Classic Horror & Ghost Stories

A seaside honeymoon holiday is plagued by the mystery of bells which never stop ringing - and that which answers the call. Druidic rites and modernity spells disaster at a Norfolk golf course. An ancient relic found on the Suffolk coast summons a nightmarish entity to its discoverer. A land of mind-stretching expanses, wide, yawning skies and the disorientating landscapes...

A spine-tinglingly beautiful hardback collection of some of Japan's scariest yet still compelling classic ghost stories. Enter the haunted world of Ancient Japan in this spine-tingling collection of ghostly tales told and retold across the centuries. From goblin-infested caves and haunted tombs, to vengeful spirits and strange, sinister happenings, Ancient Japan was a country and culture that lived between realms—the...

'The most original genius that America has produced' – Alfred, Lord Tennyson VINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIES Spine-tingling, mind-altering, and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics. Edgar Allan Poe was a writer of uncommon talent; in The Murders in the Rue Morgue he created the genre of detective fiction while...

Three of John Fowles' most popular novels, rejacketed with a vibrant new modern design. With an introduction by Evie Wyld 'There is not a page in this first novel which does not prove that its author is a master storyteller' - New York Times Weird, withdrawn, and unloved, Fred is a young collector of butterflies. One day his eye alights...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. The monstrous thought came into my mind as I perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man.

Edgar Allan Poe's Classic Tales of Horror is a handsome hardback collection that brings together 20 chilling horror stories from the maestro of suspense, Edgar Allan Poe. This edition features a gold-embossed cover design, gilded page edges, and beautiful endpapers. Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as one of the greatest American writers and a pioneer of the horror genre. This...

Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda. Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—as the daughter of a rancher in Mexico, her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that...

It had taken, at most, three seconds for the elevator to pass downwards from the sixteenth to the twelfth... Mr Meldrum had ceased to be, and something hideously different took his place. A man convinced that he has developed a phantom beak edges towards a terrible metamorphosis. Interlopers dismissing the superstitions of hare-women in the countryside pay for their scepticism...

WINNER OF THE 2026 LOCUS AWARD - BEST FIRST NOVEL NOMINATED FOR 2025 NEBULA AWARD - BEST NOVEL 'Slow, haunting and strangely beautiful' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'Read it and be changed' B. PLADEK 'Beautifully told in rhythmic, singing prose' RORY POWER 'Masterfully crafted ... Theodoridou has an amazing talent for storytelling' ASSOCIATED PRESS Something terrible has happened. In...

I am not an angel nor a genie nor a ghost...I am Erik! A mysterious Phantom haunts the depths of the Paris Opera House where he has fallen passionately in love with the beautiful singer Christine Daaé. Under his guidance, her singing rises to new heights and she is triumphantly acclaimed. But Christine is also loved by Raoul de Chagny,...

He was deaf to the murmurs of conscience, and resolved to satisfy his desires at any price. The Monk (1796) is a sensational story of temptation and depravity, a masterpiece of Gothic fiction and the first horror novel in English literature. The respected monk Ambrosio, the Abbot of a Capuchin monastery in Madrid, is overwhelmed with desire for a young...

By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened... Frankenstein is the most celebrated horror story ever written....

Welcome to The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten. In these pages, you will find a host of weird, supernatural tales featuring ghosts, witches, vampires, ominous crossroads, houses with secrets, haunted paintings, occult detectives, and things that go bump in the night. The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten features vintage stories by masters of occult fiction, including...

From world-renowned and critically acclaimed cartoonist Seth, comes this legendary ghost story—complete with brand-new spooky illustrations, this short story is the perfect seasonal gift! A classic ghost story illustrated by acclaimed cartoonist, Seth. Retired officer Colonel Mortimer takes a lease on Brentwood, a mansion in Scotland that shares grounds with the ruins of an older house—including a strange, vacant doorway....

