The Beckoning Fair One
The Beckoning Fair One is sometimes called the greatest ghost story in the English language; it may well be. Certainly it is one of the questest and most beautiful supernatural tales ever written. It reminds the reader of Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" - and that is huge praise indeed.
The story tells of British novelist Paul Oleron, who lives restlessly in cramped quarters, looking - as writers do - for some way not to work on the project at hand. That is when he sees a vast and beautiful old house for rent. He takes the first floor and moves in. When his friend Elsie Benbough comes to visit, weirdness begins. The house, it seems, does not like Elsie and begins to inflict minor but mean-spirited injuries upon her. Feeling the presence of something evil, she warns Oleron that he will never be able to work there. But Oleron is entranced... and then in love... and soon obsessed...
Oliver Onions
George Oliver Onions (1873–1961) was a significant English novelist who published over forty novels and story collections.
Besides detective fiction, historical fiction and a science fiction novel, New Moon (1918), Onions wrote several collections of ghost stories, of which the best known is Widdershins (1911). It includes the novella The Beckoning Fair One, widely regarded as one of the best in the genre of horror fiction, especially psychological horror.
Onions was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his 1946 novel Poor Man's Tapestry.