Hello,

Does anybody know if John Buchan wrote horror/supernatural stories that are not included in the list below?

Tendebaunt Manus
Skule Skerry
The Grove of Ashtaroth
The Outgoing of the Tide
The Green Wildebeest
The Watcher by the Threshold
No-Man’s-Land
The Wind in the Portico

Thank you very much.

There are at least a few more. The novel, Witch Wood, at least hints at the supernatural, for instance. As for shorter works, here are a few:

The Kings of Orion
Fountainblue
The Far Islands
The Lemnian
The Green Glen
The Herd of Stanlan
Space
The Time of True Thomas
A Lucid Interval

I may be missing some, however.

Thank you very much. I will give them a try. In actual fact, I have read Space and A Lucid Interval; who knows why I did not mentioned them in my post ... As far as Witch Wood is concerned, I know it has some supernatural elements but what has discouraged me from reading it so far is what Lovecraft says about the book - that it is full of Scottish dialect one must wade through during all the book.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 7 Mar 18 | 01:01PM by Minicthulhu.

Some readers just won't tolerate dialect at any price, but my experience has been that it can be well worth the effort to accustom oneself to it. There's this book, and Stevenson's "Thrawn Janet," and, mostly outside the realm of supernatural fiction, the novels of Sir Walter Scott -- I've really had some fine reading experiences, for what my experience is worth, in books that use dialect.

What -I- find I just can't endure is the modern fat novel or even book of reportage that (seemingly) tells a story that formerly would've weighed in at 200 pages, but now takes two, three, four times that, of which many are pages and pages of he said, she said, he said, etc. I get bored. Better things to do.

"Some readers just won't tolerate dialect at any price" ...

Personally, I have nothing against dialects but it is really tedious and discouraging for someone who is not a native speaker to wade through a text full of idioms and strange phrases that are a far cry from what you can see and hear on the Net, in books, in movies etc.

I'll add a vote in favor of trying to understand Scots English. Worth the effort.

What do you do when you want to be transported to another time and place? Well, you can learn a whole other language, like Greek, or Arabic, or Chinese, or Gaelic. Problem is, I'm lousy at foreign languages. My best language is French, but I never got to the point where I can read an entire book with anything like full comprehension.

But Scots English? That's just a close variant of my own native tongue -- one that can transport me to the rural hills and glens of Scotland in the 18th or 19th century -- a place, in spirit, that is worlds away from a modern American suburb, or even from Victorian England.

Minicthulhu sees himself as "not a native speaker", but I don't see it that way. Trying to understand a Scotsman would be 1000 times harder if he were speaking Scots Gaelic, instead of Scots English.

I realize this is a subject which we addressed in another thread, but I would like to throw my support in for attempting Buchan's Witch Wood. My first rime 'round, I found the dialect a bit difficult for the first page or two, but quickly adjusted, and found the experience more than worth it. It's a subtle novel in some ways, but often very powerful. I would say the same for Stevenson's "Thrawn Janet", which I think is in many ways one of his best works in the weird vein.

On another note... though it only mildly touches on the weird -- or, rather, weird atmosphere -- have you ever read his early book, Grey Weather? You might give that a try at some point. As with The Runagates' Club (or, for that matter, much of Chambers' The King in Yellow), it is by no means a book of the weird, but it has some lovely atmospheric touches you may enjoy. I've never read his The Gap in the Curtain, but I've seen some favorable comments on that one over the years, as well....

"Fullcircle" is a story that's been put in anthologies of "Supernatural" stories of John Buchan. However, I just read it online (Blackwood's Magazine 1920 on Google Books) and it does not qualify, IMHO. The idea that the house is haunted by a mystic influence is more of a romantic metaphor than it is an actual spook. And there's no horror, ... unless you really hate how it ends ....

John Buchan's "A Journey of Little Profit" would count as a weird story. It also has some dialect, though nearly so thick as "Thrawn Janet". It can be read on google books in THE YELLOW BOOK, vol. 9 (1896). I don't see it on your list, though it may have been retitled.