Horror

            Rating: 4.7  •  3 reviews

"The Silver Key" is a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1926, considered part of his Dreamlands series.

Randolph Carter discovers, at the age of 30, that he has gradually "lost the key to the gate of dreams." As he ages, he finds that his daily waking exposure to the more "practical", scientific ideas of man, has eventually eroded his ability to dream as he once did, and has made him regretfully subscribe more and more to the mundane beliefs of everyday, waking "real life". But still not certain which is truer, he sets out to determine whether the waking ideas of man are superior to his dreams...

            Rating: 4.9  •  6 reviews

"Medusa's Coil" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop. 

The story concerns the son of an American plantation owner who brings back from Paris a new wife. It mixes elements of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos with the ancient Greek myth of Medusa.

            Rating: 4.6  •  4 reviews

"The Shadow Out of Time" indirectly tells of the Great Race of Yith, an extraterrestrial species with the ability to travel through space and time. The Yithians accomplish this by switching bodies with hosts from the intended spatial or temporal destination. The story implies that the effect when seen from the outside is similar to spiritual possession...

            Rating: 4.8  •  9 reviews

"The Shadow over Innsmouth" is a horror novella by American author H. P. Lovecraft. It forms part of the Cthulhu Mythos, using its motif of a malign undersea civilization, and references several shared elements of the Mythos, including place-names, mythical creatures, and invocations.

The narrator is a student conducting an antiquarian tour of New England. He travels through the nearby decrepit seaport of Innsmouth which is suggested as a cheaper and potentially interesting next leg of his journey. There he interacts with strange people and observes disturbing events that ultimately lead to horrifying and personal revelations...

            Rating: 4.7  •  4 reviews

A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate... An estate haunted by a beckoning evil.

Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows - silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer...

            Rating: 4.9  •  11 reviews

H. P. Lovecraft was one of the greatest horror writers of all time. His seminal work appeared in the pages of legendary Weird Tales and has influenced countless writer of the macabre. This is one of those stories.

The narrator, a monster hunter, hearing tales of a "lurking fear" upon Tempest Mountain in the Catskills, takes his two strongmen with him to investigate. They camp inside the deserted Martense mansion as a lightning storm approaches, and feeling strangely drowsy, they all fall asleep...

            Rating: 4.8  •  4 reviews

"From Beyond" is a short story by science fiction and horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft.

The story is told from the first-person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person's pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality...

            Rating: 4.6  •  7 reviews

In H.P. Lovecraft's novella, a New England man returns to his ancestral home in 1920's England only to realize his family's cannibalistic history. Distraught by the revelation and driven insane by the scampering sounds of rats between the house walls, he commits an unthinkable act...

            Rating: 4.8  •  12 reviews

"The Man" is a victorian novel by Bram Stoker, best known for Dracula. It is a typical gothic novel, which features horror and romance.

Squire Stephen Norman is lord of the manor in Normanstead. He is married to Margaret Rowly and desirous of an heir, but fate gives them a baby girl. Before Margaret dies shortly after giving birth, Norman promises her that he will love their daughter as much as he would have loved a son, and she asks him to name the girl Stephen.

Norman raises his daughter Stephen as a tomboy. When she is six, Norman's visiting college friend Dr. Wolf tells her about his 11-year-old son Harold. The girl asks him to bring Harold on a future visit, and the children become friends. Two years later, Dr. Wolf dies of pneumonia and Squire Norman promises to raise Harold as if he were his own son.

One time Stephen and Harold visit the graveyard of the Church of St. Stephen in Normanstead, and find the crypt unlocked...

            Rating: 4.7  •  3 reviews

"The Dunwich Horror" is a horror short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft and is considered one of the core stories of the Cthulhu Mythos.

In the isolated, desolate, decrepit village of Dunwich, Massachusetts, Wilbur Whateley is the hideous son of Lavinia Whateley, a deformed and unstable albino mother, and an unknown father (alluded to in passing by mad Old Whateley, as "Yog-Sothoth"). Strange events surround his birth and precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. Locals shun him and his family, and animals fear and despise him due to his odor. All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft. Various locals grow suspicious after Old Whateley buys more and more cattle, yet the number of his herd never increases, and the cattle in his field become mysteriously afflicted with severe open wounds...

            Rating: 4.9  •  14 reviews

"The Horror at Red Hook" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It is a transitional tale, situated between the author's earlier work and the later Cthulhu Mythos.

The story begins with Detective Malone describing an on-duty incident in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that gave him a phobia of large buildings. Back-tracking to where it all began, the Brooklyn waterfront slum Red Hook is described in detail, with its gangs and crime, and hinting at an occult underbelly...

            Rating: 4.7  •  7 reviews

The novella is set in 19th-century Styria, which is located in Austria. It is narrated by a young woman named Laura, who tells her story to Doctor Hesselius.

Laura lives with her father (a widower) in a castle deep in the forest of Styria. It is an isolated but beautiful and serene place. Besides the servants, the only inhabitants of the castle are Madame Perrodon, a governess, and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, a finishing governess.

Laura narrates that her first distinct memory of her life is from when she was six years old. She awoke in the middle of the night without any nurse or other attendant. She was not afraid until she saw a lovely young woman at the foot of her bed. The woman came and laid down with her and they fell asleep. Laura then awoke to the sensation of two piercing needles below her throat, and the woman fled to under her bed...