The Death Spancel and Others

Cover image by Brian Coldrick.

“Come to me, a lonely ghost, / Out of the night and rain.” – “The Ghost”

Katharine Tynan is not a name immediately associated with the supernatural. However, like many other writers of the early twentieth century, she made numerous forays into literature of the ghostly and macabre, and throughout her career produced verse and prose that conveys a remarkable variety of eerie themes, moods, and narrative forms.

From her early, elegiac stories, inspired by legends from the West of Ireland, to pulpier efforts featuring grave-robbers and ravenous rats, Tynan displays an eye for weird detail, compelling atmosphere, and a talent for rendering a broad palette of uncanny effects.

The Death Spancel and Others is the first collection to showcase Tynan’s tales of supernatural events, prophecies, curses, apparitions, and a pervasive sense of the ghastly.

Contents:

Introduction by Peter Bell
The First Wife
The Dead Mother
The Sea’s Dead
The Dead Tryst
The Death Spancel
The Death-Watch
The Ghosts
A Bride from the Dead
Miss Mary
The Ghost
A Sentence of Death
The Dead Coach
The Body Snatching
The Spancel of Death
The Dream House
The Call
A Night in the Cathedral
The Little Ghost
The Picture on the Wall
The Fields of My Childhood
Sweet Singer from Over the Sea
Ghost Story of a Novelist
Dunsany
Sources
Acknowledgement