The White People

In a secluded garden, a diary holds the final, ecstatic secret of a dark initiation.

The White People is perhaps Arthur Machen's most celebrated and haunting work, taking the form of a frame narrative that presents a single, terrifying manuscript: the diary of a young girl.

The story begins with two men discussing the nature of sin and innocence, leading one to produce a handwritten notebook left behind by a girl who died mysteriously. The remainder of the story is the girl's diary, which c...