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.
Arthur Machen
Machen also was at this time investigating Celtic Christianity, the Holy Grail and King Arthur. Publishing his views in Lord Alfred Douglas's "The Academy", for which he wrote regularly, Machen concluded that the legends of the Grail actually were based on dim recollections of the rites of the Celtic Church. These ideas also featured strongly in the novel "The Secret Glory" which he wrote at this time, marking the first use in fiction of the idea of the Grail's surviving into modern times in some form, an idea much utilised ever since, as by Charles Williams ("War in Heaven"), Dan Brown ("The Da Vinci Code") and George Lucas ("Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"). In 1907, "The Hill of Dreams", generally considered Machen's masterpiece, was finally published, though it was not recognized much at the time.