Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was one of the most influential and mysterious writers of the twentieth century. His works have had a profound impact on everyone from Stephen King to Marvel comics to major Hollywood movies, but his name has been lost to the annals of history.  Now is the time to rescue this great author from the jaws of oblivion.

Blackwood's prime interests were human psychology, the occult and the supernatural.  He explored in profound detail the effects that both real and 'perceived' extraordinary events have on the frail human psyche.  A deeply spiritual man who rejected the simplicity of Christianity at an early age, Blackwood sought to evoke "spiritual terror" through his stories, to strike at the very core of what makes us human: how we define our universe and our place within it.  He sought to terrify, but even more expressly, he sought to astound.  The sensation of awe factors heavily throughout his work; he viewed the world through a lens of astonishing innocence and objectivity, often personifying places and supernatural phenomena just as vividly as his human characters.  According to fellow horror legend H.P. Lovecraft, Blackwood reigns supreme as "the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere."

One of Blackwood's best stories is the magnificent THE WENDIGO (1908).  On the surface, this is a classic story of man versus nature -- four hunters, lost in the Canadian woods, begin losing their minds and battling a gigantic, unseen creature -- but on a spiritual level the story forces us to question if perhaps there are some places, as the narrator says, that "no human foot was meant to trod."  While many writers of his era concentrated on reflecting society back at the reader, Blackwood delved further away from mundane realities, more interested in the bedrock of our existence: our tender and tumultuous relationship with the very earth we stand on.