A group of guests, at an exclusive luxury hotel in Hampshire, are the witnesses of an illustration of occult powers, demonstrated by “the Mystery”, as Mrs. Jefferson named the beautiful stranger who one day appeared in the Turkish Baths of the hotel. The events that follow lead Mrs. Jefferson to question the wisdom of her interest in the occult.
Can the soul of the dead come back to haunt the one who was responsible for its death? What would happen if the responsible one did not believe it could be so, and yet was in love with the returned soul? The Return of the Soul is a horror story of a man who is visited by the returning soul of a deceased, and who has some very perplexing issues to deal with upon that return.
The Lost Stradivarius (1895), by J. Meade Falkner, is a short novel of ghosts and the evil that can be invested in an object, in this case an extremely fine Stradivarius violin. After finding the violin of the title in a hidden compartment in his college rooms, the protagonist, a wealthy young heir, becomes increasingly secretive as well as obsessed by a particular piece of music, which seems to have the power to call up the ghost of its previous owner. Roaming from England to Italy, the story involves family love, lordly depravity, and the tragedy of obsession
A story of psychological horror, The Return explores ideas of identity, love, and alienation. Arthur grapples with the reactions of his family and community, and his own sanity, when he experiences a sudden and mysterious "transformation".
J. Sheridan LeFanu's Gothic mystery novel is narrated by Richard Beckett, a young Englishman abroad in Napoleonic-era France. He falls instantly in love with a mysterious and imperiled Countess, whom he glimpses momentarily behind her black veil. In order to be near her, he takes a room in the Dragon Volant (the Flying Dragon), a haunted inn that has been the site of mysterious disappearances.
The Drums of Jeopardy is a 1920 American novel by Harold MacGrath. The story was serialized by the The Saturday Evening Post beginning in January of 1920.
In 1922 the book was made into a Broadway play and the following year a motion picture. A second film version appeared in 1931.
It is said that a young Boris Karloff, who previously had a few uncredited film roles, chose his stage name for his first screen credit in 1920 from a Russian mad scientist character named "Boris Karlov" in this novel. The name "Boris Karlov" was used from MacGrath's book for the 1922 Broadway play, but by 1923 with actor Boris Karloff using the similar sounding variation, the film version renamed the character, played by Wallace Beery, "Gregor Karlov." In the 1931 film version, however, with Warner Oland playing the character, the mad scientist's name is restored to "Boris Karlov," less than a year before Frankenstein would make Boris Karloff a household word for generations. Ironically, Boris Karloff would play many mad scientists on screen, but never "Boris Karlov."
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the original title of a novel written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll and the misanthropic Edward Hyde. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was an immediate success and is one of Stevenson's best-selling works. Stage adaptations began in Boston and London within a year of its publication and it has gone on to inspire scores of major film and stage performances.
Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) studied art in Paris in the late 80's and early 90's, where his work was displayed at the Salon. However, shortly after returning to America, he decided to spend his time in writing. He became popular as the writer of a number of romantic novels, but is now best known as the author of "The King In Yellow". This is a collection of the first half of this work of short stories which have an eerie, other-worldly feel to it; but the stories in the second half are essentially love stories, strongly coloured by the author's life as an artist in France.
Only the first half of the collection of stories is presented here: the earlier stories are all coloured by the background presence of a play, "The King In Yellow" itself, which corrupts those who read it, and opens them to horrible experiences and to visions of a ghastly other world, lit by dark stars and distorted skies. This half of the collection is completed by a few very short pieces and two rather strange and beautiful stories of love and time, loneliness and death.
Edgar Allan Poe has the ability to manipulate language so well that he could engage my imagination and get me terrified even though little was 'done' in the sense of horrible actions described. My imagination, under the power of his creepy words, conjured the atmosphere and did the rest by itself. In this recording I've chosen some of his stories that succeed so well in leaving lingering hair raising memories with me: The Telltale Heart; The Masque of the Red Death; The Black Cat; The Raven, the Casque of Amontillado and Berenice. I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I did reading them.
An eclectic, catholic even, collection from the exquisitely excellent tale-telling of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. Hilarious and terrifying. Need I say more?
Henry James' classic ghost story comprises the written testimony of a young governess, charged with looking after two small children at an isolated country estate, who believes they are being haunted. As the story progresses, the governess' increasingly frenetic narration provokes the question: is she insane, or are the ghosts real?
