Jeremias Gotthelf – The Black Spider
It's a folk horror that's also a plague story. It’s really strange, like a really dark fairytale about a plague that erupts in a village in the form of this spider. I've never read anything else remotely like it, and if you read it without feeling like it has to be realistic in any way it's incredibly frightening and strange. I love it, I think it's brilliant.

It's been called a precursor to a lot of the weird fiction that's around.

I think so and I wouldn't mind betting that MR James based some of 'The Ash Tree' around it as well. It's just great. I don't want to ruin the plot for anyone who hasn't read it, because it really slowly creeps on you. You don't know where it's going to start with, and it's only after a while that you suddenly realise that all the elements have been in there from the start. You don't know where it's going until it starts kicking in. It really grips you.