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Henry James’ ghost stories are, of course, highly celebrated for their psychological ambiguity, their narrators who hover between reliability and self-delusion, and their chilling blend of realism with romantic suggestiveness. We often feel that his ghosts are not literal specters of the dead—no sheeted figures rattling chains—but neither are they ever false. Even when a haunting is revealed to be fraudulent, the atmosphere of terror remains authentic. James teaches us a para

Doyle’s first recorded short story – a rejected horror story called “The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe,” which was later recycled into 1883’s comical “The Ghosts of Goresthorpe” – was a ghost story written in the Victorian tradition. His first published supernatural tale was similarly crafted, and incidentally a masterpiece of the genre, commonly included in anthologies of Victorian bogey stories. It shares its principle features with the best of them: the wild sublimity of t

Throughout human history our mythology and folklore has studied the duplicitous nature of our hearts. Galant and vulgar. Humble and...

Often underrated and woefully under-anthologized, the following story – or more accurately, two stories couched within a frame narrative (we will comment on each, individually) – is perhaps one of Dickens’ most complex and thematically dark tales. Often misunderstood and typically criticized for its “off-kilter” plot, “To be Read at Dusk” is an intricate study in dualism, repression, fate, and psychological influences on personal identity. Dickens uses the frame narrative – w

It's a chilly night of bright fires, witches' Sabbaths, widely held superstitions, and roaming demon dogs. As cool winds whip mostly-bare...

A little known secret about me is that I take great guilty pleasure – and unapologetic enjoyment – in reading about historical conspiracy...

Crawford’s masterpiece – the story which he is best known for, horror or otherwise – remains comfortably ensconced in the canon of supernatural classics. Frequently anthologized, it pairs well with the masterpieces of other Edwardian writers who are overwhelmingly associated with a single tale: W. W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Oliver Onions’ “The Beckoning Fair One,” Ralph Adams Cram’s “The Dead Valley,” Perceval Landon’s “Thurnley Abbey,” and so on. While Crawford is also l

“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...

When it was first published in 1818, Frankenstein was a caustic indictment of the Enlightenment by way of Romanticism. The intellectual...

The first story in the King in Yellow Mythos (the first five works in the eponymous 1895 collection) introduces us to a universe of instability, irony, and pitiful meaninglessness. It is a world turned upside down, one where time and logic are useless, where status and power are pointless, and where all ambitions, hopes, and loves are destined for obliteration. “The Repairer of Reputations” tells of a strange man whose job is to retroactively clean up his clients’ pasts, savi

Among Blackwood’s most effective ghost stories are several tales of rooms inhabited by the prowling presence of their former occupants. “The Listener” is an epistolary account told through the diary of its protagonist. Much like Guy De Maupassant’s similarly-themed “The Horla, or Modern Ghosts,” Blackwood’s tale depicts the gradual encroachment of a parasitic spirit into the life of an arguably mentally-compromised man. “The Listener” is an excellent exploration of approachin

Horror is perhaps best dictated to the senses – to the animal rather than the intellectual faculties. Amelia B. Edwards shoots for both in this cerebral but visceral tale by cushioning a quaint, fireside chat with a scholar of the natural and supernatural between two lonely, agonizing experiences of fear. The first is an experience that anyone might have when a car breaks down in an unfamiliar county on a winter night. The second is a vision that most can only say to have vie

A huge thanks to the Feedspot Blog for voting Oldstyle Tales' Classic Horror Blog the 9th best literary horror blog on the internet. Now,...

As a student of the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment, it stands to reason that the eponymous protagonist of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein...

The Year Without a Summer was the grim conclusion to nearly twenty years of constant global warfare, economic depression, and the...

It may seem strange, in a world with so much natural horror, to seek to explore and even celebrate horror that extends even further...

Gothic fiction. What is it? Why did it begin? Where is it heading? First off, let's have a definition: "The Gothic novel, or in an...

Bram Stoker’s name has become synonymous with horror and the macabre, and with good reason. Frequently associated with nothing more than...

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...

Like so many of the great American horror writers of the nineteenth century, Francis Marion Crawford had a transatlantic education: he...

Few writers in the canon of horror fiction are more mystifying or frustrating than the unambitious genius of Robert W. Chambers....

Unquestionably, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is considered the most significant contributor to the detective story genre – what Verne and Wells...

He was not one for terror, or even horror. His fiction is impressionistic, psychological, and "courtly," but it has one pervasive emotion...

One of the most psychologically fascinating horror writers of her time, Edith Nesbit – perhaps more so than any of her peers – invested...