Farming the Darkness: Agricultural Loci in Classic Speculative Fiction

Abandoned farmhouses, cursed barns, and haunted fields are well-established in classic supernatural and horror fiction. Remote rural communities go hand-in-hand with superstitions and ghost lore, where crop fields and orchards that delight in the sunshine turn lonely and grim at dusk. Wide open spaces become boxed with shadows around small fires and lamps, while hidden jealousies and hatreds encourage dark deeds. This collection of rural speculative fiction includes 18 stories written from 1850 to 1929.

The stories included in Farming the Darkness: 'The Field of Terror', Friedrich De La Motte Fouqué; 'O'Reilly's Improvements', Frances Brown; 'The Haunted House', George H. Coomer; 'The Hereditary Barn', Noah Brooks; 'The Hawthorne Farm Mystery', Jeremiah L. M'Carthy; 'The Haunted Orchard', Richard Le Gallienne; 'The Farmhouse on the Hill', Algernon Blackwood; 'The Haunted Cow', Bertram Munn; 'With Intent to Steal', Algernon Blackwood; 'The Scarecrow', Gwendolyn Ranger Wormser; 'In the Barn', Burges Johnson; 'In the Wheat', Maurice Level; 'At the Farmhouse', E. F. Benson; 'Dearth's Farm', Gerald Bullett; 'The Ghost Farm', Susan Andrews Rice; 'At Simmel Acres Farm', Eleanor Scott; 'Browdean Farm', A. M. Burrage; 'Crewe', Walter de la Mare