![]() Soon afterwards, a series of stable, happy men in London commit suicide the last person known to have been in the presence of each of them was Mrs. She eventually returns to London under the pseudonym Mrs. Helen disappears for some time according to rumour, she spent the time taking part in disturbing orgies somewhere in the Americas. ![]() After some investigation with Clarke and another character, Austin, it is revealed that Helen was Herbert's wife, and that a well-to-do man died "of fright, of sheer, awful terror" after seeing something in Herbert and Helen's home. When asked how he has fallen so low, Herbert replies that he has been "corrupted body and soul" by his wife. Years later, Villiers happens across his old friend Herbert, who has become a vagrant since they last met. Clarke relates these events in a book he is writing entitled Memoirs to Prove the Existence of the Devil. Shortly after an explanation to her mother that is unrevealed to the reader, Rachel returns to the woods and disappears forever. On one occasion Rachel returns home distraught, half-naked and rambling. Helen also forms an unusually close friendship with a neighbour, Rachel, whom she leads several times into the woods. One day, a young boy stumbles across her "playing on the grass with a 'strange naked man, '" the boy becomes hysterical and later, after seeing a Roman statue of a satyr's head, becomes permanently feeble-minded. She spends much of her time in the woods near her house, and takes other children on prolonged twilight rambles in the countryside that disturb the parents of the town. Years later, Clarke learns of a beautiful but sinister girl named Helen Vaughan, who is reported to have caused a series of mysterious happenings in her town. She awakens from the operation awed and terrified but quickly becomes "a hopeless idiot". He performs the experiment, which involves minor brain surgery, on a young woman named Mary. The ultimate goal of the doctor is to open the mind of a patient so that she may experience the spiritual world, an experience he notes the ancients called "seeing the great god Pan". Lovecraft, and Stephen King, and has been adapted for the stage twice.Ĭlarke agrees, somewhat unwillingly, to bear witness to a strange experiment performed by his friend, Dr. The novella influenced the work of horror writers such as Bram Stoker, H. Literary critics have noted the influence of other nineteenth-century authors on The Great God Pan and offered differing opinions on whether or not it can be considered an example of Gothic fiction or science fiction. ![]() Beginning in the 1920s, Machen's work was critically re-evaluated and The Great God Pan has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. On publication, it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its implied sexual content, and the novella hurt Machen's reputation as an author. She undergoes a series of unearthly transformations before dying and she is revealed to be a supernatural entity. At the end, the heroes confront Helen and force her to kill herself. This is followed by an account of a series of mysterious happenings and deaths over many years surrounding a woman named Helen Vaughan. The novella begins with an experiment to allow a woman named Mary to see the supernatural world. Machen later extended The Great God Pan and it was published as a book alongside another story, "The Inmost Light", in 1894. What would become the first chapter of the novella was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890. ![]() ![]() Machen was inspired to write The Great God Pan by his experiences at the ruins of a pagan temple in Wales. The Great God Pan is a horror and fantasy novella by Welsh writer Arthur Machen. ![]()
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