Tag Archives: ralph waldo emerson

May 25, 2025 · 10:41 am

Emerson and The Dazzling Darkness

Literary Birthday! Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote . . .

“Imagination is not a talent of some men,

but is the health of every man.”

You can find these words in his essay, Poetry and Imagination [1872]. Today, May 25 is Emerson’s birth date anniversary. On this day, we celebrate this American essayist, poet, philosopher, and lecturer of Concord, Massachusetts.

I bring you a question that Emerson asks . . .

“Shall we say that the imagination exists

by sharing the ethereal currents?”

And where are those ethereal currents? In Nature of course. Emerson goes on in other writings to say . . .

“Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.”

If you are an Emerson fan, a lover of Nature, or a reader who is fascinated by the 19th-century Transcendentalists philosophy of Concord, Massachusetts, I offer you a metaphyiscal mystery about a family livng in Concord who confronts the secrets of the dead and everlasting hope.

BRONZE MEDAL WINNER, Readers’ Favorite Book Award for Supernatural Fiction. ★★★★★ “Beautiful and high standard writing style from start to finish … a superb and classy supernatural novel.”

GOTHIC READERS BOOK CLUB CHOICE AWARD WINNER
★★★★★ Outstanding Fiction “Dazzling sums up Paula Cappa’s paranormal/supernatural novel … an elegance and grace that seduces you.”

“Fast-paced, sensually-vivid novel with an uncommon take on Transcendentalism … characters alive with true-to-life dialogue and compelling descriptions … suspenseful, heart-wrenching, and unique … stunning conclusion … this novel dazzles.” Amy Belding Brown, author of Mr. Emerson’s Wife.

“An adventure into dark and mysterious places. If you are looking for a book to read that you can’t put down you’ve found it. History, the occult, legend, science and metaphysical philosophy and presents a unique and fascinating perspective.” Cathryn McIntyre, author of Honor in Concord: Seeking Spirit in Literary Concord.

“The Dazzling Darkness is a lovely mesh of mystery and the supernatural that blends myth and reality in a way that is both bittersweet and breathtaking.” Leigh M. Lane, author of Finding Poe.

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Literary Birthday, Ralph Waldo Emerson, May 25

READING FICTION BLOG

Literary Birthday, May 25, Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Readers here know I am a devoted fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you’ve read my mystery novel The Dazzling Darkness, you will find Emerson’s ghost within the story and haunting the characters from beginning to end.

Emerson believed that “when it is dark enough, you can see the stars” in every metaphorical sense that these words bring to mind. We all have dark times in our life. He knew these struggles deeply through the death of his first wife, Ellen, and his child, which caused him a crisis of faith.

American poet, philosopher, and essayist, Emerson led the transcendentalist movement in the mid-19th century. Nature. Individualism. Divinity. These are the basic ideas of his philosophy about life, liberty, and expression.

Here is a moment with Emerson to honor his everlasting insights that we still value today—especially today! He says here in this video that we are not the centre of the universe, but part of the whole … that all plant and life forms have an equal place and we all intertwine with each other within the world.

Born May 25, 1803, died April 27 1882.

Please feel free to share this post today!

Ralph Waldo Emerson Organization: https://www.rwe.org/

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EmersonSociety/

Twitter #ralphwaldoemerson

2 Comments

Filed under fiction, Reading Fiction, READING FICTION BLOG Paula Cappa, The Dazzling Darkness

Tagged as Ghosts in Concord Massachusetts, literary birthdays, May 25, ralph waldo emerson, trandscendentalism, Transcendentalists

January 29, 2016 · 4:01 pm

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Ghost: The Secret

“It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die,

but retire a little from sight and afterwards return again.

Nothing is dead.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nominalist and Realist Essays: Second Series, 1844.

Many readers ask me why I wrote The Dazzling Darkness, a supernatural mystery that takes place in Concord, Massachusetts. The recurring question is about the famous transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). “Is Emerson a ghost?” they ask.

Yes. And no. Mr. Emerson is not a ghost in the traditional sense. One of the first elements that sparked The Dazzling Darkness was a line Emerson wrote in his address Nature in 1849:

“Even the corpse has its own beauty.”

