“GHOST, n. The outward sign of an inward fear” — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary He was the successor of Edgar Allan Poe and a harbinger of H. P. Lovecraft, penning some of the most shocking, savage horror stories in the English language. His dark, literary universe was haunted by shadowy monsters who never quite revealed themselves, only stalking in the dim background like woodland predators around a campfire. And what better stories for any campfire’s company: he wro

You have read Poe before. I say that with the authority of someone who was brought up in the American public education system. You have read “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” If your school was ambitious you have read “Annabelle Lee” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” If they were truly ambitious you may have read “The Bells” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” But you have read Poe. Our annotated and illustrated collection of his best horror and macabre poetry hopes to tr

“I felt as a child feels when some fairy tale has been told it to conceal the truth it suspects.” – E. T. A. Hoffmann He was the godfather of modern horror, weird fiction, and fantasy, an inestimable influence on Poe, Dickens, and Hawthorne, de Maupassant, Stevenson, and James, left his fingerprints on “Frankenstein,” “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” “Dracula,” and “The Turn of the Screw,” and inspired filmmakers from Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan to David Lynch and Fritz Lang (an

CREPUSCULAR (Adj.) : of, resembling, or relating to twilight; (of an animal) appearing or active in twilight. Synonyms: Half-light, semi-darkness, gloom, dusk, murk, sundown, nightfall, sunset, shadowy. UNCANNY (Adj.) : something which treads the boundary between normal and abnormal, causing anxiety by virtue of its not quite normal character; a humanoid creature or figure which is not quite human; strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way. Synonyms: eerie, unnat

He was the greatest American writer of his time: he was a mentor to Poe, Longfellow, and Hawthorne, his country’s first professional author, and had met almost every president from Washington to Pierce. He transformed copyright laws to give writers and artists more representation, and cultivated a previously non-existent literary culture throughout the United States. He was idolized internationally, and adored by great authors of the day, including Byron, Walter Scott, and hi

J. M. Barrie, the Scottish playwright and author of Peter Pan, once quipped that the initials “R.L.S.” are “the best beloved in recent literature.” A quick comparison between Pan and Treasure Island, Kidnapped, or The Black Arrow will remove any doubt that the writer was making an impersonal observation. Edmond Gosse agreed that he was “the most beloved of all the authors of our time,” and William Gladstone, Prime Minister at the time, stayed up an entire night reading Treasu

There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead.— Arthur Machen With only a few exceptions, Arthur Machen rarely reveled in gore, Gothic clichés, or moments of horror. He hosts no chattering skeletons, moldering corpses,

Bram Stoker’s name has become synonymous with horror and the macabre, and with good reason. Frequently associated with nothing more than Count Dracula, Stoker wrote some half a dozen masterpieces of short horror fiction, and another dozen-and-a-half which contribute respectably to the genre. The Bram Stoker Award was created in honor of his short fiction as much as for “Dracula.” Stephen King admired him so profoundly that – when describing Stoker’s contributions to English h

Although it was not until later in his career that H. P. Lovecraft stumbled upon the treasure trove of William Hope Hodgson’s fiction, it is undeniable that once he did, he had found a kindred spirit. Lovecraft was probably indirectly influenced by Hodgson regardless of the relative lateness of his discovery: they were influenced by the same authors – primarily Poe, with elements of Bierce and Blackwood – and Hodgson’s writings were influential to writers whom Lovecraft disco

Like so many of the great American horror writers of the nineteenth century, Francis Marion Crawford had a transatlantic education: he was born in Italy – a country which would be to him what France was to Robert W. Chambers, England to Washington Irving, and the Continental spa resorts to Henry James – educated in Cambridge, Heidelberg, and Rome, and lived in India for years. What it is about the transatlantic experience that caused American expatriates to delve into superna