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b'Tonight, to kick off our fourth annual Spooky Sleep Stories series, we\\u2019ll read the opening to the novella \\u201cThe Willows\\u201d written by Algernon Blackwood and first published in 1907. This year\\u2019s series of classic horror stories will air every Monday this October.\\nIn this story, two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the River Danube. The natural environment, for example the river, sun and wind\\u2014 is personified with powerful and ultimately threatening characteristics. Most ominous are the masses of dense willows along the river banks, which "moved of their own will as though alive."\\nThis is one of Blackwood\'s best known works and has been influential on a number of later writers. Horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.\\n\\u2014 read by \'V\' \\u2014\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'