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Other than his elegiac poetry (“The Raven,” “Ulalume,” “Annabel Lee”), “The Black Cat” may be interpreted as autobiographic more than any other member of Poe’s canon. Those who carelessly “read into it” as confessional may held responsible for recklessly promoting the Poe myth. Nonetheless, its major components – alcoholism, domestic abuse, impulsive murder, and psychological decay – have become synonymous with both Poe the Man and Poe the Writer. “The Black Cat” may not accu

I often receive requests to review active writers’ horror novels and anthologies, and it is always a pleasure to be asked, but I have...

Cinematic and farsighted – a perfect subject for the pulpy comic books of ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘80s, with their over-the-top villains with iconoclastic schemes of world domination – “The Wondersmith” concerns a Christmastime plot to poison the children of the United States through no less than their Christmas toys: child’s dolls, soldiers, and manikins brought to life with the captivated, evil souls, and armed with envenomed needles. Set in the slums of antebellum New York, O’Brie

The following story is one of the most time-honored tropes of British supernatural fiction: a ghost story told over the fire of an inn about a spirit that roams its very halls. The conventional program for such a tale goes thus: a group of travelers – strangers to one another – seek shelter from a winter storm at a wayside inn. Bored and tired, they begin talking about metaphysics after they have wasted small talk, politics, and gossip. The conversation turns to the existence

Among the very last of Le Fanu’s supernatural works—certainly his final great one—is this eerie reworking, or perhaps hazy prequel, to "Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street." It is a fitting conclusion to his career, not only because it encapsulates many of his favorite themes and motifs, but because it represents his first deep, psychological excavation of one of his most chilling tropes: the malevolently carnal aristocrat. While Le Fanu had explored depraved noblemen

Unquestionably, William Hope Hodgson ranks among the most influential visionaries of the early weird tale: like Machen, Blackwood, and...

Demon lovers – a variant of the “Death and the Maiden” motif – are a standard trope in European folklore. These stories tell of beautiful, vulnerable women spirited away by lustful ghosts, demons, or vampires. Kidnapped bodily, they suffer the fate of the first victim of a demon lover – Persephone, who was abducted by Hades in Greek mythology – and are dragged, body and soul, into the underworld to serve as concubine to their kidnapper. The trope served as a colorful metaphor

Swine feature prominently as villains and motifs in Hodgson. Sometimes they are antagonists outright, othertimes they are instruments of the plot, or used to describe the attributes of Hodgson’s horrors (more simply put, they are either monsters, victims of monsters, or used to describe monsters). This is most prominently featured in “The House on the Borderland,” where a lonely man is besieged by porcine demons, his house accidentally having been built on a soft spot in the

At their core, most Victorian ghost stories are oblique commentaries on the discombobulating transition from agrarian pre-modernity to industrial capitalism. There is, of course, far more to them than this, but ghost stories found a peculiar vogue during the Industrial Revolution as Britons (who were increasingly middle-class, urban, and intellectual) struggled to reconcile these drastic developments with many, many centuries as superstitious, rural, peasants. Folklore had th

If the title of this story is familiar to you, it is probably due to the fact that it is often touted by editors and literature professors as the predecessor to A Christmas Carol – and rightfully so. Like Dickens’ most famous supernatural tale, this is a Christmas story which follows the reformation of a misanthropic curmudgeon through the agency of psychic visions administered by preternatural agents, resulting in a transformative comprehension of human suffering, beauty, an

The Haunting of Gallagher Hotel By K.T. Rose Genre: Occult/ Extreme Horror/ Demonism CHAPTER ONE: She’ll never forget the day she died....

