Summoned to the Séance: Spirit tales from Beyond the Veil
Through the electric silence around the séance table, the rapping of an unknown hand spells out a horrible revelation. A posthumous journey through the spirit realm strips bare the mind of an avowed sceptic. A medium performing one last séance finds themselves in the cold clutches of a woeful spirit. In the mid-nineteenth century, public fascination with spiritualism surged, bringing forth a new literary craze for stories of ghost and demon summonings and communications with the dead via a medium. Reviving a thrilling host of these spectral narratives from the birth of the movement through to its last days of popularity in the twentieth century and featuring stories by authors from Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie, this new collection invites you to a seat around the table, at the fragile threshold between the mortal world and the chilling realms of the dead.
Emily Vincent
Dr Emily Vincent is a Research Fellow in the Department of English Literature at Birmingham University.
British Library Tales of the Weird
British Library Tales of the Weird consists of fifty-seven books, and the series is set to expand with the upcoming release of two more books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.