Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age


Chronicle Books - 2017
    . . .This collection of tales transports the reader to a time when staircases creaked in old manor houses, and a candle could be blown out by a gust of wind, or by a passing ghost. Penned by some of the greatest Victorian novelists and masters of the ghost story genre, each story is illustrated with exquisitely eerie artwork in this special gift edition featuring an embossed textured case and a ribbon marker.Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad - M.R. JamesThe Old Nurse's Story - Elizabeth GaskellThe Signalman - Charles DickensThe Body-Snatcher - Robert Louis StevensonThe Captain of the Pole-Star - Arthur Conan DoyleThe Phantom Coach - Amelia B. EdwardsThe Screaming Skull - Francis Marion Crawford

20th Century Ghosts


Joe Hill - 2005
    She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945.... Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town.... Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead....The past isn't dead. It isn't even past...

Haunted Castles


Ray Russell - 1985
    Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story 'Sardonicus', considered by Stephen King to be 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written', to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Ted Klein, and Robert E. Howard. These stunningly creepy deluxe hardcovers will be perfect additions to the shelves of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal aficionados everywhere.Haunted CastlesHaunted Castles is the definitive, complete collection of Ray Russell's masterful Gothic horror stories, including the famously terrifying novella trio of 'Sardonicus', 'Sanguinarius', and 'Sagittarius'. The characters that sprawl through Haunted Castles are frightful to the core: the heartless monster holding two lovers in limbo; the beautiful dame journeying down a damned road toward depravity (with the help of an evil gypsy); the man who must wear his fatal crimes on his face in the form of an awful smile. Engrossing, grotesque, perverted, and completely entrancing, Russell's Gothic tales are the best kind of dreadful.RAY RUSSELL was born in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, and served in the United States Air Force during World War II in the South Pacific. After the war, he attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music and eventually joined the editorial staff at Playboy, where he published such writers as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney, Robert Bloch, and Charles Beaumont. His best-known work, 'Sardonicus', was called by Stephen King 'perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written'. He died in Los Angeles in 1999.GUILLERMO DEL TORO is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, and designer, most famous for his Academy Award-winning film,Pan's Labyrinth, and the Hellboy film franchise. He has received the Nebula, Hugo, and Bram Stoker awards and is an avid collector and student of arcane memorabilia and weird fiction.

Collected Ghost Stories


M.R. James - 1931
    R. James is widely regarded as the father of the modern ghost story, and his tales have influenced horror writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King. First published in the early 1900s, they have never been out of print, and are recognized as classics of the genre. This collection contains some of his most chilling tales, including A View from a Hill, Rats, A School Story, The Ash Tree, and The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance. Read by BAFTA and Emmy-award winning actor Derek Jacobi, and with haunting and evocative music, these tales cannot fail to send a shiver down your spine.

The Altar In The Hills and Other Weird Tales


Brandon Barrows - 2014
    Lovecraft, the most-fevered mind of 20th century horror and weirdness! These weird tales blend horror, science-fiction and fantasy to weave stories of darkness and terror that will alternately leave you checking dark spaces for hidden horrors and wondering at the nature of reality itself. From the horror/mystery of The Altar in the Hills to the private confessions and revelations of one of mankind's most brilliant minds in Through the Ether, these seven stories bring with them Old Gods, strange twists and interesting characters that will both surprise and delight fans of horror fiction.

Sourdough and Other Stories


Angela Slatter - 2010
    In the cathedral-city of Lodellan and its uneasy hinterland, babies are fashioned from bread, dolls are given souls and wishes granted may be soon regretted. There are ghosts who dream, men whose wings have been clipped and trolls who long for something other. Love, loss and life are elegantly dissected in Slatter's earthy yet poetic prose. As Rob Shearman says in his Introduction: 'Sourdough and Other Stories manages to be grand and ambitious and worldbuilding-but also as intimate and focused as all good short fiction should be . . . The joy of Angela Slatter's book is that she's given us a set of fairy tales that are at once both new and fresh, and yet feel as old as storytelling itself.'

Antique Dust: Ghost Stories


Robert Westall - 1989
    While this is his first book for adults, he has been writing ghost stories for young adult readers such as "The Machine Gunners".

Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds


Brandon Sanderson - 2018
    It’s his hallucinations who are mad.A genius of unrivaled aptitude, Stephen can learn any new skill, vocation, or art in a matter of hours. However, to contain all of this, his mind creates hallucinatory people—Stephen calls them aspects—to hold and manifest the information. Wherever he goes, he is joined by a team of imaginary experts to give advice, interpretation, and explanation. He uses them to solve problems. . .for a price.His brain is getting a little crowded and the aspects have a tendency of taking on lives of their own. When a company hires him to recover stolen property—a camera that can allegedly take pictures of the past—Stephen finds himself in an adventure crossing oceans and fighting terrorists. What he discovers may upend the foundation of three major world religions—and, perhaps, give him a vital clue into the true nature of his aspects.Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds includes the novellas Legion and Legion: Skin Deep, published together for the first time, as well as a brand-new, shocking finale to Stephen Leeds' story, Lies of the Beholder.

Subject 11


Jeffrey Thomas - 2011
    We are currently seeking 10 individuals to participate in a research study. Participants shall receive a sum to be discussed during initial telephone interview. Interested parties should email us via our contact page, subject11.webs.com, providing their telephone number and a brief biography of approximately 100 words, describing themselves in terms of gender, age, race, and occupation if any. The study will take place in a series of abandoned buildings rented for this purpose. Note: subjects involved in this test may find themselves experiencing certain psychological distortions. They may experience lapses in memory regarding others and themselves. Subjects may even forget how long this test is supposed to go on for. And please disregard any additional people you may feel you've sighted in the complex, beyond those in the test group. We thank you for your interest in our research. “Cutting right to the chase, SUBJECT 11 is one of the best novellas I've read all year. Jeffrey Thomas is at his best in this eerie story following a group of ten people (five women and five men) taking part in a mysterious experiment...The mysteries are enticing, and Thomas brings them together for an ending that is sure to linger long in the minds of readers.” - Justin Steele, THE ARKHAM DIGEST

The Second Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®


H.P. LovecraftRobert Bloch - 2016
    Included are: Introduction (The Second Cthulhu Mythos Megapack) • essay by Shawn Garrett Dreams of Yith • (1934) • poem by Duane W. Rimel and H. P. Lovecraft Out of the Aeons • short fiction by Hazel Heald and H. P. Lovecraft (variant of Out of the Eons 1935) Fishhead • (1913) • short story by Irvin S. Cobb When Chaugnar Wakes • (1932) • poem by Frank Belknap Long The Mound • (1940) • novella by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop The Thing on the Roof • (1932) • short story by Robert E. Howard The Isle of Dark Magic • (1934) • novelette by Hugh B. Cave The Secret in the Tomb • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch The Horror from the Hills • (1931) • novella by Frank Belknap Long The Terrible Parchment • (1937) • short story by Manly Wade Wellman The Shambler from the Stars • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch The Diary of Alonzo Typer • (1938) • short story by H. P. Lovecraft and William Lumley Hydra• (1939) • short story by Henry Kuttner The Suicide in the Study • (1935) • short story by Robert Bloch Marmok • (1940) • poem by Emil Petaja The Intruder • (1940) • short story by Emil Petaja Out of the Jar • (1941) • short story by Charles R. Tanner [as by Charles A. Tanner] Skydrift • (1949) • short story by Emil Petaja Anonymous • (1951) • short story by George T. Wetzel Why Abdul Alhazred Went Mad • (1950) • short story by D. R. Smith (variant of Why Abdul Al Hazred Went Mad) Caer Sidhi • (1954) • short story by George T. Wetzel Dead of Night • (1988) • short story by Lin Carter Death of a Damned Good Man • (1991) • short story by Avram Davidson Medusa's Coil • short fiction by Zealia Bishop and H. P. Lovecraft [as by Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop] Perchance to Dream • (1988) • short story by Lin Carter The Winfield Heritence • short fiction by Lin Carter (variant of The Winfield Heritance 1981) The Challenge from Beyond • (1935) • short story by C. L. Moore and A. Merritt and H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and Frank Belknap Long The Last Horror Out of Arkham • (1977) • short story by Darrell Schweitzer If you enjoy this ebook, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see more of the 300+ volumes in this series, covering adventure, historical fiction, mysteries, westerns, ghost stories, science fiction -- and much, much more!

