With only a few exceptions, Arthur Machen rarely reveled in gore, Gothic clichés, or moments of horror. He hosts no chattering skeletons, moldering corpses, or headless ghosts. Nor does he often turn to the more sophisticated horrors of Lovecraft, Hodgson, or Chambers whose shambling mutants, reeking zombies, and tentacled monstrosities shifted the direction of horror in the twentieth century. On two occasions – both in “The Three Imposters” – he indulged in the Gothic excess

There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.— Arthur Machen With only a few exceptions, Arthur Machen rarely reveled in gore, Gothic clichés, or moments of horror. He hosts no chattering skeletons, moldering corpses,