This section of the site contains public domain horror stories.
Public domain refers to the body of creative works and knowledge in which no person, government or organization has any proprietary interest such as a copyright. These works are considered part of the public cultural heritage and may be freely used by all.
Most of the texts in this section are short stories, but there are also a few online books, along with some poetry and essays.
A Note About Navigating This Page
This a long page that contains many links to public domain horror stories. All the horror stories are grouped by the author’s surname. The long row of letters below is intended to ease the process of navigation and reduce the necessity for a lot of scrolling of the page. So if you want to find Bram Stoker, for example, clicking on the letter “S” for “Stoker” will take you directly to the section of the page that contain all the authors whose surname begins with the letter S. A similar row of letters is used 26 times to mark each of the sections of the page.
William Harrison Ainsworth
The Spectre Bride
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Louisa Baldwin
How He Left the Hotel
Many Waters Cannot Quench Love
The Real and the Counterfeit
The Shadow on the Blind
The Uncanny Bairn
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Honoré de Balzac
La Grande Breteche
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John Kendrick Bangs
A Midnight Visitor
A Psychical Prank
A Quicksilver Cassandra
The Ghost Club
The Speck on the Lens
The Spectre Cook of Bangletop
The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
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Sabine Baring-Gould
A Dead Finger
A Happy Release
A Professional Secret
Aunt Joanna
Black Ram
Colonel Halifax’s Ghost Story
Glámr
H.P.
Jean Bouchon
Little Joe Gander
McAlister
Mustapha
On The Leads
Pomps and Vanities
The 9.30 Up-Train
The “Bold Venture”
The Book of Were-Wolves (non-fiction)
The Leaden Ring
The Merewigs
The Mother of Pansies
The Red-Haired Girl
The White Flag
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E. F. Benson
A Tale of an Empty House
And No Bird Sings
And the Dead Spake
At Abdul Ali’s Grave
At the Farmhouse
Bagnell Terrace
Between the Lights
Caterpillars
Christopher Comes Back
Corstophine
Expiation
Gavon’s Eve
Home, Sweet Home
How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery
In the Tube
Inscrutable Decrees
James Lamp
Machaon
Monkeys
Mr. Tilly’s Séance
Mrs Amworth
Naboth’s Vineyard
Negotium Perambulans
Outside the Door
Pirates
Reconciliation
Roderick’s Story
Spinach
The Bath-Chair
The Bus-Conductor
The Cat
The China Bowl
The Confession of Charles Linkworth
The Corner House
The Dance
The Dust-Cloud
The Face
The Gardener
The Hanging of Alfred Wadham
The Horror-Horn
The House with the Brick-Kiln
The Man Who Went Too Far
The Other Bed
The Psychical Mallards
The Room in the Tower
The Sanctuary
The Shootings of Achnaleish
The Step
The Temple
The Terror by Night
The Thing in the Hall
The Wishing-Well
Thursday Evenings
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Ambrose Bierce
A Baby Tramp
A Baffled Ambuscade
A Cold Greeting
A Diagnosis of Death
A Fruitless Assignment
A Holy Terror
A Jug of Sirup
A Man With Two Lives
A Psychological Shipwreck
A Resumed Identity
A Tough Tussle
A Vine on a House
A Watcher by the Dead
A Wireless Message
An Adventure at Brownville
An Arrest
An Heiress from Redhorse
An Inhabitant of Carcosa
An Unfinished Race
At Old Man Eckert’s
Beyond the Wall
Charles Ashmore’s Trail
Haïta the Shepherd
John Bartine’s Watch
John Mortonson’s Funeral
Moxon’s Master
One of Twins
One Summer Night
Present at a Hanging
Staley Fleming’s Hallucination
The Applicant
The Boarded Window
The Damned Thing
The Death of Halpin Frayser
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
The Eyes of the Panther
The Famous Gilson Bequest
The Haunted Valley
The Isle of Pines
The Man and the Snake
The Man Out of the Nose
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
The Moonlit Road
The Night-Doings at “Deadman’s”
The Other Lodgers
The Realm of the Unreal
The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch
The Spook House
The Stranger
The Suitable Surroundings
The Thing at Nolan
Three and One are One
Two Military Executions
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Mary Elizabeth Braddon
At Chrighton Abbey
The Cold Embrace
The Shadow in the Corner
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Wilkie Collins
Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman
The Haunted Hotel (Online Book)
The Traveler’s Story of a Terribly Strange Bed
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Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (Mrs Craik)
A Dreadful Ghost
The Last House in C—- Street
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F. Marion Crawford
For the Blood is the Life
The Screaming Skull
The Upper Berth
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Bithia Mary Croker
To Let
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At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “F”).
