The Thing from the Lake

Description

First published in 1921, Eleanor M. Ingram’s The Thing from the Lake is a great story about a house and its owner being haunted, a supernatural thriller with a little dramatic edge.

The story is told by Roger Locke, a New York composer who decides to buy a house in the countryside to escape from the big city. He chooses an almost perfect mansion in Connecticut – the only problem with the property is that it there is a marsh emanating foul smells in its immediate proximity, but other than that, the property seems flawless. Roger is visited by two strange creatures during the very first night he spends on his new property: one of them is an unseen woman who came to warn the new owner about the dangers that come with living in the house and a specter (the Thing) that has come to take Roger’s soul and sanity. Roger stays in the house despite the exhausting night-time battles with the Thing, what’s more, other members of his family join him, too. The story ends with an epic battle against the Thing, a final confrontation with an unpredictable outcome.

The Thing from the Lake is an excellently plotted horror story, a writing with a great atmosphere and well-penned characters. The book is a page turner, never ceasing to challenge the reader’s imagination and keeping the reader guessing what is going to happen next. Just like other stories by Ingram such as The Unafraid or From the Car Behind, The Thing enjoyed great success at the time it was published – one reviewer even compared it to Poe, which is no small praise. However, both the book and, to a certain extent, the author were soon forgotten, partly because of the author’s early death, at the age of 34, not long after the story came out.
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