A mysterious, bandaged stranger arrives in the small English village of Iping - and chaos follows close behind. H.G. Wells' classic story of obsession, murder, and science run amok.
In 1896 HG Wells produced the Island of Doctor Moreau. After a fateful shipwreck, a chance rescue, and offer of safe harbor, Edward Prendick must contend with a dark science. A man of science, Prendick must wrestle with the ethics of its passions. His inner struggle is illuminated by the island's outward horrors. Central to the themes are ethics, principles, and the extent of human compassion. This science fiction icon argues the true question of science: Could the cure be more dangerous than the disease?
Here's a Mark Twain story that's very unlike those he became famous for, but when I read it back in Catholic high school, it left a deep impression. It concerns the deeply religious residents of a small village in Austria during the late sixteenth century, and what happened to several of them when a strange man began to visit their insulated homeland. There's little of Twain's humor here; this is a horror story, a parable. . . and a warning.
A series of mysterious and increasingly alarming crimes are taking place across London. People are being injured, even murdered without mercy and without reason. And yet, the perpetrator cannot be found. The crimes happen overnight, but in the morning the murderer is gone "like breath upon a mirror". Mr Utterson (a lawyer), Dr Lanyon and Dr Jekyll each bring their insights to this sinister conundrum.
Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is brought to life with a cast of voices in this dramatic reading. Only 10 chapters long, tradition says that Stevenson wrote the novella in less than a week, yet the central idea of the duality of human nature continues to fascinate through the ages!
"The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication (together with another story, "The Inmost Light") in 1894. On publication it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its decadent style and sexual content, although it has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. Machen’s story was only one of many at the time to focus on Pan as a useful symbol for the power of nature and paganism. The title was taken from the poem "A Musical Instrument" published in 1862 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in which the first line of every stanza ends "... the great god Pan."(via Wikipedia)
Considered a change agent in early Gothic romance; oft-referenced in later literary works or paid homage to by such authors as Jane Austen (influential novel ready by her heroine, Catherine Morland, in Northanger Abbey); Edgar Allen Poe (borrowed plot elements for the short story The Oval Portrait); and Sir Walter Scott. - In The Mysteries of Udolpho, one of the most famous and popular gothic novels of the eighteenth century, Ann Radcliffe took a new tack from her predecessors and portrayed her heroine's inner life, creating an atmosphere thick with fear, and providing a gripping plot that continues to thrill readers today. - The Mysteries of Udolpho, set in Europe in the year 1584, is the story of orphan Emily St. Aubert, who finds herself separated from the man she loves and confined within the medieval castle of her aunt's new husband, Montoni, after being forced to travel through France and Italy. Inside the castle, she must cope with an unwanted suitor, Montoni's threats, and the wild imaginings and terrors that threaten to overwhelm her. - The mysterious happenings in the story always have a natural and probable explanation because Radcliffe was a very rational person and did not believe in the supernatural. Radcliffe's strengths in writing were in describing scenery as well as suspense and terror. Many critics have called the work "dreamlike" and "suggestive of the cinematic technique of slow-motion."
A tale of horror in which a pleasant sojourn down the Danube tumbles terrifyingly awry as the veil between this world and an unfathomably weird dimension is inadvertently pierced by an innocent pair of vacationers, "The Willows", arguably Algernon Blackwood's seminal contribution to supernatural literature, has had a lasting influence on the field. No less a personage than H. P. Lovecraft describing it as "...the greatest weird tale ever written." A reading will reveal a clear influence to one familiar with Lovecraft's work. The masterful handling of mystery and suspense that build to a quite satisfyingly unnerving crescendo may be particularly noted by the discerning aficionado of the genre.
"The Willows" is one of Algernon Blackwood's best known creepy stories. American horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. He wrote in his treatise "Supernatural Horror in Literature", "Here art and restraint in narrative reach their very highest development, and an impression of lasting poignancy is produced without a single strained passage or a single false note." "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.
Horror stalks the earth. There are many dimensions that coexist with our universe and, unfortunately, overlap it in very special places. The horrific beings that live in these other dimensions are ancient, terrifying and very malign. This story is about one of these overlapping spots in a decaying community in the USA where these beings can interact with our world and where humans succeed in calling them forth in all of their stench, fetor and power with the intent of destroying all life on our planet. Mere humans cannot resist their power. Is there any hope?
In a rundown farmhouse near isolated, rural Dunwich, a bizarre family conjures and nurtures an evil entity from another realm, with the purpose of destroying the world and delivering it to ancient gods to rule, and only an aged university librarian can stop them. The Dunwich Horror was first published in 1929 in Weird Tales.
