A solitary man, lost in the Welsh hills, stumbles through thick mist—his only companion a mounting sense of unease. The landscape is indifferent; the path vanishes; every familiar landmark dissolves into obscurity. Rescue appears in the form of an enigmatic stranger, whose kindness feels both matter-of-fact and unsettling. A map changes hands, but the mist has a memory longer than any traveller’s, and the hills have their own way of keeping secrets. What follows is not a tale of terror, but a quiet reckoning with the uncanny—a story in which benevolence and danger are not so easily separated.

“An Encounter in the Mist” by A. N. L. Munby, first published in The Alabaster Hand (1949).

A. N. L. Munby (1913–1974) was a British librarian, bibliographer, and author, best known for his ghost stories and scholarly work on rare books.