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Rivaled in popularity only by “The Willows” – and the contest is a close one – Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” pairs finely with its older...

As with “The Stolen Body,” “The Inexperienced Ghost” (perhaps Wells’ most anthologized ghost story after “The Red Room” – with good...

Longtime readers of my reviews and my own short stories will probably know that I have a passion for two particular literary motifs:...

The iron maiden has a checkered history. Almost every source will promptly confess that it is essentially a 19th century invention before...

“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...

One of Stevenson’s most shamefully underrated stories, Olalla (pronounced oh - LAH -yah ), is a masterpiece of erotic horror—among the most coquettishly ambiguous vampire tales in English—and an eerily prescient reflection of Jung’s later theories of the Self. At once philosophical and sensual, it stands as a bridge between the Dark Romanticism of Edgar Allan Poe and the psychological realism of the twentieth century. The novelette also represents one of the most brilliant h

Subtitled “An Imitation of the German,” this, the earliest of Poe’s supernatural tales, builds a unique atmosphere on a foundation of...

Edith Nesbit’s supernatural masterpiece – “Man-Size in Marble” – was first published in 1887, one year after “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll...

Written one year after “The Turn of the Screw,” the story which many consider Machen’s masterpiece shared several elements with Henry...

Most famous and proliferate of all Hoffmann’s tales, “Nutcracker and the King of Mice” was not, however , very well received by its...

CREPUSCULAR (Adj.) : of, resembling, or relating to twilight; (of an animal) appearing or active in twilight. Synonyms: Half-light,...

The last of James’ ghost stories, written six years before his death, is widely considered his best, after “Turn of the Screw.” “The...

No collection of Victorian Era ghost stories would be complete without a glance into the troubling relationship between Britain and her...

There is no question as to which of Charles Dickens’ traditional ghost stories is the magnum opus: critics, readers, and aficionados...

The general way that these stories are structured is as follows: a heinous murder, a tragic death, or an unexpected demise causes someone...

Aside from the King in Yellow Mythos, Chambers’ most notable contribution to weird fiction is the following story. “The Maker of Moons” is typical of most of the Chambers’ weird fiction in that it collates a variety of genres into a marketable pop hit that is at parts forgettable and at others blazingly original. “The Maker of Moons” is seemingly equal parts horror, romance, fantasy, mystery, farce (in the style of P. G. Wodehouse), and science fiction. However, the story is

A drifting couple leave their bustling Chicago neighborhood to photograph a covered bridge outside of the wife's rural hometown....

Blackwood’s most famous ghost story is also one of the most excellent examples of the haunted house genre. It is not a story about ghosts, however; it is a story about fear. Like “The Willows,” “The Empty House” features two adventurers finding themselves locked in a battle for their sanity, desperately employing psychological gambits to maintain their self-control and avoid the madness that runs at them full tilt. Supposedly a relic from Blackwood’s ghost hunting days with t

Anthologies are the sampler flights of literature. When I go to a restaurant with its own microbrewery, I always get the sampler flight:...

He was the greatest American writer of his time: he was a mentor to Poe, Longfellow, and Hawthorne, his country’s first professional...

The Victorian Era was ostensibly one of confidence: confidence in queen and country, in God and duty, in science and virtue. But beneath the solid wainscoting crawled many rats. Wells, whose speculative fiction almost always had a social conscience hammering industriously behind the scenes, knew that the ghost story – a naturally subversive genre – had the potential to expose the vulnerability of British social and philosophical vulnerability, and in “The Red Room,” he does s

Unquestionably, “The Judge’s House” is Stoker’s short fiction masterpiece. Alongside “The Squaw,” “Dracula’s Guest,” and “The Burial of the Rats,” it will remain remembered and celebrated as one of his greatest literary accomplishments. A frequent luminary of horror anthologies, it has become as ubiquitous to editors as “The Body Snatcher,” “The Monkey’s Paw,” “Man-Size in Marble,” “The Signal-Man,” or “The Red Room.” It probes themes common to Stoker’s fiction, but still rel

Some of the novels I review can be described as pleasant, humorous little reads – Gothic but campy, dark but easygoing – and I certainly...

Other than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, none of Stevenson’s horror tales has achieved greater renown than “The Body Snatcher.” The story appears regularly in anthologies of classic terror, standing shoulder to shoulder with “The Judge’s House,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Monkey’s Paw.” It deserves this distinction, for it resists simple classification. The supernatural episode that concludes the story cannot be conclusively labeled a haunting, a vision, a vampire’s return, or a re