"The Cosy Room" by Arthur Machen

Bleadon... a real place in Somerset, England. A rather small village along the Bristol Channel. Bleadon Woods I don't know if a place of such name really exists, but could be. There is a Bleadon Hill, so why not a Bleadon Woods? What I find frustrating about it is I can come up with a variety of possible pronunciations for the word and have no idea which one is correct. Wikipedia is no help. For all the videos showing various places and activities in Bleadon, I only found one where anybody would actually say the name out loud, so that's the pronunciation I went with. Hope it's right!

Now Ledham, on the other hand... There's a place called Ledsham, several such places actually, one in Cheshire, one in West Yorkshire, but seemingly no Ledham. At least not today, but I suppose a hundred years ago it might have been. Ledham does appear to be a surname in England, but not a (current) place name that I can determine.

And then there's Darnley. There is a Darnley in Scotland, but not in England as best I can tell. So it appears Machen is just picking British names at random to plug in without regard to the reality of the geography.

"outing does" - I have no clue what this phrase means. If you know, please leave a comment below! "Lots of men had heard him swearing it would be outing does for Joe If he didn't leave the girl alone."

Thematically this feels very Poe-like. Published in 1929, it's not obvious that was intended, but could be. Certainly an attempt at a psychological thriller, but not as intense or sophisticated as the sort we get these days.

The picture used is of Alfred Hitchcock eating apparently lamb chops, but it looks like it could be almost anything, eggs and bacon like our protagonist at the end of the story. Hitchcock was just getting started with silent films in the 1920s, although obviously in this picture he is a lot older than that, so this picture would be from the 1940s or 50s, I don't know exactly. But the scene in the picture looks like it could be the final scene of the story, so it's what you get for a visual.

There was an incredibly cool picture I really wanted to use: "Mind devour" by SebastianEriksson, but it is fully copyrighted so I had to give it a pass. Boo! But you should go look it up just for how bizarre it is :)

I never could find an image of a small cosy room as described.

To follow along: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0607681h.html#12