The Wendigo
3.5/5
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About this ebook
“For sheer naked concentrated horror, unexplained and unexplainable, such tales as The Wendigo ... may be said to lead among the stories of the supernatural.”
- Grace Isabel Colbron.
Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English journalist, novelist, and short story writer. Born in Shooter’s Hill, he developed an interest in Hinduism and Buddhism at a young age. After a youth spent travelling and taking odd jobs—Canadian dairy farmer, bartender, model, violin teacher—Blackwood returned to England and embarked on a career as a professional writer. Known for his connection to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Blackwood gained a reputation as a master of occult storytelling, publishing such popular horror stories as “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” He also wrote several novels, including Jimbo: A Fantasy (1909) and The Centaur (1911). Throughout his life, Blackwood was a passionate outdoorsman, spending much of his time skiing and mountain climbing. Recognized as a pioneering writer of ghost stories, Blackwood influenced such figures as J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, and Henry Miller.
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Reviews for The Wendigo
96 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wendigo is creepy in a way only Victorian stories can be. It is a short story, but an intense one. It did not take me long to read this story but it stayed in my head long after I finished, leaving me with a vague sense of unease and dread for the remainder of the night. I will be keeping this book in my collection and I recommend that horror fans read it if they can.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Wendigo was written by Algernon Blackwood in 1910. The Wendigo, a creature from Algonquin legend, is a cannibalistic spirit which possesses humans and causes the possessed to transform into an extremely emaciated creature, which is skeletal gray in color and exudes the stench of putrefying meat.A small hunting party embarks on an expedition through the densely forested and unclaimed north Canadian wilderness to hunt moose. The party splits into two pairs, and the main characters Simpson and his native guide, Defago, are subjected to profoundly ominous and unnerving events. Defago is dragged from the pairs tent and disappears into the trees. Simpson escapes and returns with the rest of the group whereupon they discover Dafago but strangely altered. The Wendigo takes the reader along through the tale as if they were a member of the hunting party. A sense of dread of the unknown is slowly developed. This book is a superbly written campfire tale.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5(1910) A hunting party that ventures into forbidden territory has a run-in with a creature out of legend. This horror classic has some very well-done elements. I like how the 'rough' talk of the huntsmen and their guides is contrasted with the lovely and evocative descriptions of nature. Blackwood does an excellent job of conjuring up the vastness and mystery of the untamed North American wilderness. Unfortunately, it does contain a few racial slurs and depictions which, while they may serve to contribute to the setting of the story, are quite jarring to a modern reader. There are also elements of the 'horrific' in this story that came off as... well, just a bit silly. But overall, the juxtaposition of small blustering (but strangely vulnerable) men against the unknown is quite effective. It does indeed evoke "savage and formidable potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists..."
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5If I was a suspersticious person, it would have been a miracle to read ALGERNON BLACKWOOD'S short story THE WENDIGO but the story comes from an era of discipline which does not support the animated story but still a goodread.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Review from BadelyngeA Dr. Cathcart and his nephew Simpson go hunting for moose in the Canadian wilderness, accompanied by two Canadian guides and a native American cook.On the surface this classic horror story by Algernon Blackwood revisits the sort of set-up that worked so well in The Willows. There are other similarities but they feel quite different; the other worldly eeriness of the Willows is quite different than the overall tone in The Wendigo. The first half of The Wendigo is very powerful, with the characters having their differing world views challenged by the perilous vastness of the natural world. The focus at this stage is more on Simpson as he sets out with Defago, one of the guides, to explore 50 Island Water in search of those elusive moose. These are the most powerful scenes as he contemplates the wild space about him and Defago starts to be broken down by his own superstitious knowledge. Blackwood characterises Simpson as being a 'student of divinity' counterpointing Cathcart's rationalistic adherence to science and the bulwarks of civilisation. Blackwood also describes one of the guides as being 'nearest primitive conditions' by which I believe he means that he (Hank) is the most in-tune with nature. It's a challenging and atmospheric read that pitches human instinct against rationalism, superstition against science and the awe of nature against the human social constructs of civilisation. The weakest part of the story is The Wendigo itself or more accurately Blackwood's choice to focus so strongly on one of the more absurd elements of the legend. I'm talking about the flaming feet. It's still a great story full of Blackwood's beautiful contemplative descriptive prose. It's not quite in the same weird horror league as The Willows but then again, what is.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty good for a tale written over 100 years ago. Basically a creepy campfire tale. One feels a growing sense of dread from early on. Good atmospherics and not too predictable.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I like the tension, the story line, and some of the characters. It’s the racism that I can’t get past.
