A second collection of sixteen beautifully illustrated stories that explore the dark side of folklore: unholy rites, witches’ curses, sinister village traditions and ancient horrors that lurk within the landscape.
Tales Accursed is the second collection of classic supernatural stories selected by the artist Richard Wells. Each of the sixteen tales is accompanied by one of Richard’s striking lino-print illustrations.
Richard’s previous anthology, Damnable Tales, has been acknowledged as a classic both in the UK and the US. Tales Accursed explores similar territory: great stories by acknowledged masters of the genre like M. R. James, Shirley Jackson and Algernon Blackwood, alongside eerie tales by those less associated with the horror genre, like John Buchan, E. F. Benson and William Croft Dickinson.
What is it about these stories of the uncanny, many of them written over a century ago, that make them so appealing to contemporary readers? In his Introduction to Damnable Tales, the novelist Benjamin Myers offers a clue: ‘They take place in worlds we recognise as once-removed from our realities. These are the settings of our ancestors, and therefore are still carried somewhere deep within us now: remote villages and darkened lanes, lonely woodlands, obscure country houses and crumbling cemeteries. Places where the crepuscular light is eternally fading and in which the inanimate or the dormant is slowly stirring.’
