Review: The Spider

The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the form of a diary, this short tale takes place in a boarding room, where recent residents have repeatedly hung themselves on the curtain cords, a black spider is repeatedly seen exiting the mouths of the victims. A young student decides to debunk this nonsense and persuades the local constabulary to occupy the room, whereby he becomes transfixed by the vision of the nocturnal beauty in the window opposite. She has a strange otherworldly insect-like manner, and is dressed entirely in black, her mesmeric presence completely hypnotises him and he becomes like a puppet, subject to move and gesticulate through the window at her whim. Eventually she manipulates him into hanging himself. Upon discovery a gigantic black spider with livid purple spots is found crushed between his jaws.

Has a decadent vibe to it, and elements of ETA Hoffmann at times. Recommended reading for fans of horror and weird lit.

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H.L. Brakstad illustration from Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales. Circa 1890.

source

"By the early modern period learned ideas about the contract made between demon familiar and witch accreted into a stereotype which would have been famailiar to all officials who interrogated magical practitioners on charges of witchcraft or sorcery. The stereotype depicted the demon familiar making a variety of contractual demands in return for his magical services. The two core demands, which together comprised the ‘classical’ pact, were the witch to renounce her Christianity and that she pledge her soul to him. Other ancillary demands (which were often made at the sabbath) were, among others, that the witch marry him and/or have sexual relations with him; that she serve and worship him; that she allow herself to be re-named by him; that she give him her blood; that she permit herself to be marked by him and the participate in acts of exhumation and cannibalism"

Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic