Reading a ghost story on Christmas eve was once as much a part of traditional Christmas celebrations as turkey, eggnog, and Santa Claus. The Red Lodge is a magnificent Queen Anne house, the ideal rental for a young family on a much-needed holiday. But something is wrong at the Red Lodge. What caused the drownings of so many previous occupants? What dark presence lurks in the river? Why has the son grown sullen and afraid?

When H. R. Wakefield's STRAYERS FROM SHEOL was published by Arkham House in 1961, it was fully intended that a further collection of the author's supernatural tales would follow within a few years; subsequent appearances of Wakefield stories in Arkham House anthologies referred to this final volume. Unfortunately, no further Wakefield titles were issued by Arkham House, and it was widely assumed that any unpublished stories by the author had been destroyed by him prior to his death in 1964. Recently, however, Arkham House Editor Peter Ruber uncovered a cache of previously unknown Wakefield stories, most of them in the long neglected files of August Derleth. These seventeen tales by one of the twentieth century's masters of the supernatural are gathered in this new volume for the first time, bringing to an exciting conclusion Ash-Tree Press's series reprinting Wakefield's supernatural stories. The supernatural tales in REUNION AT DAWN range from the gentle ('The Assignation', 'The Fall of the House of Gilpin') to the horrific ('Final Variation', 'A Man's Best Friend', 'The Bodyguard'). We meet—for the final time—the recurring characters of Dr Landon and Anstruther Sawbridge, Bart. ('That Sleep of Death'); encounter two variations on the same theme ('The Latch-Key' and 'The Night Can Sweat with Terror'); and, unusually for Wakefield, venture into the past for a historical ghost story ('Familiar Spirit'). In these seventeen stories, H. R. Wakefield once more triumphantly proves himself to be a master of the weird tale.

In 'Farewell to all Those', the introduction to his 1961 collection STRAYERS FROM SHEOL, H. R. Wakefield stated 'I've written my last ghost story', continuing with the bleak sentence 'I believe ghost story writing to be a dying art.' However, he concluded his introduction on a more cheerful note, urging readers not to be too sure that 'none of the old magic endures'; and the fourteen stories collected in the original edition of the book show Wakefield to have been still very much at the top of his form. Indeed, STRAYERS FROM SHEOL opens with one of the author's finest and most frightening tales, the classic 'The Triumph of Death'. Following Wakefield's death in 1964, a further four of his stories were published in various Arkham House anthologies edited by August Derleth, who had long been a champion of Wakefield's writing. These stories have been included in the present volume, which also incorporates more than four dozen changes to the original STRAYERS FROM SHEOL text that Wakefield noted in the margin of the copy of the book which he presented to his sister Mary. In her introduction, Barbara Roden looks at the stories in STRAYERS FROM SHEOL, and concludes her biographical study of the author—the longest and most complete such biography yet written—with an examination of his later years and second marriage; a marriage which the author kept a complete secret from the rest of his family, and which was not revealed until many years after his death.

(From the dust jacket of the First Edition): Mr Wakefield's first book of Ghost Stories, published under the happy title of THEY RETURN AT EVENING, was so successful both here an in America (where it was recommended by that curious institution 'The Book of the Month Club') that the author has been persuaded to draw further upon the resources of his horrific imagination. For the encouragement of the reader, Mr Wakefield writes: 'Personally I hav not seen or felt anything supernatural for some years. (Probably since I began to write about them, Ghosts have left me in disgust). I am convinced, however, that any percipient peerson might enjoy any of these experiences on any dark night — or bright day. Such strollers are never farther away than just round the corner from what is called "Reality".' OLD MAN'S BEARD, H. R. Wakefield's second collection of ghost stories, was first published in 1929, and built on the success of the earlier THEY RETURN AT EVENING. The fifteen disturbing tales collected here are: 'Old Man's Beard', 'The Last to Leave', 'The Cairn', 'Present at the End', '"Look Up There!"', '"Written in Our Flesh"', 'Blind Man's Buff', 'A Coincidence at Hunton', 'Nurse's Tale', 'The Dune', 'Unrehearsed', 'A Jolly Surprise for Henri', 'The Red Hand', 'Surprise Item', 'A Case of Mistaken Identity'.