockhill; copyedited by Timothy J. Jarvis; typeset by Steve J. Shaw; published by Swan River Press.

Hardback: Published on 19 April 2022; limited to 400 copies of which 100 were embossed and hand numbered; xi + 189 pages; lithographically printed on 90 gsm paper; dust jacketed; illustrated Wibalin boards; sewn binding; head- and tail-bands; issued with four postcards; ISBN: 978-1-78380-042-1.

Paperback: Published on 31 December 2022; no limitation; print on demand paperback; xi + 189 pages; ISBN: 978-1-78380-766-6.

“Gooseflesh”

First broadcast in the series “Books and Authors” on BBC Light Programme on 31 January 1948.

BBC: When writing one of your really creepy stories do you, yourself, get a feeling of this so-called “gooseflesh”, or a chill down the spine?

AB: If I didn’t feel it myself, it doesn’t get across. Actually, in fact, it’s feeling the creeps or gooseflesh that starts the story. No creepy story starts without that first shock of the uncanny. Once felt, your instinct—if you’re a writer—is obviously to give expression to your emotion in a story. Oddly enough, an emotion tries to express itself—to dramatise itself—hence the story. Without that first stimulating thrill, any story remains still-born. No story results. But—and this is a big but—I must obviously be thrilled myself—feel that chill down the spine—before I can hope to “get it across”, in story form. Interesting, perhaps, to remember the primitive origin of this gooseflesh. An animal, when frightened, wants to make itself as big and fierce-looking as it can. Up goes its fur, its hackles. Well, our hair or fur has gone, but the action of the pores or hair roots remains.

BBC: I’d never heard that before. But tell me, where do you get it from, this shock of something unusual, uncanny, other-worldly, call it what you will. What is its origin? What causes it in your own case, for instance?

AB: Your question is good and penetrating. I’d love to answer it. You want to know in terms of the man in the street, let us say, what starts this shock of the queer, the uncanny, the so-called supernatural sensation. Where, for instance, do I myself get it from? In a few words, it’s hard to summarise, but it comes, I think, from the usual appearing suddenly unusual. A normal incident in normal life—catching a bus, meeting a friend, anything—suddenly and, above all, inexplicably, takes on another guise. You are puzzled, worried, even scared a bit. The incident is over. What’s the explanation? You don’t know. “That’s odd,” you say to yourself, and you feel an unpleasant thrill down the spine—gooseflesh.

BBC: That may be, but, after all, it doesn’t get much further.

AB: Agreed. One further answer, I think, is that anything “out of the ordinary” alarms us. Most of us are mere mechanical automata. The machine then plays tricks—and we are suddenly scared to death.

BBC: But what gives you, personally, gooseflesh?

AB: Well, I think my best answer is that it’s something, some incident, some combination of atmosphere and accidental surroundings at a given moment—anywhere—at home, in a forest, on a lonely mountain, out in the desert, on the tube—suddenly seems unnatural, and therefore inexplicable. And it frightens.

BBC: But why? Why the chill down the spine?

AB: Because, firstly, it’s unusual. Secondly, and I believe this is vital, because it stirs to life in me a touch of those old primitive instincts of long ago. The fear of the dark, the dread of the external animistic universe, when a clap of thunder was a god roaring. This underbed of superstitious terror lies in every one of us. It is still easily evoked. The unusual, the inexplicable, awakens it. This deep thrill of superstition in us—above all in our so-called intellectuals, who are both ashamed to admit it and puzzled to explain it—is still active subconsciously. Humanity still lies rather terrifyingly close to the primitive caveman, with his fear of the dark.

BBC: You mention superstition—do you mean in a derogatory sense?

AB: On the contrary. Superstition lies more or less hidden in all of us and is too easily tapped in daily life. We all recognise that. The so-called supernatural is a different question. It’s a silly, meaningless phrase. Everything is natural and under natural laws. Only there are other laws of which we are so far ignorant.

BBC: Such as . . . ?

AB: An aboriginal, hearing my voice suddenly out of a box is pure magic, because he is ignorant of the natural laws producing it.

BBC: Coming back to our subject . . .

AB: Quite so—and why it’s been the theme of so many of my stories, John Silence among them. Well, I imagine the vein of primitive superstition lives on in me. I love a ghost story. As a boy, my father told me lovely ones, though he, being evangelical, attributed them mostly to a personal devil. Then I went searching for myself and found others. Few had the authentic touch, I’m afraid. Few gave me the real genuine gooseflesh we’re talking about. The clever ones were invented by the brain, the mind, admirable in their construction and literary craft, but—and it’s a big “but”—the writers hadn’t felt in themselves that awful otherworldly thrill of personal experience. I find it rarely, this awful personal thrill. How well I remember, be the result good or bad, feeling so frightened while writing that I had to sit with my chair against the wall—with the horrible feeling that something might get at me from behind while I was writing, in an Alpine hut . . .

BBC: What story was that?

AB: “The Wendigo” . . . it scared me stiff. I well remember being afraid to go to sleep without the light on.

BBC: And other writers?

AB: I devour everything in the field, but the authentic touch is rare. The brain doesn’t write “gooseflesh” tales. The frightened heart does.

BBC: Thank you, Mr. Blackwood.

About the Editor

Though he worked in local government until 1998, Mike Ashley has still managed to spend over fifty-five years collecting, reading and researching popular fiction, especially fantasy, supernatural, crime and science fiction. He has compiled or edited over 100 books including reference works for children, a biography of Algernon Blackwood and a five-volume series on the history of the science-fiction magazines, though he is probably best known for the many Mammoth Book anthologies he has compiled. His Age of the Storytellers explores the British popular-fiction magazines from the 1880s to 1940s. He received the Pilgrim Award for Lifetime Achievement in science-fiction scholarship in 2002 and the Edgar Award for The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction in 2003.