“Come tonight,” I heard the old man say, “come to me tonight into the Wood of the Dead.”
Join Weird Walk for a new journey into the ghostly and bizarre, striking out from the shelter of the inn for the places where the path begins to fade, from the sublime wilderness of mountains, coasts and ravines to forbidden, ancient tracts of woodland.
Featuring disorientating classics from John Buchan and Algernon Blackwood alongside modern, thrilling (and sometimes violent) warnings to the intrepid from Lisa Tuttle and Dorothy K. Haynes, The Wayfarer’s Weird leads you towards fae dangers, down lost tracks in time and deep into the liminal spaces of Britain and beyond.
This book will always have a special place in my readng history as it was the one I'd put in my bag before heading out on the walk where I fell and broke my femur - oh, the irony (not to mention the agony). For obvious reasons, it took me a long while to get around to reading it again, but it was worth the wait.
Coming as it does from the editors of the Weird Walk zine it presents, in line with the rest of the series, a series of themed stories, here all about wanders in the great outdoors.
It's an attractive selection of old and modern and of classics and lesser known examples of wanders in the weird. Walter de la Mare's 'All Hallows' and L.T.C. Rolt's 'Cwm Garon' rub shoulders with Ramsey Campbell's 'Above the World' and R.B. Russell's 'The Pharisees Glass' along with stories by the very welcome likes of Algernon Blackwood - 'The Wood of the Dead' - H.R. Wakefield - 'The Cairn' - and E.F. Benson - 'The Face'. Some of the older stories have a nice, almost pulp fiction flavour - A.N.L. Munby's 'The White Sack' - but a couple of the modern tales failed to raise my interest with the obviousness of their telling.
This is though another strong entrant in the series and one I recommend, although maybe not before you head outside for a walk.
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