Bookish Delights, Issue #1: Something Afoot in the Wilderness
On The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, published in 1910, is a short horror story that can easily be read in one sitting. It’s also in the public domain.
I started a discussion thread on The Wendigo you can find here.
Brief Synopsis
Five men venture out to hunt moose north of Rat Portage (today: Kenora), Ontario, Canada:
Dr. Cathcart, an author on collective hallucinations
Hank Davis, a guide Dr. Cathcart has used multiple times in previous years
Simpson, Dr. Cathcart’s nephew, who is a divinity student
Punk, an American Indian, who is the cook
Joseph Défago, a French Canadian and good friend of Hank’s who is also serving as a guide
When the group splits up in order to increase their chances of finding game, events unfold that make them question their sanity. Are they succumbing to superstition and the maddening effects of the wild? Or are they being preyed upon by… something?
Impressions
What is it About Horror?
For those of you who are fans of H. P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood was one of his inspirations and it shows. Dr. Cathcart, like many of Lovecraft’s characters, is an academic that tries to remain detached, but nonetheless has difficulties explaining away the events he witnessed. The events that unfold stand outside the realm of what human understanding deems possible. It flies in the face of reason, scientific rationale, and the status quo. No formula, natural law, or dialectic is capable of providing an explanation—not unless that person is willing to lie.
I don’t want to say anything more out of fear of spoiling the story.
These kinds of stories are the type of horror I enjoy the most. I never really got into horror until later in life. In fact, as a child I defied my parents once and watched part of a horror movie at a friend’s house that gave me nightmares for weeks. I’m not a fan of the slasher aspect of horror films, nor do I like jump scares. What I do like, however, are the more psychological aspects of horror. Events that can’t be easily explained. Entities that defy human explanation (that aren’t killing people in gory fashion every five seconds). Ambiguity as to whether what’s happening is supernatural or a product of hysteria or an elaborate hoax. It’s why I enjoyed The X-Files growing up, but never bothered to get into the Jason or Freddie movies.
It wasn’t until the last 7-8 years that I started getting into horror. For some reason, I started diving into the horror community on YouTube, listening to narrations of real, or allegedly real, scary events, and looking up Creepypastas1 and ARGs.2
I don’t know what it is about horror. I know fantasy is great for escapism and allowing you to experience a world that will never be. Romance stirs up emotions in a way no other genre can and makes you daydream. Science Fiction makes you think about a future that could be. However, I couldn’t sit and listen to any narrations or equivalents to Creepypastas for fantasy, science fiction, or romance.
A horror story though, even a completely fictional one, has this element that makes it fascinating. They tell stories of characters I would never want to be (unlike fantasy and romance). The circumstances or the mysterious entity is more of the main character than the protagonist(s) you follow. Maybe horror reaches down and pricks long forgotten primal mechanisms we no longer have use for thanks to the advancement of civilization? Mechanisms that were developed in response to the dangerous unknown?
Anyway, because I enjoy older stories, I started looking up classic horror writers and it was in this search that I stumbled upon The Wendigo.
The True Essence of Nature
Blackwood does a great job at describing the setting of the story. The wilderness is as much of a character as the people you follow throughout the story. You get this sense of both wonder and dread.
The wintry sharpness of the air was tempered now by a sun that topped the wooded ridges and blazed with a luxurious warmth upon the world of lake and forest below; loons flew skimming through the sparkling spray that the wind lifted; divers shook their dripping heads to the sun and popped smartly out of sight again; and as far as the eye could reach rose the leagues of endless, crowding Bush, desolate in its lonely sweep and grandeur, untrodden by foot of man, and stretching its mighty and unbroken carpet right up to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay.
For Simpson, this was all new to him. It made a deep impression.
His heart drank in the sense of freedom and great spaces just as his lungs drank in the cool and perfumed wind… It was one thing, he realized, to hear about primeval forests, but quite another to see them. While to dwell in them and seek acquaintance with their wild life was, again, an initiation no intelligent man could undergo without a certain shifting of personal values hitherto held for permanent and sacred.
However, Simpson realized later that day that nature has another side to it.
The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting… Yet, ever at the back of his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of man. The sense of his utter loneliness… came close as he looked about him… There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly comprehensible alarm.
The splendor and solitude of pure nature is addicting, especially for one used to human civilization, but it is also an unbridled force that will destroy you if it’s not given proper respect. It’s a good reminder than human civilization is a shield that keeps nature at bay and allows us to experience nature in doses rather than be eternally at its mercy.
That’s all I want to say about The Wendigo. I encourage you to read it for yourself. It took me about an hour to read and I’m a slow reader. After that, you could read another story by Blackwood that H. P. Lovecraft enjoyed even more: The Willows.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos
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The term “Creepypasta” is a derivative of “Copypasta.” Copypasta is a portmanteau of “copy/paste” and refers to text that has been copied and pasted many times on the internet. They are usually used for humor or to annoy people. Creepypastas, on the other hand, refer to creepy stories that circulate on the internet and are usually portrayed as urban legends. Some of them have reached mainstream status like Slender Man and the SCP Foundation.
ARGs, “Alternate Reality Games,” are narratives that usually span across multiple mediums like video, social media posts, telephone numbers to call, and even flyers posted on utility poles. Many invite people to help advance the story through solving puzzles, finding hidden clues, etc. Popular ARGs include Cicada 3301, Local 58, and The Backrooms.