Group Reads Discussion Post: The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

[Kim, Moderator]

This is the discussion thread for the Fall 2025 Group Read, The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories in the category Gutenberg Classics. Please post your comments here. This thread is not restricted to those choosing this book for task 20.10, feel free to join in the discussion. Warning- spoilers ahead!

The requirement for task 20.10: You must participate in the book's discussion thread below with at least one post about the contents of the book or your reaction to the book after you have read the book.

[Katrisa]

I thought this was a solid classic spooky story collection. I liked "The Willows" the best - it was almost lovecraftian with it's atmosphere and the creeping madness. The whole natural/supernatural horror was really well done.
I also liked The Empty House as just a quintessential haunted house story. It wasn't as creepy as The Willows, but very atmospheric as well.
Overall a lovely book to settle into with a mug and a blanket in the fall!

[Jessica]

I started off enjoying the book. The stories weren't that spooky but they were fun. They type of horror stories you would let a 12 year old read.

As the book progressed, it felt like the same story being told over and over with minor changes, and each MC felt like the same person,

One story that did stand out to me was Keeping His Promise. We actually had a character who felt real and the story was quite moving as well as spooky. Loved this one.

[Jayne, Moderator Emeritus]

I almost wish I'd saved this book until later in the challenge, a good haunted house story never goes amiss on Hallowe'en. It's a good collection of classic horror stories - not too scary, but wonderfully atmospheric (although some of them are certainly showing their age with regard to social attitudes...)

I'm inclined to agree with Jessica though: a few of them did feel like the same story being rehashed. As for each MC feeling like the same person, well, either Mr. Shorthouse gets around, or there's a whole family of them plagued with supernatural goings-on! I wasn't quite sure if the stories were meant to tie together or not, which got a little confusing.

My edition didn't include The Willows, sadly, so I'll have to go and hunt that one down. Can't resist a good Lovecraftian tale.

[Fly]

I guess I'm going to be the outlier here, but I was disappointed with this one. Maybe it was because I did the audio version, but I didn't feel the sense of foreboding that I expect from a good spooky story. The stories just seemed to go on and on, not really building any tension, until they just fizzled to an end. Character motivations weren't really explained, so I didn't understand why they kept putting themselves in these situations to begin with. Mr. Shorthouse seemed like a stand-in for Blackwood himself, as the stories in which he appeared seemed unrelated and without continuity. Perhaps he just liked the name. The Willows could have been a really good story, but it dragged on for so long it went from atmospheric to boring.

[RedSycamore]

Despite loving classic horror/Lovecraft/Poe/etc, I'd never read any Algernon Blackwood. I really enjoyed most of these short stories, and they were surprisingly cozy, at least in that basically none of the named characters ever die unless they're already dead before the story starts - the narrator and any major secondary characters tend to be safe even if they're going through it a little bit before they overcome/escape danger.

Blackwood definitely has a formula and sticks to it, so it would probably get repetitive to read straight through a long collection, but it was great to curl up with one or two of these little stories at the end of the day.

The only one I was mad at was the 'it was all a dream' one with the poor boarding house columnist. I didn't mind the 'inconsistencies' with Shorthouse's background/chronology, but that's only because I assumed that the character name was just being recycled and wasn't meant to actually be one continuous person from story to story.

or there's a whole family of them plagued with supernatural goings-on!

I love this take, haha!

My copy (pub'd 1916) also didn't have The Willows. I'm glad people here in the thread mentioned it. It ended up being one of my favorites and had a stronger Lovecraftian vibe than any of the stories from the original collection.

[Robin P]

I felt the same as others, that many stories were the same. I assume they were originally published separately, in magazines or other formats, so they wouldn't have seemed so repetitive.

I just read The Haunting of Hill House last season. When I read the first story, The Empty House, I wondered if Shirley Jackson had read it. The fact of the house seeming to physically change reminded me of the other.

My favorite was also Keeping His Promise. I also liked The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York. It was more horror than ghost story. Unfortunately, in books from this era, there are often unfortunate comments about Jews, Asians, Africans, etc.

I think Algernon Blackwood is an excellent name for a horror writer!

[Nick]

When I think of Blackwood, I think of "The Willows," "The Wendigo," and "The Man Whom the Trees Loved," novella-length short stories none of which are in this collection. Their common theme, and the one I associate with Blackwood, is the unknowable terror in the wilds, especially the forest. With a couple of exceptions, the stories here deal mainly with interiors of houses and the ghosts that lurk there.

I would say the major exception is the final story, "Skeleton Lake," even though its horror ends up being interior and man-made murder. "A Haunted Island" starts out with meticulous description of the interior of a cabin, but the horror ends up being the eerie canoe that floats by with its spectral inhabitants, Canadian Indians that fit the bill of Blackwood's colonialist superiority. Much of Victorian/Edwardian gothic is caught up in this colonialism and fear of the unknown, so I do not blame Blackwood for hopping on to that boat. It does end up in good ghost stories.

I think what remains consistent with Blackwood is the spookiness he sets up with sense of place. His forests and haunted islands are replete with a sense of unreasonable terror. Reason ends and is replaced by wonder, albeit a terrifying wonder. The same is true in the houses. Witness the first two lines of the first and titular story:

"Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil.... They seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their immediate neighborhood shrink from them as a thing diseased."

House or forest (or person), the evil is certainly a dreadful thing.