Classic Horror Fiction

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Poe's only full novel, is one of his most unusual works. A riveting story, toldl in the first person, it tells of a disastrous sea voyage involving storms, mutiny, starvation, thirst - and a mysterious conclusion. Jorge Luis Borges and Baudelaire were among those who rated it highly. This recording was timed to mark the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth.

From the first moment Vincentio di Vivaldi, a young nobleman, sets eyes on the veiled figure of Ellena, he is captivated by her enigmatic beauty and grace. But his haughty and manipulative mother is against the match and enlists the help of her confessor to come between them. Schedoni, previously a leading figure of the Inquisition, is a demonic, scheming monk with no qualms about the task, whether it entails abduction, torture - or even murder.

Working in the ER, Dr. Marie Lavant sees the darkest side of New Orleans. But the bloody wounds of patients are not the only things that haunt her. As the descendent of a legendary voodoo queen, Marie is cursed with the ability to communicate with spirits of the dead.

Le Chat noir relate l'implacable chute d'un homme. C'est l'une des nouvelles qui ont assuré la célébrité d'Edgar Poe, et ont décidé Charles Baudelaire...

In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs, paintings come alive, deadly spectral brides haunt the living and a samurai delivers the baby of a Shinto goddess with mystical help. Here are all the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore: 'rokuro-kubi', whose heads separate from their bodies at night; 'jikininki', or flesh-eating goblins; and terrifying faceless 'mujina' who haunt lonely neighbourhoods.

All of Edgar Allan Poe’s great short stories in one 16-hour collection.

Welcome to Babylon, a typical sleepy Alabama small town, where years earlier the Larkin family suffered a terrible tragedy. Now they are about to endure another: 14-year-old Margaret Larkin will be robbed of her innocence and her life by a killer who is beyond the reach of the law. But something strange is happening in Babylon: traffic lights flash an eerie blue, a ghostly hand slithers from the drain of a kitchen sink, graves erupt from the local cemetery in an implacable march of terror.

The Jewel of the Seven Stars is the frightening tale of an archeologist determined to bring the ancient Egyptian Queen Tera back from the dead. Abel Trelawny sets out to fulfill his dark agenda, but he needs the help of the young lawyer Malcolm Ross. Convinced that Malcolm's interest in his daughter will help persuade him to go along with the evil plot, Trelawny sets his plan in motion. None of them could anticipate the horrifying consequences of his diabolic actions. Will Malcolm go along with Trelawny's evil plan?

When Cassie's twin sister, Lissa, commits suicide, Cassie discovers she can travel to Hell to retrieve her sister's soul. Cassie thought she knew all about the Hell of legend, but finds Hell has evolved over the millennia into a bustling city full of the damned with looming skyscrapers, crowded streets, systemized evil, and atrocity as the status quo.

Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic Tales blends the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; Lois the Witch, a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors.

In what Henry James called a 'trap for the unwary', The Turn of the Screw tells of a nameless young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care. But is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence or something else entirely?

Crossover sensation Melissa de la Cruz created an instant New York Times best seller with the inventive Witches of East End. In this follow-up, everything is going smoothly in North Hampton now that Joanna and her daughters, Ingrid and Freya, are allowed to perform magic again. But chaos erupts with the arrival of Freya’s twin brother, Freddie, who’s finally escaped from Limbo. And Freddie’s convinced that Freya’s fiancé, Killian Gardiner, is the one who landed him there in the first place.

An elderly couple living in Victorian London struggle against despair as their small resources dwindle. When an eccentric and mysterious gentleman answers their advertisement for a lodger, they celebrate. But as women begin dying at the hands of "The Avenger", they start to suspect something too horrific for words.

While there have been many famous vampires in modern media, none are as well known as Dracula, the modern introduction to the blood-drinking creatures of the night. In this epistolary horror novel, listeners are introduced to Count Dracula as he attempts to move to England to find new prey and create new vampires. He is thwarted by Abraham Van Helsing, a doctor who sees Dracula’s victims and gathers hunters to fight against the growing team of vampires.

The Most Dangerous Game, also published as The Hounds of Zaroff, is the classic horror yarn about big-game hunter Sanger Rainsford, from New York City, who falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean, where a sadistic Russian aristocrat hunts humans for sport. Rainsford must fight for his life.

The Dualitists recounts the tale of the Bubb family, childless for very long but finally blessed with twins. Two friends lived in the houses surrounding the Bubbs, Harry and Tommy, but they were forbidden to see each other because of the trouble they caused. Harry and Tommy began to secretly meet in the Bubb's garden, bringing with them their knives and items to destroy with the knives. Soon, items are not enough for the boys and they begin dueling, then killing animals. But their thirst could not be quenched.

HorrorBabble's complete, dramatic telling of Robert W. Chambers' classic collection, The King in Yellow. The book comprises 10 individual tales, several of which are thematically linked by a controversial play with which the novel shares its title.

“Jane Eyre” is a masterpiece of gothic romance, where tempestuous passions and dark secrets intertwine in an epic and intimate tale of love, tragedy, and one woman’s struggle for happiness against overwhelming odds. Orphaned Jane Eyre, raised in the home of her kind-hearted aunt, must confront loneliness and cruelty. Her challenging upbringing fortifies her natural independence and spirit, qualities that prove essential when she becomes a governess in the enigmatic and brooding Mr. Rochester’s household.

Teenage delinquent Angel Crawford lives with her redneck father in the swamps of southern Louisiana. She's a high school dropout, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and has a police record a mile long. But when she's made into a zombie after a car crash, her addictions disappear, except for her all-consuming need to stay "alive".

A compilation of five chilling stories from M.R. James, including four previously unreleased stories and originally recorded for the Radio 4 Woman's Hour in Christmas 2007. MR James is an important part of the nation's celebration of Christmas. In the oral tradition, many of his 30 or so tales were penned as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to gatherings of friends.