Agatha Christie was famously a founding member of The Detection Club, a group of mystery writers formed in 1930. They crafted ten commandments about writing detective fiction, composed by member Ronald Knox, of which the second very clearly stated: “All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.” Sometimes, though, Christie did dabble in that other world, where there supernatural possibilities weren’t left out but were left lingering at the end – in which everything wasn’t explained, in which the rational didn’t quite prevail.
That said, many of Christie’s short stories – even those that seem expressly to be categorized as “supernatural” – are actually only superficially “supernatural,” often in the end resolving quite starkly into mysteries that are fully explained, the apparently supernatural events merely tricks and deception employed by real-life characters who are driven by the usual motives (mostly financial necessity or greed). Some dwell in horror for a significant part of their length but then resolve into an explained mystery so abruptly that the story strains under it. But, in some of her fiction, Christie didn’t employ the supernatural merely as misdirection, didn’t venture into horror terrain and then turn back at the last minute. Sometimes, she stayed there, lingering in the realm of a more ambiguous horror.
Here are Agatha Christie’s best horror stories – all of them in the collection The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural (HarperCollins, 2019). This list isn’t exhaustive (Christie wrote over 150 short stories) – so I’d love to hear what your favorites are.