'A gothic masterpiece and a devastating exploration of humanity's capacity for evil' Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters The Black Hunger is a phenomenal book full of rich historical detail, occult mysticism, and slow, creeping horror... a triumph' Thomas D. Lee, author of Perilous Times John Sackville will soon be dead. Shadows writhe in the corners of his cell...

The third novel in six-times New York Times best-selling author Lois H. Gresh's Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu series. Both Fitzgerald and Moriarty travel to Innsmouth, the stronghold of the cult of the Old Ones. Holmes and Watson follow them across the ocean and discover a structure designed to enable the Old Ones to flood into our world and unleash horrors...

Inspired by Stephen King's bestselling horror novel turned successful movie franchise, fans will love this officially licensed, perfectly terrifying Pennywise the clown talking bobble bust—with a bobbling head! Specifications: A 3-inch Pennywise bust with a bobbling head, mounted on a base. Magnet Included: Includes one 2 x 3-inch magnet depicting a scene from It Chapter Two. Talking Feature: Bobble bust...

Penguin Worlds introduces classic horror stories by a world-famous children's author. A groom promises to be at the church on time, even if he has to come back from the grave to do it. A man inherits a property where he discovers a portrait of a woman that will change his life forever. Two newlyweds find their dream country cottage,...

The bestselling author of international BookTok sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story of a group of misfits who meet in the local cemetery each night to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave. Every night, in the college's ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a...

HarperCollins is proud to present our range of timeless literary classics. ‘I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence.’ When lonely nineteen-year-old Laura welcomes an enigmatic stranger into her home in the heart of the Stryian forest, she has no idea that the beautiful Carmilla is not what she seems. Laura’s childhood nightmares have resurfaced,...

A British traveller in France stops in a remote French hill town with some very unusual inhabitants and soon finds himself unable to leave; a scholar staying in a lodging house feels himself observed by a malevolent presence; two friends on a canoeing trip spend a night on a lonely willow-covered island in the middle of the Danube, haunted by...

H. P. Lovecraft: Tales of Horror presents H.P. Lovecraft's tales of cosmic horror, science fiction, and the fantastic, which are among the most classic in all literature. His writing challenges readers, scares them senseless, and explodes the boundaries of the known. This stunning collection, illustrated in colour, brings to life some of his greatest, most profound works, including The Call...

1899 Transylvania bleeds with history and evil. Young Solicitor Jonathan Harker braves ghosts, demons, living skeletons, and armies of rats as he encounters Dracula of Transylvania, the Son of Satan. The demonic, shapeshifting vampire imposes his wrath, malice, and vengeance upon an England about to enter the Modern Era, crushing everything in his path. A fresh, bold retelling of the...

What a study in contrasts is the friendship between Henry Jekyll and his boon companion, Edward Hyde. Where Jekyll is a handsome and respected man of science, Hyde is a surly and brutish misanthrope. Nevertheless, Jekyll has allowed Hyde free access to his home and laboratory and, surprisingly, made him the sole beneficiary of his will. Given the closeness of...

Life in seventh-century China teems with magic, fox spirits, and demons; there is a fervent belief that the extraordinary resides within the lives of both commoners and royalty. During the years when the empress Wu Zhao gains ascendancy in the Tang court, her evil-minded lover Xie becomes obsessed with finding and possessing the oracle bone, a magical object that will...

Ghosts Revisited 3 by William P. Robertson is the third collection of his ghost stories, featuring 34 chilling tales from Pennsylvania and Western New York. Within these pages, you will encounter a witch, wailing babies, and a faceless phantom that lurk in creepy graveyards. Plane crash spectres shop at the Aliquippa Giant Eagle, too, while a Lady in White searches...

Disturbing, exhilarating, potent, savagely funny.

