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This is a quick and fun look behind the scenes at how our books are made. One of the most common questions I get in my inbox is how...

Like his peers Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein's Creature has been featured extensively in film – both adaptations of the...

Ever since its explosive publication in 1890, Oscar Wilde's Gothic treatise on decadence, sin, and corruption has been subject to scandal...

In this three-part series we will explore the forgotten tales of Poe: stories of Gothic horror, black humor, and fantasy/suspense that...

In this three-part series we will explore the forgotten tales of Poe: stories of Gothic horror, black humor, and fantasy/suspense that...

In this three-part series we will explore the forgotten tales of Poe: stories of (1) Gothic horror, (2) black humor, and (3) strange...

(Updated from August 2017) Every summer there are nights that I feel the urge to wander into the shady woods of my native Midwest: the...

Invisibility in literature is as old as history itself. Some the earliest references come from Greek and Roman mythology – such as the “Ring of Gynges” spoken of by Plato. In this revealing story, a shepherd discovers a ring of invisibility that he uses to seduce the Queen of Lydia and murder the king. It hints at both sides of the issue: the possibility (invisibility could raise a shepherd to a king) and the horror (even a king has no defense against an invisible man), and c

Before “The Masque of the Red Death,” Poe had begun contemplating its principle themes: denial of death, libertine seclusion, and the illimitable dominion of the reaper. In “Shadow – A Parable” these ideas are consolidated into a nearly Homeric meditation on death’s invincibility. The story of a mere moment, “Shadow” peeks into the room where seven men are nervously peering into their own reflections while a gruesome plague ravishes the streets beyond their fastened brass doo

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 in William Hope Hodgson’s fiction. Sometimes they are antagonists outright; at other times they are instruments of the plot or used to describe the attributes of Hodgson’s horrors. Put more simply, they are either monsters, victims of monsters, or metaphors for monsters. This is most prominently featured in The House on the Borderland, where a lonely man is besieged by porcine demons after his house is accidentally built upon a weak spot in the fabri

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,...