Kind of shocking, right? It certainly stopped me on the page. Oddly, this line of prose carries a certain passion, as if Emerson somehow connected to death. He points out that there is “no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.” Of course, Emerson was being emblematic here as he did in so much of his writing. Or was he?

Haunted for weeks by this line of a corpse having its own beauty, I began reading more of Emerson’s writings. When I looked deeply into his personal life, I discovered that he did indeed have a strong connection to death.

Emerson lost his young wife Ellen to what was then called consumption. Driven by his intense grief over Ellen’s death, one day he entered the family graveyard and opened Ellen’s coffin to view her corpse. It was only a year after her death. What did he see? His journals say nothing more, except that he did this act. And then, some twenty-five years later, he opened the coffin of his little boy, Waldo, who died at 5 years old.

Could any of us view our beloved dead in the grave even once, let alone twice? Heart-wrenching to say the least. And yet, this experience certainly did connect him to death in a unique way.

For me, these images all connected. A story emerged. Images of a cemetery. A little boy named Henry appeared. Coffins began opening. The dead suddenly became physically visible.

A mysterious woman named Dorothea began speaking from the cemetery.

The story unraveled and I met Elias Hatch, owner and keeper of Old Willow Cemetery in Concord. Elias is the last of modern-day transcendentalists. During the 19th century, Concord was the center for the new thinking of transcendentalism, and even today the town still carries all that transcendental history. The transcendentalists honored intuition, insightfulness, and creativity. As I wrote my modern story I began to see these themes emerging through the characters and especially in the mind of Detective Mike Balducci. Old Willow Cemetery and the statuary there began to haunt Mike and one day, he decides to dig up a grave of a woman known as the Weeping Woman of Old Willow.

The idea of a corpse having ‘beauty,’ as Emerson said, crystallized in my mind. I didn’t know quite where I as going during the drafts but in the end, I had a ghost story, a supernatural mystery about the Brooke family, Antonia and Adam, who confront long-buried secrets of the dead while they endure a tireless search for their lost child Henry.

And the ghost of Mr. Emerson seemed to speak

from the very pages I was writing.

A secret lies buried beneath the haunting statuary in Old Willow Cemetery. The surrounding woods are alive with the spirits of transcendentalists Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott. Elias Hatch can sense their presence. Does he know the secret power buried in Old Willow Cemetery? Would he ever reveal it?

If there is a secret, that all things subsist and do not die, as Emerson wrote, that secret lies in Old Willow Cemetery.///////

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The Dazzling Darkness (print edition published by Crispin Books) hit the Amazon Kindle Best Seller List for 17 weeks in Mystery/Thriller ghost stories. The novel continues to sell in the top 150 in this category.

BRONZE MEDAL WINNER, Readers’ Favorite International Book Award for Supernatural Fiction, 2014. “Beautiful and high standard writing style from start to finish.”

MIDWEST BOOK REVIEWS ★★★★★ “Paula Cappa is a master of the metaphysical mystery genre … an extraordinary and original storyteller of the first rank. Very highly recommended.”

GOTHIC READERS BOOK CLUB CHOICE AWARD “Dazzling sums up Paula Cappa’s paranormal/supernatural novel … an elegance and grace that seduces you.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson Organization Website

Transcendentalist Trail in Concord, MA

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, MA

The Colonial Inn, Concord, MA [Emerson is said to haunt Room 24 in The Colonial Inn.]

Ghosts in Concord at TheConcordWriter.com

Ralph Waldo Emerson House, Concord, Massachusetts.

Visits and tours at NPS.gov.