'It is almost impossible to put down' - Lisa Tuttle, GUARDIAN 'A stonking great slice of American folk horror: modern trauma layered with ancient evil' - DAILY MAIL The ranch was our dream home. Nestled in the arms of a valley below the Teton mountains, acres upon acres of wilderness, our nearest neighbours over a mile away... Beautiful, serene -...

Tales of suspense for the twilight hour... Dark Encounters is a collection of classic and elegantly unsettling ghost stories. A spine-tingling collection, these tales are set in the brooding landscape of Scotland, with an air of historic authenticity – often referring to real events, objects and people. From a demonic text that leaves its readers strangled to the murderous spectre...

Veteran anthology editor Mike Ashley returns with a collection of rare stories by women writers from the heyday of Weird Tales and its chilling pulp contemporaries. Featuring a riot of monsters, murderesses, and madness from a mixture of lesser-known writers and some surprises such as Lucy M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables, this new selection also includes a...

When a young governess arrives at a remote and dreary country estate to take care of two charming little children, she is initially thrilled. However, the longer she stays, the more she realises that things aren't quite right. The children, while beautiful, are strangely distant, and she feels as if she is being constantly watched. When she witnesses the children...

What a study in contrasts is the friendship between Henry Jekyll and his boon companion, Edward Hyde. Where Jekyll is a handsome and respected man of science, Hyde is a surly and brutish misanthrope. Nevertheless, Jekyll has allowed Hyde free access to his home and laboratory and, surprisingly, made him the sole beneficiary of his will. Given the closeness of...

The Cthulhu Mythos was H.P. Lovecraft's greatest contribution to supernatural literature: a series of stories that evoked cosmic awe and terror through their accounts of incomprehensibly alien monsters and their horrifying incursions into our world. The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales collects 23 of Lovecraft's greatest weird tales, including "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Colour out of Space," "The Dunwich Horror,"...

For years, Dr. Victor Frankenstein labours to create a new race of intelligent beings. He spends his nights scavenging body parts from graveyards, slaughterhouses, and hospital dissection rooms. By day he experiments in his secret laboratory, perfecting the creature who, he believes, will worship him as a god. But when he succeeds, Frankenstein is horrified by the ugly brutishness of...

A masquerade ball in a secluded abbey; a vendetta settled in the wine cellars of an Italian palazzo; a gloomy castle in a desolated landscape; the beating of a heart beneath the floorboards: the plots and settings of Poe's dark, mysterious tales continue to haunt the popular imagination. This new selection introduces the greatest Gothic fiction from one of the...

The Platform Edge howls down the tunnels with a new collection showcasing the greatest stories of strange happenings on the tracks, many of which are republished here for the first time since their original departure. Waiting beyond the barrier are ghostly travelling companions bent on disturbing the commutes of the living. Experience a subway car disappearing into a different dimension...

The terrifying presence of a restless spirit on the top deck of a London bus; a possession at the bridge table on a cruise up the Nile; a nightmare encounter with druidic sacrifice in the innocuous setting of a terraced back garden... E. F. Benson's The Outcast pushes the boundaries of the ghost story tradition by exploring new, previously 'out...

There was not a soul to be seen, up or down; and the trees stood like ghosts, and the silence was terrible, and everything clear as day. You don't know what silence is until you find it in the light like that... Margaret Oliphant's superbly strange tales have been long overdue their rediscovery as classics of the Victorian ghost story...

The supernatural tales of A. M. Burrage were recognised by contemporaries such as M. R. James and the critic E. F. Bleiler as some of the most imaginative and cleverly told ghost stories in the English language, and yet today his name haunts the fringes of the genre. Burrage was unafraid to position his ghosts among the trappings of modernity,...

I had been staying just within the shadow of the exit of the great rift. Now, without volition on my part, I drifted out of the semi-darkness and began to move slowly toward the House. Amidst the din of roaring water, in a chasm where a house once stood in an isolated corner of Ireland, a manuscript is discovered entitled...

