Title Three John Silence Stories Author Algernon Blackwood Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing 1908
	Title Three More John Silence Stories Author Algernon Blackwood Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing ---
	Category Horror Warnings None Main Characters John Silence Main Elements Spirits, witches, demons, werewolves

One of the former British writers of supernatural tales in the twentieth century, Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) wrote stories in which the slow accumulation of telling details produced a foreboding atmosphere of almost unendurable tension. Blackwood's literary renown began in 1908 with the publication of a highly successful collection of stories, John Silence — Physician Extraordinary, featuring a "psychic doctor."

• A Psychical Invasion
• Ancient Sorceries
• The Nemesis of Fire
• Secret Worship
• The Camp of the Dog
• A Victim of Higher Space

I'm not a huge fan of ghost stories, but I really enjoyed these, maybe because John Silence was such an interesing character. Also because each story was quite different. Sometimes it was from Silence's point of view, sometimes it was someone retelling a story to him, sometimes it was from the point of view of another character watching John Silence work, and in one case he almost wasn't even there till the end.

They also weren't all ghost stories. You had spritis and witches and demons, and even one story about a man that figure out how to interact with higher dimentions (if anyone thought A Wrinkle in Time invented the word Tesseract, it gets used here, and the Murray family are not the first to fold space). Blackwood also knows his cats and as a cat fan I enjoyed the large focus the felines had in the first two stories.

The stories have their creep factor, but aren't outright scary, they are more like supernatural mysteries to be solved, and except in a few places, I didn't get bored reading them (older writing can be a little dense and slow, but not always!). I recommend these, they were very enjoyable to read, especially as Silence is a precursor to more modern magical detectives like Harry Dresden. Since they are short and free to download, no excuse not to give them a try.