From the dawn of storytelling we have been mesmerized, entertained, and fascinated by stories of other-worldly visitations. Our earliest folklore and oral tales suggest that even before recorded time, on every continent and in every language, we created narratives to animate our fear of the unknown. The classic stories in this anthology have been selected for their literary style, psychological complexity, and enduring power to electrify both the imagination and the senses. As varied, rooted in, and intriguingly expressive of their time and place, these stories give expression to a universal hunch that we live among ghosts-whether of the past or in the form of portending presences. From Edgar Allan Poe’s timeless ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ to M. R. James’s ‘Count Magnus’ to Algernon Blackwood’s subtly unnerving ‘The Willows’ each of these tales rise to-and in many ways define-the high water mark of the genre. Includes the full text of H. P. Lovecraft’s superb essay, On the Supernatural in Poetry, an illuminating history and exploration of the art of the weird story-along with brief author biographies.
Table of Content
Young Goodman Brown 1
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Tell-Tale Heart 16
Edgar Allan Poe
The Phantom Coach 22
Amelia Edwards
The Signal-Man 37
Charles Dickens
The Rival Ghosts 51
Brander Matthews
The Phantom Rickshaw 70
Rudyard Kipling
The Death of Halpin Frayser 94
Ambrose Bierce
Lot No. 249 111
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Monkey’s Paw 147
W. W. Jacobs
Count Magnus 160
M. R. James
The Bus-Conductor 174
E. F. Benson
The Willows 184
Algernon Blackwood
The Eyes 237
Edith Wharton
The Open Window 258
Saki
On the Brighton Road 262
Richard Middleton
Supernatural Horror in Literature 267
By H. P. Lovecraft
Biographical Notes 346
About the author
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, and Civil War veteran. The tenth of thirteen children, he left home at the age of fifteen to become a printer’s devil at a small abolitionist Ohio newspaper. At the outset of the Civil War he enlisted in the Union Army and was eventually commissioned a first lieutenant. In 1866, a military expedition took him to San Francisco where he contributed to or edited a variety of local newspapers. After a stint living and writing in England he returned to San Francisco and became a regular columnist at The San Francisco Examiner and one of the most influential journalists on the West Coast. He wrote piercingly about the ghastly things he had seen in the war and is considered a pioneer of the psychological horror story. At the age of seventy-one Bierce disappeared while accompanying Pancho Villa’s army in Mexico and, in spite of an official investigation, his ultimate fate remains a mystery. For his horror writing, Washington Post critic Michael Dirda ranks Bierce alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. ‘The Death of Halpin Frayser’ (1891) is among Bierce’s finest short stories.700,748 Ebooks in this category