At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the world she looked at suffered a change... It was the same world, flat field for flat field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were, infinitely transparent. Tales of eternal damnation, love, sexuality, death, and supernatural talents form the core of May...

A young girl whose love for her fiancé continues even after her death; a sinister old lady with claw-like hands who cares little for the qualities of her companions provided they are young and full of life; and a haunted mirror that foretells of approaching death for those who gaze into its depths. These are just some of the haunting...

You will hear loud raps, you will have your faces touched by cold, damp, unseen fingers. THINGS will be all around you, and a frightful white face will come out of nowhere and peer into yours! Through the electric silence of the séance, a terrible, hurtling force draws near. A play with the planchette invites a diabolical visitor to Radley...

Christianna Brand is not merely a purveyor of thrills or a maker of puzzles. She is a novelist. - The Daily Telegraph While the Blitz bombards London, the boisterous grandchildren of Sir Richard March have descended upon Swanswater Manor in Kent for a family gathering and the finalising of the patriarch's will. Disgruntled by the behaviour and life choices of...

Suddenly he began hastening hither and thither about the room. He moved the furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the effect upon the shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible outlines wavered. The disquieting tales of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman explore a world of contrast, where the supernatural erupts out of authentically drawn portraits of...

These stories have all had their origins in dreams... Terrifying enough to the dreamer... I hope that some readers will experience an agreeable shudder or two in the reading of them. A malignant entity answers the call of an ancient curse on the coast of Brittany; a traveller's curiosity delivers him to an abominable Hallowe'en ritual; the curious new owner...

Something moved along upon the verge with a sliding, writhing motion, seeming like the body of a huge serpent...Drawn by horror's fearful traction, I moved to the verge of the parapet and looked down. Bristol, the early eighteenth century. On the run following a fatal accident at school, the orphan Will Harvell joins a voyage setting sail in search of...

The first thing my dazed eyes fell upon was the mirror of black glass... She held it so that I might gaze into its depths. And there, with a cry of amazement and fear, I saw the shadow of the Basilisk. Through odysseys across dreamlike lands, Gothic love affairs haunted by the shadow of death, and uncanny episodes from the...

From the once-popular yet unfairly neglected Victorian writer Charlotte Riddell comes a pair of novels which cleverly upholster the familiar furniture of the haunted house story. In An Uninhabited House, the hauntings are seen through the perspective of the solicitors who hold the deed of the property. Here we find a shrewd comedic skewering of this host of scriveners and...

Fearsome Fairies taps into the enormous fascination with fairies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and includes cornerstone authors of the Weird genre such as Arthur Machen, M. R. James, and Charlotte Riddell. You see—no, you do not, but I see—such curious faces: and the people to whom they belong flit about so oddly, often at your elbow when...

Between horror and fantasy lies a world in which the inexplicable remains unsolved and the rational mind is assailed by impossible questions. Welcome to the realm of Dark Fantasy, where safe answers are beyond reach and accounts of unanswerable dilemma find their home. Delving deep into the sub-genre, fiction expert Mike Ashley has gathered an unsettling mixture of twisted tales,...

Suddenly, he tripped and fell his length over a prostrate body... he marvelled that so rough an impact should not have kicked a groan out of the drunkard... With a stiff measure of the supernatural, a dram of melodrama, and a chaser of the cautionary kind, tales of drink and drunkenness can be found in a well-stocked cabinet of Victorian...

I have stood on the dim shore beyond time and matter and seen it. It moves through strange curves and outrageous angles. Some day I shall travel in time and meet it face to face. Unlike nineteenth-century Gothic fiction, which tends to fixate on the past, the haunted and the ghostly, early weird fiction probes the very boundaries of reality—the...

During her lifetime, Violet Paget, who wrote as Vernon Lee, was referred to as 'the greatest of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction'. Yet today, she remains on the periphery of the genre. This collection of her uniquely weird short stories and dark fantasies proves why she was once considered among the best of the genre and why she...