An entertaining selection of "modern" ghost stories selected "to include specimens of a few of the distinctive types of modern ghosts, as well as to show the art of individual stories."
Sure to please the love of the supernatural in all of us!
This story helped propel 19th Century gothic fiction in the direction of “cosmic” horror. In fact, H.P. Lovecraft lists it as among his greatest influences. It begins simply enough: with two friends stumbling upon a ruined and curious house while vacationing in a remote village. After reading the tattered journal of the old recluse who lived there, they are shocked to discover an interdimensional, reality-bending nightmare full of nearly-indescribable horrors that range from demons, to bestial (somewhat Lovecraftian) monsters, and devastating parasitic fungal diseases.
The plot of Là-Bas concerns the novelist Durtal, who is disgusted by the emptiness and vulgarity of the modern world. He seeks relief by turning to the study of the Middle Ages and begins to research the life of the notorious 15th-century child-murderer Gilles de Rais. Through his contacts in Paris (notably Dr. Johannes, modeled after Joseph-Antoine Boullan), Durtal finds out that Satanism is not simply a thing of the past but alive in turn of the century France. He embarks on an investigation of the occult underworld with the help of his lover Madame Chantelouve. The novel culminates with a description of a black mass. (Wikipedia)
Reader's note: This novel certainly reaches to the depths of depravity and blasphemy, and achieved some notoriety for doing so. A redeeming feature, if one is required, is that Durtal begins in this book a pilgrimage; like Dante's hero, he begins this in a horrible and God-forsaken place.
The Sun has gone out and the Earth is lit only by the glow of residual vulcanism. The last few millions of the human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, nearly eight miles high – the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. These are held back by a Circle of Energy, known as the "air clog", powered from a subterranean energy source called the "Earth Current". For millennia, vast living shapes—the Watchers—have waited in the darkness near the pyramid. It is thought they are waiting for the inevitable time when the Circle's power finally weakens and dies. Other living things have been seen in the darkness beyond, some of unknown origins, and others that may once have been human.
To leave the protection of the Circle means almost certain death, or worse an ultimate destruction of the soul. As the story commences, the narrator establishes mind contact with an inhabitant of another, forgotten Lesser Redoubt. First one expedition sets off to succor the inhabitants of the Lesser Redoubt, whose own Earth Current has been exhausted, only to meet with disaster. After that the narrator sets off alone into the darkness to find the girl he has made contact with, knowing now that she is the reincarnation of his past love.
H. P. Lovecraft describes the novel as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written". Clark Ashton Smith wrote of it that "In all literature, there are few works so sheerly remarkable, so purely creative, as The Night Land.
In the six volumes of the Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Julian Hawthorne presents us thrilling and mysterious short stories from all corners of the world. Some of the stories appeared in this collection for the first time translated into English, and many of them come from unexpected sources, such as the letters of Pliny the Younger, or a Tibetan manuscript. In this fourth volume, we find stories originally written in French, Italian, Spanish and Latin.
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories is a collection of short semi-comic mystery stories. This collection exemplifies Wilde's sharp wit and dark humour. Stories in this collection includeLord Arthur Savile's Crime,The Canterville Ghost,The Sphinx Without a Secret, The Model Millionaire, and The Portrait Of Mr W H.
Manfred is a dramatic poem in three acts by Lord Byron, and possibly a self confessional work. A noble, Manfred, is haunted by the memory of some unspeakable crime. In seeking for forgetfulness and oblivion, he wanders between his castle and the mountains. He has several encounters with the people who try to assist him, as well as spirits that rule nature and human destiny. The poem explores themes of morality, religion, guilt and the human condition.
This issue contains "The Dark Side of Antri" by Sewell Peaslea Wright, "The Sunken Empire" by H. Thompson Rich, "The Gate to Xoran" by Hal K. Wells, "The Eye of Allah" by C. D. Willard, "The Fifth-Dimension Catapult" by Murray Leinster, and "The Pirate Planet[' by Charles W. Diffin.
"A miraculous masterpiece" it seemed to Henry James, who wrote it. What actually happens in this most remarkable story (though at one level, it is quite clear - a ghost appears) must ever remain unresolved. Stalked by an alternative self in his childhood home, abandoned by him for more than thirty years, the narrator must find his hidden Hyde, incorporate all the violent possibility he represents into his all too impressionable psyche and still go on living. How? That is the question. Well, Cecilia de Noel has the answer.
