The Willows

By: Algernon Blackwood

Narrated by: Nick Sampson

Length: 2 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

Perhaps Blackwood's most celebrated story, The Willows was influenced heavily by his own trips down the Danube River. It tells the story of two campers who pick the wrong place to sleep for the night, a place where another dimension impinges on our own. H.P. Lovecraft considered this the finest supernatural tale in English literature.

(P)2007 Listen and Live Audio, Inc.

short and creepy

I enjoyed the atmosphere.
nothing earth shattering but genuinely creepy experience.
I wanted a bit more. it ended abruptly.

Spooky

Very effective ratcheting of tension. Lovecraftian before the adjective existed, but less densely polysyllabic. Classic.

I love the feel of this story

Genuinely unnerving. The setting. The era. Top tier storytelling that will stay with you.

start is scary

the beginning is very scarry though it doesn't maintain till the end. well done though interesting

very very creative

I really enjoyed the description of the beauty, and how it turns to a horror

Slowly building dread.

I have very little patience for slow starters and this is most definitely a slow starter. Fortunately when it comes to audio, I can and will usually stick it out. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. This time it did and it’s given me one more reason to add to my “Why I’ll Never Go Camping Again” list.

The beginning is filled with an abundance of descriptive prose. The first hour basically sets the scene for the nightmarish dreamlike conclusion.

Two friends head out on a canoeing adventure ignoring, and slightly oblivious to, all of the warning signs that they should go ANYWHERE but where they’re headed. They set up camp somewhere on a small island. Unfortunately they’ve chosen the wrong location. As the eeriness continues to settle in, I found it absorbing and a little terrifying and even slightly humorous as one of our protagonists attempts to make excuses for everything happening to them – even though we know he doesn’t really believe any of his own words.

It’s worth a listen. The narrator is very proper and keeps things moving despite the sometimes slow pace of the narrative and though it ends too abruptly for my liking it did give me a decent case of the creeps.

Awe and disappointment

This was an exquisite story, performed so well that, through the narrator's expressiveness, some of the archaic words'meanings were made abundantly clear. The more Blackwood's stories I read, however, the more elements of his I recognize in the modern day authors' works. Now I know where the topiaries in The Shining came from. Straight out of The Willows.

Phenomenal Atmospheric Horror

I'm a huge fan of H.P Lovecraft's work, and quite honestly found the feeling of horror in this short story far above what I've felt in any of Lovecraft's stories. Very much worth the read, and I want more like this. The audio quality varies in certain places but it's still understandable and the lower quality parts even add to the feeling of fear at times.

paranoia at it's finest

One of the best stories I have ever read. The travelers believe they are being stalked by an unseen force

Pretty Good, thought it was going to be scarier.

I think I heard about this back when I listened to Bird Box, and wanted to find something similar. This was short and free so I gave it a go. Thinking about when it was wrote, I have no doubt it would have been a much scarier read back then, but the level of horror had come a long way. So it was enjoyable but just mildly scary to me.