The Great God Pan
The Great God Pan is a horror and fantasy novella by Welsh writer Arthur Machen. Machen was inspired to write "The Great God Pan" by his experiences at the ruins of a pagan temple in Wales. What would become the first chapter of the novella was published in the magazine "The Whirlwind" in 1890. Machen later extended "The Great God Pan" and it was published as a book alongside another story, "The Inmost Light", in 1894. The novella begins with an experiment to allow a woman named Mary to see the supernatural world. This is followed by an account of a series of mysterious happenings and deaths over many years surrounding a woman named Helen Vaughan. At the end, the heroes confront Helen and force her to kill herself. She undergoes a series of supernatural transformations before dying and she is revealed to be the child of Mary and the god Pan.
Angels of Mons
Machen, who had already written a number of factual articles on the conflict for the paper, set his story at the time of the retreat from the Battle of Mons in August 1914. The story described phantom bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt summoned by a soldier calling on St. George, destroying a German host. Machen's story was not, however, labelled as fiction and the same edition of the "Evening News" ran a story by a different author under the heading "Our Short Story". Additionally, Machen's story was written from a first-hand perspective and was a kind of false document, a technique Machen knew well. The unintended result was that Machen had a number of requests to provide evidence for his sources for the story soon after its publication, from readers who thought it was true, to which he responded that it was completely imaginary, as he had no desire to create a hoax.