The Damned

Description

This is one of those books that gets hurt by modern horror writing. The atmosphere is creepy and there is a constant sense of dread throughout. You constantly expect something horrible to happen. The characters do not trust that their feelings are genuine. They want to leave, but they feel foolish being driven out by their own shadows, so to speak. They want something to happen. They crave it, if only so they know that their terror is legitimate. Modern haunted house stories, which so often would have someone killed by some monster or another within ten pages, could learn something from this novella. Blackwood creates tension, and keeps it there, which little more than atmosphere for 60 pages.