The diabolical conferences of Arthur Christopher Benson

Dagon Press recently published in Italian - with the title "The closed window" (translation by Bernardo Cicchetti) - the supernatural tales of Arthur Christopher Benson, along with Montague Rhodes James one of the most significant "ghost-writers" English of the early twentieth century, as well as comparable in suggestions and themes to writers roughly contemporary to him and equally "esoteric" such as Arthur Machen, HP Lovecraft and Algernon Blackwood.

Dorothy Carrington's dream Corsica

A primitive universe, the Corsican one, splendidly described by Carrington in her β€œGranite Island”. A suspended, rarefied, immobile world, where Christianity has penetrated only superficially and has not affected the profound essence of an atavistic religiosity with shamanic traits, centered on the cult of the Ancestors, on the magical practices of the ecstatic brotherhoods, the MazzΓ¨ri, and on a folklore crystallized over the centuries, which speaks to us of the spirits of the dead and of a ghost procession of the "wild hunt" type led by a mysterious "white lady".

β€œThe Shining”: in the labyrinths of the psyche and time

From the careful analysis of Stephen King's novel (1977) and of the film counterpart by Stanley Kubrick (1980), readings emerge that we can define as "esoteric": the Overlook Hotel as a labyrinth / monster that swallows its occupants and as a space outside of time; the superimposition of the past with the present in a similar perspective to that of the so-called "Akashic memory"; the "shimmer" as a supernatural capacity to insert oneself into this flow outside of time and space; a conception of the United States of America as a single, huge Indian cemetery (and not only).

The supernatural horror of Montague Rhodes James

Far from being classified simply in the context of "hauntology", the stories of Montague Rhodes James, far more than just "ghost stories", anticipated the "cosmic-horror" mythopoeia of HP Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti, presenting the Horror in β€œtotally other” terms, completely unrelated to anthropomorphism and the typically human physical-corporeal dimension.

Rudyard Kipling's India between folklore, terror and wonder

In the "Anglo-Indian Tales of Mystery and Horror", Kipling places himself in the position of Western observer and narrator of an 'other' and atavistic culture such as the Indian one, which if necessaryΒ reveals itself to his eyesΒ as a mirror of ours.