Haunted Tales of Darkness - The Death Mask by H.D. Everett (1920) | A Forgotten Classic Ghost Story

What if the face of someone long dead began appearing where no human face could possibly be? In The Death-Mask, H. D. Everett takes a deceptively simple supernatural idea and turns it into an increasingly disturbing tale of memory, possession and a presence that refuses to relinquish its influence over the living. Rather than relying upon the familiar trappings of the traditional haunted house, Everett allows the supernatural to invade ordinary domestic surroundings. Familiar objects become unsettling, and the unmistakable likeness of the dead begins to appear in places where reason insists that it cannot exist. First published in 1920 in The Death-Mask and Other Ghosts, issued in London by Philip Allan, the story is the title tale of Everett’s collection of fourteen supernatural stories. The collection is now recognized as an important but comparatively neglected contribution to early twentieth-century British ghost fiction. Henrietta Dorothy Everett (1851–1923) was a prolific British novelist and short-story writer who also published extensively under the name Theo Douglas. Her supernatural fiction often favors suggestion, psychological unease and the intrusion of the uncanny into everyday life rather than overt horror. The Death-Mask is a particularly effective example of her approach: restrained, intimate and increasingly disturbing.