These stories detail the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War. This is the 1909 edition. The 1909 edition omits six stories from the original 1891 edition; these six stories are added to this LibriVox recording (from an undated English edition). The 1891 edition is entitled In The Midst Of Life; Tales Of Soldiers And Civilians. The Wikipedia entry for the book uses the title Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – after December 26, 1913) was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist. Today, he is best known for his short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and his satirical lexicon, The Devil's Dictionary. The sardonic view of human nature that informed his work – along with his vehemence as a critic, with his motto "nothing matters" – earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce." Despite his reputation as a searing critic, however, Bierce was known to encourage younger writers, including poet George Sterling and fiction writer W. C. Morrow. Bierce employed a distinctive style of writing, especially in his stories. This style often embraces an abrupt beginning, dark imagery, vague references to time, limited descriptions, the theme of war, and impossible events. In 1913, Bierce traveled to Mexico to gain a first-hand perspective on that country's ongoing revolution. While traveling with rebel troops, the elderly writer disappeared without a trace. Since the book is a compilation of short stories, there is not an overarching plot. However, there are literary elements, or plot devices, that are shared throughout. Bierce's stories often begin mid-plot, with relevant details withheld until the end, where the dramatic resolution unfolds differently than expected, to a degree where most are considered twist endings. His characters were described by George Sterling as: "His heroes, or rather victims, are lonely men, passing to unpredictable dooms, and hearing, from inaccessible crypts of space, the voices of unseen malevolencies."... Bierce served as a union soldier during the Civil War and his experiences as a soldier served as an inspiration for his writing, particularly for the Soldiers section. In this way, Bierce's war treatments anticipate and parallel Ernest Hemingway's later arrival, whereas the civilian tales later influence horror writers.
A story about a mysterious oriental figure who pursues a British politician to London, where he wreaks havoc with his powers of hypnosis and shape-shifting, Marsh's novel is of a piece with other sensational turn-of-the-century fictions such as Stoker's Dracula, George du Maurier's Trilby, and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu novels. Like Dracula and many of the sensation novels pioneered by Wilkie Collins and others in the 1860s, The Beetle is narrated from the perspectives of multiple characters, a technique used in many late nineteenth-century novels (those of Wilkie Collins and Stoker, for example) to create suspense.
Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the British author born Richard Bernard Heldmann.
Written in 1912 by a famous ghost hunter who was also an occult fantasy writer, this interesting book collects together folktales and traditions from across Europe, starting in the British Isles, through Spain, France, Belgium and Norway to Russia. The "scientific" accounts (including "How to Become a Werewolf") are embellished by anecdotes of the author's personal experiences with werewolves, ghosts and vampires.
From Chapter 1: It is an old belief that the souls of cataleptic and epileptic people, during the body's unconsciousness, adjourned temporarily to animals, and it is therefore only in keeping with such a view to suggest that on the deaths of such people their spirits take permanently the form of animals.
The Lair of the White Worm (also known as The Garden of Evil) is a horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, who also wrote Dracula. It is partly based on the legend of the Lambton Worm. The book was published in 1911, the year before Stoker's death, with color illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith. In 1988, it was adapted into a film by Ken Russell.
The Lair of the White Worm (also known as The Garden of Evil) is a horror novel by Anglo-Irish author Bram Stoker, who also wrote Dracula. It was published in 1911.This book centers on Adam Salton who is contacted by his great uncle in England, for the purpose of establishing a relationship between these last two members of the family. Adam travels to Richard Salton's house in Mercia, and quickly finds himself in the center of some inexplicable occurrences. The new heir to the Caswall estate, Edgar Caswall appears to be making some sort of a mesmeric assault on a local girl. And, a local lady, Arabella March, seems to be running a game of her own, perhaps angling to become Mrs. Caswall. There is something strange about Lady March, something inexplicable and evil....
A researcher goes on an expedition to find "The Tablets of the Gods" which have plagued his dreams since his boyhood. He finds them, and the horrible truth of humanity's true purpose in the universe. This story, The Man Who Found Out" is an example to me of pure cosmic horror in that the horror comes totally from knowledge which is (in-story) so terrible that it forever blights the minds of anyone who discovers it. Two highly intelligent and well informed men, Professor Ebor and then Dr. Laidlaw, learn the contents of the Tablets of the Gods, and even though this information is short enough to be on two ordinary-sized tablets, it is enough to induce absolute belief in its veracity and utterly destroy hope in the reader. Yeah, that is pretty scary. There are no monsters in the tale, nothing but Forbidden Knowledge -- which, apparently, is Forbidden with good reason. (Wikipedia and the reader)
Four stories: The Insanity of Jones, The Man Who Found Out, The Glamour of the Snow, and Sand. Tales by one the greatest practitioners of supernatural literature. Reincarnation, the Occult, and mystery.