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “I”).
W. W. Jacobs
Count Magnus
Lost Hearts
Martin’s Close
Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance
Number 13
‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’
Rats
The Ash Tree
The Diary of Mr Poynter
The Experiment – A New Years’ Eve Ghost Story
The Haunted Dolls’ House
The Malice of Inanimate Objects
The Mezzotint
The Residence at Whitminster
The Rose Garden
The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral
The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance
The Tractate Middoth
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
The Uncommon Prayer-Book
There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard
Two Doctors
Wailing Well
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Jerome K. Jerome
The Man of Science
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Joseph Rudyard Kipling
At the End of the Passage
The Mark of the Beast
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Vernon Lee
A Wicked Voice
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J.S. Le Fanu
A Debt of Honor
An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
Carmilla
Catherine’s Quest
Devereux’s Dream
Dickon the Devil
Dr Feversham’s Story
Haunted
Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse
Squire Toby’s Will
The Phantom Fourth
The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts
The Spirit’s Whisper
What Was It?
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H.P. Lovecraft
Azathoth (Fragment)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Celephais
Cool Air
Dagon
Ex Oblivione
From Beyond
He
Herbert West – Reanimator
Hypnos
In the Vault
Literary Composition (essay)
Nyarlathotep
Old Bugs
Pickman’s Model
Polaris
Supernatural Horror in Literature (essay)
The Alchemist
The Beast in the Cave
The Call of Cthulhu
The Descendant (Fragment)
The Doom that Came to Sarnath
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (novella)
The Festival
The Horror at Red Hook
The Hound
The Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
The Lurking Fear
The Moon-Bog
The Music of Erich Zann
The Nameless City
The Other Gods
The Outsider
The Picture in the House
The Quest of Iranon
The Rats in the Walls
The Shunned House
The Silver Key
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Street
The Temple
The Terrible Old Man
The Tomb
The Transition of Juan Romero
The Tree
The Unnamable
The White Ship
Under the Pyramids
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Edward Bulwer Lytton
The Haunted and the Haunters
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George MacDonald
Uncle Cornelius His Story
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Francis Oscar Mann
The Devil in a Nunnery
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Guy de Maupassant
Fear
Ghosts
Mademoiselle Cocotte
The Apparition
The Flayed Hand
The Grave
The Hand
The Horla
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Richard Middleton
And Who Shall Say—?
Blue Blood
Children of the Moon
On the Brighton Road
Shepherd’s Boy
The Bird in the Garden
The Coffin Merchant
The Conjurer
The Ghost-Ship
The Passing of Edward
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Jan Neruda
The Vampire
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E. Nesbit
From the Dead
In the Dark
John Charrington’s Wedding
Man-Size in Marble
The Ebony Frame
The Haunted Inheritance
The House of Silence
The Mass for the Dead
The Mystery of the Semi-Detached
The Power of Darkness
Uncle Abraham’s Romance
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Amyas Northcote
Brickett Bottom
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Vincent O’Sullivan
The Interval
When I Was Dead
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Edgar Allan Poe
Berenice
Eleonora
Hop-Frog
Ligeia
Metzengerstein
Morella
MS Found in a Bottle
Shadow – a Parable
Silence – a Fable (Siope – a Fable)
The Assignation (The Visionary)
The Black Cat
The Cask of Amontillado
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Man That Was Used Up
The Masque of the Red Death
The Oval Portrait
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Raven (poem)
The Tell-Tale Heart
William Wilson
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John William Polidori
The Vampyre
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Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
The Queen of Spades
At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “Q”).
At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “R”).