'Scared the hell out of me' Stephen King A normal camping trip: Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip, a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfire. The boys are all friends, and the weekend should go smoothly. A horrifying...

A meeting of lost souls in the care of a headless coachman. An obsession with eugenics descends into a cruel madness. In 1911, the British writer, feminist and literary salon hostess Violet Hunt published her groundbreaking first collection of uncanny stories, Tales of the Uneasy, exploring psychological and ghostly hauntings shot through with tragedy. Seeking to promote Hunt's achievements as...

To mark the 150th anniversary of Scottish author John Buchan's birth, strange fiction expert James Machin presents a new selection of the writer's best uncanny fiction, including stories from The Runagates Club.Though best known today as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, this new volume aims to foreground his contribution to the early weird tale, including some of his most...

As he turned over its stiff and yellow pages, he noticed with pleasure the smell of corruption that had first repelled him in these decaying volumes, a smell, he now thought, of ancient and secret knowledge... Researchers prying into an obscure manuscript come face to face with its ghoulish guardian. A bookseller digging through an attic disturbs something far more...

May Day Eve, Walpurgis Night and Midsummer Eve or the Summer Solstice. Tales of these fated days and nights, and their riotous rituals and feasts, have rung down the centuries, and yet in today's world those that observe their ancient ways are few.Setting out on a mission to re-weird this lost stretch of the ritual year, Johnny Mains returns with...

'Two small green-silver spots, almost like small fragments of reflected moonlight, shone up at them, not more than three yards away. Then, as they watched, the two points moved, trailing after them a smear of black...'When the aspiring Canon Throcton is passed up for promotion to Dean of the Cathedral in favour of his rival Canon Simpkins, a faint knell...

A goddess incarnate drives her worshipper to a glorious destruction in 1880s Italy. Archaeologists in 1940s Persia discover a maddening secret in Tiamat's tomb. In 1990s Britain, an avowed sceptic is lured into a bloody initiation to the cult of Mithras.Ancient tales of mythical gods and monsters are embedded deep in the world's cultures, and as weird fiction developed, a...

John Travers has been hanged for the murder of his mother-in-law Helga, but to those who knew him something is amiss. Driven by justice and a sense of uncanny forces at work, John's friend Doctor Toogood recounts a haunting tale of love and jealousy under the fell influence of a shadowy and implacable evil. First published in 1927, this novel...

When Jonathan Harker is summoned to Transylvania to finalize a property deal for the mysterious Count Dracula, he stumbles upon an ancient evil he is unprepared to face. When that evil escapes to England, the entire nation is suddenly under threat and only an aged vampire hunter, Professor Abraham Van Helsing, can put a stop to the bloodshed. Sensual, dark...

When morning broke, the ravages of this strange visitant were but too visible: graves had been opened, and the remains of the dead, frightfully torn and mutilated, lay scattered upon the earth. A village is driven to a murderous frenzy by the wolf walking among them. In the dead of night, a sleepwalking monk reenacts a scene of violence glimpsed...

Step right up to see the enchanted Ferris wheel whose magical gifts are to die for! Marvel at the man-eating menagerie and dreadful secrets of 'Satan's Circus'! Behold the nightmare waxworks of Mrs. Groby's Chamber of Horrors! Carnivals and sideshows are settings closely entwined with the history of horror cinema, but in the realms of literature, there is a strain...

Titanic meets Event Horizon in this sci-fi horror novel as a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended. Truly un-put-downable in its purest sense – Chloe Gong, author of These Violent Delights The ultimate haunted house story, in space – Alma Katsu, author of The Deep and...

What just happened? The classic book you will need to dissect - the story of a writer whose research into a forgotten female author breaks down into a deeply creepy and weird tale of female erasure and resurrection. Deeply unnerving and utterly original - the book you will need to talk about. A writer decides to write her next book...

Back from the shouting floor and ceiling came the chorus of images that stormed and clamoured for expression. Jones lay still and listened; he let them come. There was nothing else to do. Algernon Blackwood was one of the most influential writers of twentieth-century weird and supernatural fiction. He once told a correspondent that every story he wrote was based...

Motionless now and in absolute silence, she awaited her doom, the moments growing to hours, to years, to ages; and still those devilish eyes maintained their watch. Ambrose Bierce was one of America's leading writers of the nineteenth century, seen by contemporaries as a successor to Edgar Allan Poe with an authentic grasp of horror based on his experiences fighting...

"All I can tell you is that I think it was pig's meat." "You mean you're not sure?" "One can never be sure." A brush with the mushroom devil whets the appetite. The meat at the werewolf's table is a dish to relish. Dessert with London's cannibal club may be the cherry on top. From fairy tales and folklore focused...

All about us on the stairs was some of the most exquisite statuary I have ever seen... save for a few pieces carved in the form of some hideous beast, the like of which I have never seen on earth... The sunken continent of Atlantis has dwelt in the collective imagination of writers and artists for centuries; a bejewelled paradox...

The pipe music shrilled suddenly around her, seeming to come from the bushes at her very feet, and at the same moment the great beast slewed round and bore directly down upon her. In 1894, Arthur Machen's landmark novella The Great God Pan was published, sparking a resurgence of literary fascination with the figure of the pagan goat god. Tales...

Sheridan Le Fanu was lauded by contemporaries such as M. R. James for his innovations in the ghost story and mystery genres, and his mastery of conjuring atmosphere and driving stories to thrilling narrative crescendos. And yet, aside from some regularly anthologised short stories and novellas, much of the writer's fiction remains unknown despite its quality. Aiming to firmly position...

Occult or psychic detective tales have been chilling readers for almost as long as there have been ghost stories. This beguiling subgenre follows specialists in occult lore—often with years of arcane training—investigating strange supernatural occurrences and pitting their wits against the bizarre and inexplicable. With tales featuring the most prominent psychic detectives, such as William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki, the Ghost...

This chilling anthology, first published in 1898, features classic gothic authors Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Thomas de Quincey, and Hans Christian Andersen alongside well-known and influential fairy tales and folklore. All of the macabre stories and extracts from longer works have hints of the supernatural, and many include malevolent spirits and grotesque murders. This varied selection also features melancholy...

Darkness now was around me and sound. I seemed to stand in the centre of some yelling planet, the row resembling the resounding of many thousands of cannon, punctuated by strange crashing. The violent peals of a disconnected bell in the night; a trudging footfall in the hush of an abandoned manor; the whisper of a deathly voice in the...

Fired up by the accounts of exploring parties in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writers of the weird and supernatural began to construct a literary Arctic and Antarctic in which terrors lay undiscovered in the ice and gateways to bizarre hidden worlds were waiting. From James Hogg's lurid North Pole narrative of life amongst polar bears in 'The Surpassing...

Named one of the best books of the year by the Wall Street Journal There's something strange about Walter Kopple's farm. It begins with his grandson, who senselessly murders one of Walter's pigs. But then rumours spread that Walter's grandson heard a voice commanding him to kill. And that the voice belongs to a most peculiar creature: the pig named...

One of the titles in an exciting series of beloved, charming and spooky ghost stories, brought to life by legendary illustrator Seth. When Lady Jane Lynke unexpectedly inherits Bells, a beautiful country estate, she declares she'll never leave the peaceful grounds and sets about making the house her home. But she hasn't reckoned on the obstinate Mr Jones, the caretaker...

I hear from Mrs Barlow, who is a good gossip, that your mother and your sister are both ill. You must, then, have very little company. Very little human company, she replied. On a moonlit night, a wearied traveller dressed as the Devil calls at the mossy gates of Holcot Grange. Fleeing some bloody misadventure in London, the stranger claims...