Oke of Okehurst - or, A Phantom Lover ; (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

The family curse. A narcissistic wife. And the phantom rival that drives a man to madness.

This celebrated novella, often considered the masterpiece of Vernon Lee's (Violet Paget) supernatural fiction, is a chilling and sophisticated take on the English country house ghost story. It masterfully blends Gothic atmosphere with deep psychological horror, leaving the reader to question where the haunting ends and madness begins.

The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed portrait painter commissioned to capture the likenesses of William Oke and his young, beautiful wife, Alice. The painter soon finds himself immersed in the oppressive atmosphere of Okehurst Manor, a stately home weighted down by centuries of history and a terrifying legend.

Alice, cold and disdainful toward her husband, becomes obsessed with a sensational family scandal: the 17th-century murder of a poet named Christopher Lovelock, killed by William's ancestor with the aid of his own wife, who was Alice's namesake and doppelganger.

As Alice plunges deeper into the historical tragedy, she begins to believe she is the reincarnation of her ancestress, and that Lovelock, the Phantom Lover, has returned to claim her heart. William, already sensitive and troubled, is driven to distraction by his wife's mocking taunts and his own terrifying glimpses of a shadowy figure.

Oke of Okehurst is a mesmerising study of obsession, an exploration of gender and desire that subverts Victorian norms, and a profoundly unsettling tale of how the malignant power of the past can utterly destroy the present.