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Filed under fiction, ghost stories, Hauntings, horror, horror blogs, literary horror, mysteries, Reading Fiction, short story blogs, supernatural mysteries, tales of terror

Tagged as Concord, Ghosts in Concord, Haunted Concord, ralph waldo emerson, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, The Colonial Inn, Transcendentalists

October 23, 2014 · 8:50 am

Literary Aficionado’s Book Review of The Dazzling Darkness

Latest Review for The Dazzling Darkness at Literary Aficionado

‘Even the corpse has its own beauty’ – Emerson

Review by Grady Harp

“American author Paula Cappa deals with words. She has experience as a journalist for newspapers in New York and Connecticut, a freelance copywriter, editing health, business communications, magazines and news articles, newsletters and advertising copy, but her true love is writing both short stories and novels – that destination for words that satisfies her most. NIGHT SEA JOURNEY and met with considerable success. THE DAZZLING DARKNESS is her second novel and the winner of Gothic Readers Book Club Award for Outstanding Fiction. From reading both books it seems assured she has a secure future in her chosen field of paranormal mystery.

Cappa has that special gift of being able to make the supernatural natural, so polished is her prose and ability to string together ideas and development of same in a sustaining suspenseful manner. Even as she describes supernatural imagery her descriptive sense makes the quasi-visible visible. And that is a talent that will draw even those who are not keen on supernatural stories into her fold. Rather than repeat the fine synopsis of her story, allow the author to inform us of the background f this novel (from her website): `The Dazzling Darkness, a supernatural mystery set in Concord, Massachusetts, which is laced with 19-century transcendentalism, some people are curious to know how Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) features in this present-day novel. Emerson, driven by his intense grief over his wife’s death, entered the family graveyard and opened Ellen’s coffin to view her body. It was only a year after her death. Twenty-five years later, he opened the coffin of his boy, Waldo, who died at 5 years old. Could any of us do this even once, let alone twice? `In my novel, Elias Hatch, the cemetery owner of Old Willow Cemetery, keeps to himself, reading voraciously in his cottage overlooking the gravestones in Concord, Massachusetts. Like Emerson, Hatch is a modern-day, transcendentalist. He believes we can all transcend mind and body. Like Emerson, Hatch believes that man is disunited with himself in a thick darkness and that the “gleams of better light,” can and do prevail in all of life and nature. Emerson and the 19th-century transcendentalists had a passion for wakefulness, deep thought, and inspiration. Do you sometimes feel like you want to wake up and see a true vision? Emerson wrote in Method of Nature “The crystal sphere of thought is as concentrical as the geological structure of the globe. As our soils and rocks lie in strata, concentric strata, so do all men’s thinkings run laterally, never vertically.” A crystal sphere of thought … thinkings run laterally. What is that exactly? In Old Willow Cemetery, Elias Hatch understands this mystery. He witnesses this crystal sphere connecting to the darkness of the dead. Impossible? Not if you know the secret that lies buried in Old Willow in Concord. Can you guess what this mysterious power is? Elias Hatch will not tell you. Only the dazzling faces of Old Willow will reveal it.

There are authors who attempt to enter the realm of great literature on th ecoattalis of the famous writers and philosophers of the past. Paula Cappa knows how to inform her story with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and refrain from mimicking or palgarizing. She simply, and quite assuredly incorporates the influence into her web. Through the twists and turns of the plot Cappa manages to establish the rare use of the concept of transcendentalism with a story that is staggeringly poignant. Paula Cappa is a fine, informed young writer and now with two successful books under her belt, we will be reading even more about her.”

Buy on Amazon.com or at Barnes&Noble in ebook or trade paperback published by Crispin Books.

Founded in 2009, Literary Aficionado provides professionally written book reviews and articles about current literary trends. In addition to posting reviews on the Literary Aficionado website, reviews are also supplied to a growing lists of libraries, booksellers, and readers.

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GOTHIC READERS CHOICE AWARD WINNER

May I share some good news with you?

Gothic Readers Book Club Award Review for The Dazzling Darkness 8-5-13

Dazzling sums up Paula Cappa’s paranormal/ supernatural novel. Set in Concord Massachusetts, the spirits of transcendentalists Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott wander the woods near an old cemetery. Elias Hatch, the cemetery keeper, is the last of the transcendentalists in our age. There are also secrets, guilt, and pain hidden among the old tombstones. The straightforward narrative is about a kidnapping, the clues, and a family suffering from their loss. Poetry’s woven among the plot to give the prose an elegance and grace that seduces you. The metaphorical elements bring a fascinating dimension to the supernatural elements.

If You Like: Algernon Blackwood, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gothic Readers Book Club