Book preview
The Wendigo - Algernon Blackwood
15
I
Aconsiderable number of hunting parties were out that year without finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families with the best excuses the facts of their imaginations could suggest. Dr. Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the bull moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was interested in other things besides moose—amongst them the vagaries of the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole....
Besides himself and his guide, Hank Davis, there was young Simpson, his nephew, a divinity student destined for the Wee Kirk
(then on his first visit to Canadian backwoods), and the latter's guide, Défago. Joseph Défago was a French Canuck,
who had strayed from his native Province of Quebec years before, and had got caught in Rat Portage when the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing the old voyageur songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to an obsession. The life of the backwoods fascinated him—whence, doubtless, his surpassing efficiency in dealing with their mysteries.
On this particular expedition he was Hank's choice. Hank knew him and swore by him. He also swore at him, jest as a pal might,
and since he had a vocabulary of picturesque, if utterly meaningless, oaths, the conversation between the two stalwart and hardy woodsmen was often of a rather lively description. This river of expletives, however, Hank agreed to dam a little out of respect for his old hunting boss,
Dr. Cathcart, whom of course he addressed after the fashion of the country as Doc,
and also because he understood that young Simpson was already a bit of a parson.
He had, however, one objection to Défago, and one only—which was, that the French Canadian sometimes exhibited what Hank described as the output of a cursed and dismal mind,
meaning apparently that he sometimes was true to type, Latin type, and suffered fits of a kind of silent moroseness when nothing could induce him to utter speech. Défago, that is to say, was imaginative and melancholy. And, as a rule, it was too long a spell of civilization
that induced the attacks, for a few days of the wilderness invariably cured them.
This, then, was the party of four that found themselves in camp the last week in October of that shy moose year
'way up in the wilderness north of Rat Portage—a forsaken and desolate country. There was also Punk, an Indian, who had accompanied Dr. Cathcart and Hank on their hunting trips in previous years, and who acted as cook. His duty was merely to stay in camp, catch fish, and prepare venison steaks and coffee at a few minutes' notice. He dressed in the worn-out clothes bequeathed to him by former patrons, and, except for his coarse black hair and dark skin, he looked in these city garments no more like a real redskin than a stage Negro looks like a real African. For all that, however, Punk had in him still the instincts of his dying race; his taciturn silence and his endurance survived; also his superstition.
The party round the blazing fire that night were despondent, for a week had passed without a single sign of recent moose discovering itself. Défago had sung his song and plunged into a story, but Hank, in bad humor, reminded him so often that he kep' mussing-up the fac's so, that it was 'most all nothin' but a petered-out lie,
that the Frenchman had finally subsided into a sulky silence which nothing seemed likely to break. Dr. Cathcart and his nephew were fairly done after an exhausting day. Punk was washing up the dishes, grunting to himself under the lean-to of branches, where he later also slept. No one troubled to stir the slowly dying fire. Overhead the stars were brilliant in a sky quite wintry, and there was so little wind that ice was already forming stealthily along the shores of the still lake behind them. The silence of the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them.
Hank broke in suddenly with his nasal voice.
I'm in favor of breaking new ground tomorrow, Doc,
he observed with energy, looking across at his employer. We don't stand a dead Dago's chance around here.
Agreed,
said Cathcart, always a man of few words. Think the idea's good.
Sure pop, it's good,
Hank resumed with confidence. S'pose, now, you and I strike west, up Garden Lake way for a change! None of us ain't touched that quiet bit o' land yet—
I'm with you.
"And you, Défago, take Mr. Simpson along in the small canoe, skip across the lake, portage over into Fifty Island Water, and take a good squint down that thar southern shore. The moose 'yarded' there like hell last year, and for all we know