ABSTRACT
John Buchan, known principally for a series of espionage thrillers, is also the author of a large number of supernatural stories. His attraction to the genre, while indicating his eclectic interests, was both aesthetic and pragmatic. From the point of view of style, supernatural ction contains the same essential ingredients as his ‘shockers’: excitement, mystery, suspense. Secondly, Buchan ‘wrote to be read’,1 and in his day, supernatural stories habitually drew a large audience. Modern ignorance of Buchan’s contribution to this genre may be the result of the popularity of his other books: the nearest he came to a collection of supernatural stories was Th e Watcher by the Th reshold (1902), but this book has ‘constantly been overshadowed by his other work’.2 While novels like Prester John (1910), Th e Dancing Floor (1926), Witch Wood (1927) and Th e Gap in the Curtain (1932) contain supernatural elements, Buchan’s most consistent work in the genre is to be found in his short ction.3 He wrote around twenty supernatural short stories, from the 1890s to the 1930s, proving that he had ‘an abiding interest in the supernatural’.4 But because the stories appeared over many years and in various publications, they have not been considered as a contained body of work worthy of serious study.