The King in Yellow is a savage, jealous potentate who longs to possess his worshippers – mind, body, and soul. In this way He is not so very unlike the God of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. The Abrahamic deity wishes to possess His followers’ hearts in order to prosper them and to provide salvation, but the King in Yellow has a far more insidious desire for His devotees. It is fitting that this story should begin in a Catholic church where a body of Christian worshippers ar

Unquestionably Bierce’s most popular and critically acclaimed ghost story, “The Death of Halpin Frayser” also brings with it a great deal of confusion and mystery. Several credible theories have been floated around as to the nature of its plot and the identities of its characters, but no one interpretation has been universally accepted. What is clear, however, is that Bierce’s favorite themes of familicide, loathsome family secrets, hidden identities, sexual depravity, and co

One of James’ most extraordinary tales (both for him as a writer and for the period during which he wrote), “Lost Hearts” was only the second story that he wrote, but it pushed limits that he would never again feel comfortable pursuing. In fact, in spite of its popularity, James was famously displeased with it, considering it a lesser work and the result of a lack of maturity. There certainly are one or two maxims of his treatise on writing ghost stories which it appears to d

Sympathy was a byword in the Scottish Enlightenment – an intellectual movement that influenced the development of American politics,...

Its title would also be applicable to “The Story of the Late Mr Elvesham,” but its themes are far less nefarious and far more action-packed. “The Stolen Body” is no misnomer: the plot concerns what we may (with tongue in cheek) call grand theft body. A man has toyed recklessly with his metaphysical condition by leaving his corporeal-self unoccupied and unlocked, and is left stranded in the spiritual world. Part comedy, part thriller, and part parable, Wells responds to the qu

One of the briefest tales in Poe’s oeuvre, “The Oval Portrait” delves into the costs of art, and – more generally – the relationship...

The final entry in James' prolific 1890s period, “The Real Right Thing,” was penned mere months after The Turn of the Screw, and represents one of James’ very shortest tales. Its brevity, however, has not prevented it from becoming one of his most studied and debated ghost stories. Like “The Friend of the Friends,” it lacks the supernatural terror of Lovecraft or Blackwood, but is positively teeming with psychological tension. Written some seventeen years before his own death

In the midst of a starving winter, a cocksure hunter ignores his neighbors’ advice to come down from his lonely cabin on Jawbone Ridge: they avoid the sinister area during the savage winters, but he savors its isolation. But when he and his three hounds are unexpectedly trapped there in a blizzard, he grows desperate for food, and doesn't hesitate to chop off and eat the long tail of a bizarre, cat-like creature he catches in the woods. But the animal wants its tail back, and

“The Leather Funnel” is a very uneasy tale, presaging the queasy fiction of Algernon Blackwood (“The Insanity of Jones”), M. R. James (“The Rose Garden”), and Oliver Onions (“Io”). The stories I’ve associated with these Edwardian masters of the macabre all bear a somber similarity to “The Leather Funnel,” in that they concern visions of the past forced on a hapless victim – either by their proximity to the supernatural, the loss of their senses, or in the worst cases both. Th

“Owl Creek Bridge” is Bierce’s masterpiece. There is almost no scholarly dissent to that argument. Concerning its legacy, fellow Hoosier, Kurt Vonnegut, wrote, "I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read the greatest American short story, which is '[An] Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' by Ambrose Bierce. It isn't remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius, like 'Sophisticated Lady' by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove." Both in themes and execution it

Irving’s most famous overt supernatural story — and one which makes no apologies for it — emerges, like most of his finest works, from the German literary tradition. In this case, it draws upon the legend of Doctor Faust. Desperately hungry for forbidden knowledge, this semi-historical alchemist was said to have sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for wisdom, power, and magical abilities. According to sixteenth-century German pamphlets, the scholar spent his middle years i

NOTES BY M. GRANT KELLERMEYER: Aside from “Carnacki the Ghost-Finder,” Hodgson is probably most famous for what has been referred to as...

Out of the Storm {1909} "Hush!" said my friend the scientist, as I walked into his laboratory. I had opened my lips to speak; but stood silent for a few minutes at his request. He was sitting at his instrument, and the thing was tapping out a message in a curiously irregular fashion—stopping a few seconds, then going on at a furious pace. It was during a somewhat longer than usual pause that, growing slightly impatient, I ventured to address him. "Anything important?" I