Stay Awake


Dan Chaon - 2012
    Now, in Stay Awake, Chaon returns to that form for the first time since his masterly Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award.In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection—and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations.A father’s life is upended by his son’s night terrors—and disturbing memories of the first wife and child he abandoned; a foster child receives a call from the past and begins to remember his birth mother, whose actions were unthinkable; a divorced woman experiences her own dark version of “empty-nest syndrome”; a young widower is unnerved by the sudden, inexplicable appearances of messages and notes—on dollar bills, inside a magazine, stapled to the side of a tree; and a college dropout begins to suspect that there’s something off, something sinister, in his late parents’ house.Dan Chaon’s stories feature scattered families, unfulfilled dreamers, anxious souls. They exist in a twilight realm—in a place by the window late at night when the streets are empty and the world appears to be quiet. But you are up, unable to sleep. So you stay awake.

Tomorrow's Cthulhu


Scott GableMike Allen - 2015
    Madness. Transhumanism.This is the dawn of posthumanity. Some things can’t be unlearned. Gleaming labs whir with the hum of servers as scientists unravel the secrets of the universe. But as we peel away mysteries, the universe glances back at us. Even now, terrors rise from the Mariana Trench and drift down from the stars. Scientists are disappearing—or worse. Experiments take on minds of their own. Some fight back against the unknown, some give in, some are destroyed, and still others are becoming… more. The human and inhuman are harder and harder to distinguish. Mankind is changing, whether it wants to or not, with brand new ways of thinking. What havoc is wreaked by those humans trying to harness and control their discoveries? As big science progresses and the very fundamentals of this universe are understood, what stories are being hushed up? Of course, the Old Ones laugh at our laws, scientific and otherwise. These are transhumanist near-future science fiction tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. These are tales of more than merely cosmic dread. They exist in our world of the next couple years. This is the era of big science and—what is that? We’ll be right back. ​​

Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales


Vernon Lee - 1890
    of whom I can affirm only one thing, that they haunted certain brains, and have haunted, among others, my own.” First published in 1890, Lee’s most famous volume of supernatural tales occupies a special place in the literature of the fantastic for its treatment of the femme fatale and the allure of the past, along with the themes of thwarted artistic creativity and psychological obsession. This collection, which includes the four stories originally published in Hauntings and three others, enables readers to consider Lee’s work anew for its subtle redefinitions of gender and sexuality during the Victorian fin-de-siècle.The appendices, which include extensive excerpts from writings by Lee’s predecessors and peers, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, and Lee’s brother Eugene Lee-Hamilton, allow the reader to see how Lee takes on the themes and preoccupations of the late-Victorian period but adapts them to her own purposes.Preface to Hauntings (1890) -- Amour dure (1887, 1890) -- Dionea (1890) -- Oke of Okehurst (1886, 1890) -- A wicked voice (1887, 1890) -- Prince Alberic and the snake lady (1896) -- A wedding chest (1904) -- Preface to The virgin of the seven daggers (1927) -- The virgin of the seven daggers (1896, 1909,1927) -- Appendix A: From Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Notes on designs of the old masters at Florence" (1868, 1875) -- Appendix B: From Walter Pater, "Pico della Mirandula" (1871, 1873) -- Appendix C: From Walter Pater, "Lionardo da Vinci" (1869, 1873) -- Appendix D: Vernon Lee, "Faustus and Helena: notes on the supernatural in art" (1880, 1881) -- Appendix E: A. Mary F. Robinson, "Before a bust of Venus" (1881) -- Appendix F: Eugene Lee-Hamilton, "The mandolin" (1882) -- Appendix G: A. Mary F. Robinson, "The ladies of Milan" (1889) -- Appendix H: Eugene Lee-Hamilton, "On a surf-rolled torso of Venus" (1884, 1894) -- Appendix I: Vernon Lee, "Out of Venice at last" (1925).

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things


Lafcadio Hearn - 1904
    Faceless creatures haunt an unwary traveler. A beautiful woman — the personification of winter at its cruelest — ruthlessly kills unsuspecting mortals. These and 17 other chilling supernatural tales — based on legends, myths, and beliefs of ancient Japan — represent the very best of Lafcadio Hearn's literary style. They are also a culmination of his lifelong interest in the endlessly fascinating customs and tales of the country where he spent the last fourteen years of his life, translating into English the atmospheric stories he so avidly collected.Teeming with undead samurais, man-eating goblins, and other terrifying demons, these 20 classic ghost stories inspired the Oscar®-nominated 1964 film of the same name.

Unnatural Creatures


Neil GaimanGahan Wilson - 2013
    Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Gahan Wilson, and other literary luminaries. Sales of Unnatural Creatures benefit 826DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students in their creative and expository writing, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.