The Unwelcome

Widely regarded as Seignolle’s masterpiece, The Unwelcome take the reader to the rural Sologne region of a hundred years ago, when night was terrifying and a lingering scent of witchcraft was just as acceptable to the people in its hamlets as any modern scientific advances. Against this eerie backdrop, sixteen-year-old Jeanne is out of control – burning hayricks and playing jealous lovers off against each other with terrible consequences – but can she really be blamed for her behaviour when a sense of evil seems to linger around her family like morning mist over the cursed local marsh?

The answer lies in a discovery made by her father, Moarc’h, a generation before, when he dug the ceramic head of a pagan statue from a plough furrow and installed it at the family farm. Dreadful things happened then; just as dreadful things are happening now. And as the ghosts of the past both literally and figuratively descend on the descendants of Moarc’h, the horrors that seem to swirl around Jeanne become impossible to ignore.

Originally released in 1948 now published as part of the British Library Tales of the Weird series.