Classic Horror Fiction

A collection of six classic chilling horror stories including "The Three Strangers", "The Phantom Coach", "The Open Window", and "The Travellers Story of a Terribly Strange Bed".

Two star-crossed lovers, whose families fought and killed each other during a civil war in France, try to find their way to forgiveness and reconciliation. The heroine's plan? Sleeping on St Catherine's Couch - a terrifying ledge above the Loire where the faithful may dream of Heaven's advice. Despite the advice from King Henry and the Countess Villeneuve's faithful servant, the lovers leave their fate up to the dream.

When an American man discovers that he's the last descendant of the De la Poer family, he travels to England to take over their crumbling estate. Accompanied only by his cat, the man follows the incessant sound of rats to a dark place beneath the estate, unearthing horrible, dark, gruesome secrets about his ancestors and the type of activities they partook in. Taken by madness, the man falls into a dark pit of despair and commits unthinkable crimes. This jarring story from a renowned writer of horror fiction utilizes fear-inducing themes to entice its audience.

Un joven caballero es invitado al viejo caserón de un amigo de la infancia, Roderick Usher, artista enfermizo y excéntrico que vive completamente recluido en compañía de su hermana, Lady Madeline, también delicada de salud. Usher vive presa de una enfermedad indefinible, lo que hace a todos temer por su vida.

Pubblicato nel 1843 "Il cuore rivelatore" è forse uno dei racconti più famosi di E. A. Poe, considerato l'inventore del genere letterario del terrore e del mistero. Nella sua mania ossessiva per i dettagli, la voce narrante conduce l'ascoltatore nella ricostruzione di un delitto, senza mai sottolineare una sua presunta innocenza, quanto invece la sua perfetta salute mentale, nel tentativo disperato di negare la sua pazzia. Con estrema razionalità Poe scandaglia i luoghi più reconditi dell'animo umano alla ricerca dell'ombra, del mistero e del paradossale.

The narrator is interested in mesmerism, a pseudoscience involving bringing a patient into a hypnagogic state by the influence of magnetism, a process that later developed into hypnotism. He points out that, as far as he knows, no one has ever been mesmerized at the point of death, and he is curious to see what effects mesmerism would have on a dying person. He considers experimenting on his friend Ernest Valdemar, an author whom he had previously mesmerized and who has recently been diagnosed with phthisis (tuberculosis).

Lovecraftian themes abound in the tales of an intern at a madhouse and an illiterate madman. Slater, the madman whose unspeakable crimes led him to the madhouse, is continuously awakened in this story by surprisingly literate hallucinations of a glowing entity seeking revenge. Inspired by Slater’s uneducated background and the telepathic machine that he had made in his yesteryear, the intern delves deep into Joe Slater - who is receiving telepathic messages from a being of light.

On the brink of death, the friend of a notable mesmerist commits to an experiment of hypnosis prior to imminent death. As the tale progresses, the mesmerist describes keeping his friend in a fully mesmerized state without a pulse or breath. When Valdemar asks from his trancelike state to either be awakened or let go, the narrator tries to wake him from the grips of death - with dire consequences.

"The Outsider" is one of Lovecraft's earliest and creepiest stories. A man exists alone in a mysterious dark castle, with no memory of how or why he is there. One day he decides to climb the highest tower in the hope of seeing the sky...and in doing so briefly learns the terrible, ghastly, unbearable truth....

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

First published in 1886, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, is a psychological fable for our time. It draws on intuitive knowledge of the nasty complications of the human mind (which Shakespeare used so well in his tragedies). Here, Sir Laurence Olivier unfolds the story as precisely and pedantically as it was written.

A superbly crafted Dickens classic, masterfully narrated - a ghostly apparition supervises the trial of his murderer.

M. R. James (1862-1936) was provost of King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College. He was a highly regarded scholar and academic in his time but today is remembered for his ghost stories, which are considered among the finest in the genre. Here is one of them: "Casting the Runes".

Imagine living in a house over 100 years old, and of course wondering about the former occupants, and now the couple living in the home meets the former residents. Only one problem; the former residents have been dead for many years, and these are the ghosts of the loving couple who lived in the home searching for treasure. Glenn Hascall does a magnificent job performing as the narrator of this charming story by Virginia Woolf.

The story takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, part of Puritan New England, which was a common setting for Hawthorne's work. Its theme is one often used by Hawthorne: the conflict between good and evil in human nature and, in particular, the problem of public goodness and private wickedness.

Aus der Tiefe des Pazifischen Ozeans ertönt infernalisches Gebrüll, das alles Menschliche verhöhnt. Die Welt, wie wir sie kennen, ist dem Untergang geweiht, denn Seine Zeit ist gekommen! Die Geschichte nimmt uns mit in die Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs. Ein Matrose landet auf einem deutschen Kriegsschiff in Gefangenschaft. Es gelingt ihm, bei Nacht und Nebel mit einem Beiboot zu entkommen, ungewiss, ob Rettung wartet. Nach vielen Tagen auf offener See taucht unerwartet ein geheimnisvolles Eiland aus dem Meer auf und bringt eine schreckliche Wahrheit an die Oberfläche.

Do you believe in ghosts? You might reconsider if you don't after listening to this story of a man haunted by a longtime enemy.

This is the unabridged audio recording of M R James' excellent ghost story "An Evening's Entertainment". Read by David Collings, this is sure to scare and delight in equal measure.

Una mujer y su marido que es médico, John, han alquilado una casa antigua para pasar el verano. Deciden en vez de usar la habitación normal de matrimonio instalase en el cuarto de los niños en la planta alta. El marido considera que eso será una forma de tratamiento médico para que su mujer pueda recuperarse de lo que él ha diagnosticado como "una depresión nerviosa temporal con una ligera tendencia histérica", diagnóstico habitual para las mujeres de esa época.

Get ready for a terrifying spin on some of literature’s most beloved tales—no story is safe! From Captain Hook’s run-in with dark magic to Sherlock Holmes narrowly escaping graveyard spirits to a happily never after for Cinderella, this horror anthology is anything but a bedtime story. In this terrifying new collection for young listeners, the best-loved stories from the literary canon are revisited and reimagined with a deadly twist by some of the top authors working in middle grade today.