Horror Fairy Tales

Winifred Rudge, a bemused writer struggling to get beyond the runaway success of her mass-market astrology book, travels to London to jump-start her new novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Upon her arrival, she finds that her stepcousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence seems to have taken over his home.

The view from this tall tree is kind of pretty. I can see salmon jumping on the river. Colorful birds are making their nests while they sing. The sky is clear this morning after a night of heavy rain. My name is Emma and I am a 16-year-old orphan with long brown hair that I braid every other day. My eyes are hazel like my mom's. My blue maiden dress is the only one I own. I am in charge of four siblings. Our parents died trying to protect us from a dragon attack and were killed instantly by the monster's lethal fire. I was not successful at hunting last night because I could not see anything with the rain.

Peel back that rotting skin and behold the improbable creatures, nightmarish places, and horrifying events that lie waiting just beyond everyday experience. Witness the terror of a man stalked for decades by entities from across the void. Feel the agony of an unholy union between technology and flesh. Know the decay of our reality as it collapses into a darker plane. Our deepest fears are mere shadows on the wall. Find out what casts those shadows in this collection of short stories by Felix Blackwell and Colin J. Northwood.

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. It introduced the famous character Count Dracula and established many conventions of subsequent vampire fantasy. The novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England so that he may find new blood and spread the undead curse, and of the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

Screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill continues the story begun in his acclaimed debut Dreams and Shadows in this bold and brilliantly crafted tale involving fairies and humans, magic and monsters - a vivid phantasmagoria that combines the imaginative wonders of Neil Gaiman, the visual inventiveness of Guillermo Del Toro, and the shocking miasma of William S. Burroughs.

Gretel tells the story of 17-year-old Lucy, taken against her will five years ago. Caged up with no one left to protect her, she must survive the night or become the killer’s latest victim. After he killed her, she wept. Body bags and chainsaws stripped the night clean. Her mind a mess of revulsion as the silence took over and the girls pleaded for their lives. Had it been five years already? Trapped down in the darkness, away from reality. Now Jess was gone, brutally murdered; she was like a lamb to the slaughter…and tonight was the feast.

A secret they intended to take to the grave, but the dead will tell...In 1945, Liv commits an unspeakable act. She flees from her life, but all actions have consequences. Twenty years later, she's drawn back to Northern Michigan where it all began. Dead Stream Curse weaves together the past and present in a chilling ghost story filled with mystery.

Sharing the Mountain with Bigfoot is a true story of one family's terrorizing encounter with an unknown creature lurking in the woods of the Appalachian Mountains.

In the summer of 1816, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley - the two great poets of their age - and a lovely 17-year-old named Mary Shelley were partying and reading ghost stories on the shores of Lake Geneva. They dared each other to come up with the scariest story. Young Mary was the only one to rise to the challenge, and she gave birth to the entire horror and science fiction genres by crafting a brilliant and chilling account of what it means to be human, what responsibilities we have to each other, and how far we can go in tampering with nature.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is Mary Shelley's passionate and Gothic tale of terror, in which a man's desire to know the unknowable sweeps him into a living nightmare. Victor Frankenstein's experiments with life itself give birth to an extraordinary force with the potential for either good or evil.

Here is the most famous of all tales of vampirism and an enduring classic. Jonathan Harker's journeys to Transylvania and the discovers the un-dead Count Dracula. Upon his return to England, Professor Van Helsing joins the dark struggle to overcome the evil Count. Only with a pursuit back to Transylvainia can the battle between good and evil finally prove decisive.

Ron and Jessica Stahl are a power couple from California, on a Christmas holiday in Colorado. When they stop for the afternoon in sleepy Lone Cone, they're charmed by the quaint tourist town. But the folksy hospitality will vanish as the sun drops behind the mountains. A winter storm is approaching, and the Stahls couldn’t have picked a worse night of the year to get snowed into this perfect little town with a dark, dark secret.

In the frozen wastes north of Russia, a lone seaward vessel seeks the elusive Northwest Passage. Suddenly they sight a dog sled with a gargantuan figure in the shape of a man, driving the dogs northward to sure oblivion. The following day, they find another sled. This sled is filled with a European near death, and when asked what he is chasing, he simply replies, "to seek one who fled from me."

Few events have sparked more legends and stories of the supernatural than America's Civil War. The accounts of gallantry and heroism have spread far and wide. Nancy Roberts grew up listening to her father's stories of the War Between the States, and she trekked over many battle sites with him during her childhood. After reading about General Joshua Chamberlain's supernatural experience at the Battle of Gettysburg, Roberts began to collect tales of the blue and gray and write them down.

Un manoir hanté, le fantôme d'un homme qui a tué sa femme et une tâche de sang qui apparaît de façon récurrente. Pourtant, Mr Otis n'a pas peur et ne croit pas aux revenants. "Le Fantôme de Canterville" est une nouvelle dont l'écriture se prête à différentes grilles de lecture. Ainsi, les plus jeunes en apprécieront sans nul doute les traits d'humour, alors que d'autres y trouveront une forme particulièrement intelligente de critique sociale.

Years have passed since Marlene's death, and Gretel, unable to cope with her mother's descent into madness, has fled the Back Country for the solitude and anonymity of the Old World. But one quiet day in the remote village of Stedwick, Gretel is taken by Gromus, an ageless mythical figure known only by locals, but whose reputation and power is steadily growing.

In the Highlands of Scotland lies the Hole, a famed passageway under the town of Bethel where hundreds have vanished. After years of ignored recovery wishes, the Hole’s ownership has passed to Elisabeth Wingate. A former child star and British fashion mogul, Elisabeth wants to redeem her scandalous, reckless life. She agrees to finance an expedition to retrieve the legion of bodies that have accumulated over the years, but there’s only one catch: She wants to venture alongside the caving team. But they’re not alone down there....

Between November 1966 and December 1967, the small Appalachian town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was stalked and harassed by a terrifying entity dubbed the Mothman. Over a half a century has passed since the tragedy in Point Pleasant when Billy Slater and his mom move to the small town, blissfully unaware of the horrific things that have cast a dark cloud over the town to this very day. But then, in one sudden gust of unimaginable horror, the close-knit community of Point Pleasant is thrust back into the same madness, chaos, and nerve-shredding fear they suffered years earlier.

It’s December in a small seaside town, and Ruby Harper spends her nights looking into her neighbor's apartment. Unable to sleep due to insomnia and the heartache of a family she has run away from, she fantasizes that the mystery man could be the answer to her loneliness. But one night Ruby sees something unexpected: The man is not alone; a woman and a child are sharing the apartment - and they never go outside. Why are they kept hidden? Then the man is found half-drowned in the bathtub, a pile of women’s clothes is left on the beach, and a little girl is discovered, abandoned.

In this original collection from Skyboat Media and Blackstone Publishing, Elizabeth Gaskell showcases the height of gothic fiction's ability to delight in the otherworldly and to dig deep into what truly haunts us. Set against the backdrop of the Salem witch trials, "Lois the Witch" reveals much about the complicity of mankind. Recently orphaned, Lois is forced to leave the English parsonage that had been her home and sail to America.