Robert Chambers was a contemporary of Lovecraft, and this book consists of "weird supernatural tales" in a somewhat similar manner, except that the emphasis is on humor rather than horror. The narrator works for the newly opened Bronx Zoo in New York. He describes his adventures trying to obtain various rare specimens for the zoo's collection, animals that range from the merely extinct to the considerably more unusual. Along the way, he invariably finds a beautiful woman to fall in love with.
24 short stories in fairly typical Bierce fashion - ghostly, spooky, to be read (or listened to) in the dark, perhaps with a light crackling fire burning dimly in the background. Stories of ghosts, apparitions, and strange, inexplicable occurrences are prevalent in these tales, some of which occur on or near Civil War fields of battle, some in country cottages, and some within urban areas. Can Such Things Be? implies and relates that anything is possible, at any time.
Fifteen short stories by Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (1869 – 1951), an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T. Joshi has stated that "his work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's…"
This is a collection of seven ghost stories by Francis Marion Crawford. The volume includes all of the essential ingredients for good ghost and horror stories, such as mysterious deaths, haunted houses, and even vampires.
Includes: An introduction by Dorothy Scarborough -- The Canterville ghost / by Oscar Wilde -- The ghost-extinguisher / by Gelett Burgess -- "Dey ain't no ghosts" / by Ellis Parker Butler -- The transferred ghost / by Frank R. Stockton -- The mummy's foot / Théophile Gautier -- The rival ghosts / Brander Matthews -- The water ghost of Harrowby Hall / by John Kendrick Bangs -- Back from that bourne / Anonymous -- The ghost-ship / by Richard Middleton -- The transplanted ghost / by Wallace Irwin -- The last ghost in Harmony / by Nelson LLoyd -- The ghost of Miser Brimpson / by Eden Phillpotts -- The haunted photograph / by Ruth McEnery Stuart -- The ghost that got the button / by Will Adams -- The specter bridegroom / by Washington Irving -- The specter of Tappington / compiled by Richard Barham -- In the barn / by Burges Johnson -- A shady plot / by Elsie Brown -- The lady and the ghost / by Rose Cecil O'Neill.
The novel recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. The Hill of Dreams of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain. Later it describes Lucian's attempts to make a living as an author in London, enduring poverty and suffering in the pursuit of art. Generally thought to be Machen's greatest work, it was little noticed on its publication in 1907 save in a glowing review by Alfred Douglas. It was actually written between 1895 and 1897 and has elements of the style of the decadent and aesthetic movement of the period, seen through Machen's own mystical preoccupations.
This is collection of uncanny stories complied and curated by Cyril Arthur Pearson. The stories are fine ghost and horror stories, with all the ingredients to make it work: night, ghosts, unexplained deaths, and locked rooms
The stories in Volume 1 centre on dreams, psychic presentiments, traces, wraiths, doppelgängers, apparitions, and imaginings of the after-life. Crowe's vivid tales, written with great energy and imagination, are classic examples of nineteenth-century spiritualist writing and strongly influenced other authors as well as providing inspiration for later adherents of ghost-seeing and psychic culture.
This is a collection of short stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. The stories all have different topics, there are mysterious deaths, haunted houses, ghosts, moving shadows, and all other ingredients which make for a good ghost story.
Five ghost stories, published in 1920, by the early twentieth century master of ghostery.
Eighteenth-century sailors adrift in a lifeboat encounter strange lands and weird creatures in their search for home. A creepy tale of nautical adventure.
"We cannot tell you what kind of a story this
is. We simply cannot present it as we present
other stories. It is too tremendous for that.
We are very glad—and proud—to share it with you."
This collection of 14 stories collected by Lafcadio Hearn, contains Japanese ghost stories, but also several non-fiction pieces. Hearn tries to give a glimpse into the customs of the Japanese, by giving examples of Buddhist Proverbs and explaining the use of incense and the nation wide fascination with poetry. Furthermore, he has again translated several hair-rising ghost stories, like "A Passional Karma" about the truly undying love of a young couple.
This book tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures.