Into the London Fog (British Library Tales of the Weird)

As the fog thickens and the smoky dark sweeps across the capital, strange stories emerge from all over the city. A jilted lover returns as a demon to fulfill his revenge in Kensington, and a seance becomes a life and death struggle off Regents Canal. In the borough of Lambeth, stay clear of the Old House in Vauxhall Walk and be careful up in Temple—there’s something not right about the doleful, droning hum of the telegram wires overhead . . . Join Elizabeth Dearnley on this atmospheric tour through the Big Smoke, a city which has long fueled the imagination of writers of the weird and supernormal. Waiting in the shadowy streets are tales from writers such as Charlotte Riddell, Lettie Galbraith, and Violet Hunt, who delight in twisting the urban myths and folk stories of the city into pieces of masterful suspense and intrigue. This collection will feature a map motif and notes before each story, giving readers the real-world context for these hauntings and encounters, and allowing the modern reader to seek out the sites themselves—should they dare.


Table of Contents

Introduction 7

Temple
The Telegram 19
Violet Hunt

Regent’s Park
In the Séance Room 53
Lettice Galbraith

Kensington
The Demon Lover 77
Elizabeth Bowen

Mayfair
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth 89
Rhoda Broughton

Piccadilly
The Dressmaker’s Doll 107
Agatha Christie

Soho
War, an extract from London In My Time 133
Thomas Burke

The Strand
Street Haunting 153
Virginia Woolf

Holborn
Pugilist vs Poet, an extract from A Long Way from Home 171
Claude McKay

Stoke Newington
N 181
Arthur Machen

Whitechapel
The Lodger 215
Marie Belloc Lowndes

Waterloo
My Girl and the City 257
Sam Selvon

Crystal Palace
The Mystery of the Semi-Detached 269
Edith Nesbit

Vauxhall
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk 277
Charlotte Riddell

Putney (and Bloomsbury)
The Chippendale Mirror 303
E. F. Benson

Peckham
Spring-Heeled Jack 321
Anonymous

Contos / Suspense e Mistério / Terror