This section of the site contains public domain horror stories, ghost stories, dark fairy tales, and texts of a similar nature. On this page you will find the work of famous authors, such as Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, You will also find stories by authors that you are unlikely to be familiar with, such as Bernard Capes, William Harvey, and Huge Walpole.
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. I read every text before adding it to the site, check for obvious errors, and provide supplementary information where possible.
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.
John Aikin
Sir Bertrand
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William Harrison Ainsworth
The Spectre Bride
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J. Y. Akerman
The Miniature
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Louisa May Alcott
Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy’s Curse
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William Allingham
The Fairies (Poem)
The Witch-Bride (Poem)
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Leonid Andreyev
Lazarus
The Abyss
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Anonymous
A Fight with a Ghost
A Misfit Ghost
A Phantom Toe
An Unbidden Guest
Banshees
Ghost of Buckstown Inn
Grand-Dame’s Ghost Story
How He Caught the Ghost
Sandy’s Ghost
The Burglar’s Ghost
The Fiend (Russian Fairy Tale)
The Ghost of a Live Man
The Ghost of Washington
The Ghosts of Red Creek
The Old Mansion
The Parlor-Car Ghost
The Phantom Hag
The Phantom Woman
The Story of Clifford House
The Twa Corbies (Poem)
The Witch Girl (Russian Fairy Tale)
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Gertrude Atherton
Death and the Woman
The Bell in the Fog
The Dead and the Countess
The Greatest Good of the Greatest Number
The Striding Place
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Gertrude Bacon
The Gorgon’s Head
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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
___________________
Robert Barr
Purification
The Man Who Was Not on the Passenger List
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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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R. H. Benson
Consolatrix Afflictorum
Father Macclesfield’s Tale
Over the Gateway
Poena Damni
The Blood-Eagle
The Green Robe
The Traveller
The Watcher
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J. D. Beresford
Cut-Throat Farm
Flaws in the Time Scheme (Story Series)
1. An Effect of Reincarnation
2. A Case of Prevision
3. The Late Occupier
Force Majeure
Lost in the Fog
Powers of The Air
The Empty Theatre
The Hidden Beast
The Little Town
The Man in the Machine
The Misanthrope
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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 Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
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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Algernon Blackwood
A Case of Eavesdropping
A Haunted Island
A Mysterious House
A Suspicious Gift
Accessory Before the Fact
An Egyptian Hornet
Ancient Lights
Clairvoyance
Dream Trespass
Entrance and Exit
First Hate
Keeping His Promise
May Day Eve
Running Wolf
Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp
Smith: An Episode in a Lodging House
The Attic
The Damned (Novella)
The Deferred Appointment
The Empty House
The Goblin’s Collection
The House of the Past
The Kit-Bag
The Occupant of the Room
The Other Wing
The Prayer
The Sea Fit
The Second Generation
The Singular Death of Morton
The Terror of the Twins
The Transfer
The Tryst
The Wendigo (Novella)
The Whisperers
The Willows (Novella)
The Woman’s Ghost Story
The Wood of the Dead
Transition
Wayfarers
With Intent to Steal
You May Telephone from Here
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Marjorie Bowen
A Poor Spanish Lodging
Ann Mellor’s Lover
Giuditta’s Wedding Night
Half-Past Two
Kecksies
One Remained Behind
Scoured Silk
The Breakdown
The Burning of the Vanities
The Crown Derby Plate
The Extraordinary Adventure of Grace Endicott
The Extraordinary Adventure of Mr. John Proudie
The Fair Hair of Ambrosine
The House by the Poppy Field
Twilight
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Mary Elizabeth Braddon
At Chrighton Abbey
The Cold Embrace
The Shadow in the Corner
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Rhoda Broughton
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth
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Robert Browning
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (Poem)
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Gottfried August Bürger
Lenore (Gothic Ballad)
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George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)
Fragment (of a horror story)
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Bernard Capes
A Ghost-Child
A Voice From the Pit
An Eddy on the Floor
The Black Reaper
The Marble Hands
The Thing in the Forest
The Vanishing House
The Widow’s Clock
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Robert W. Chambers
In the Court of the Dragon
Out of the Depths
The Maker of Moons
The Mask
The Messenger
The Repairer of Reputations
The Yellow Sign
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Alexandre Chatrian
See Erckmann-Chatrian
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Erckmann-Chatrian
The Crab Spider
The Invisible Eye
The Owl’s Ear
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Mary Cholmondeley
Let Loose
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Christabel
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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Wilkie Collins
Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman
The Dead Hand
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
By the Waters of Paradise
For the Blood is the Life
Man Overboard
The Dead Smile
The Doll’s Ghost
The King’s Messenger
The Screaming Skull
The Upper Berth
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Bithia Mary Croker
To Let
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Elizabeth Gilbert Cunningham-Terry
At the Witching Hour
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Daniel Defoe
The Apparition of Mrs. Veal
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Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death (Poem)
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (Poem)
I Years had been from Home (Poem)
The Only Ghost I Ever Saw (Poem)
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
De Profundis
How It Happened
John Barrington Cowles
J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement
Lot No. 249
Playing with Fire
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
The Brazilian Cat
The Bully of Brocas Court
The Captain of the Polestar
The Case of Lady Sannox
The Fiend of the Cooperage
The Horror of the Heights
The Leather Funnel
The Lift
The New Catacomb
The Parasite
The Ring of Thoth
The Silver Hatchet
The Silver Mirror
The Story of the Brown Hand
The Striped Chest
The Terror of Blue John Gap
Through the Veil
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Olivia Howard Dunbar
The Shell of Sense
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Charles Dickens
A Child’s Dream of a Star
A Christmas Carol
The Black Veil
The Signal-Man
The Trial For Murder (aka To be Taken With a Grain of Salt)
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Amelia B. Edwards
No. 5 Branchline: The Engineer’s Story
The Four-Fifteen Express
The Phantom Coach
Was it an Illusion? A Parson’s Story
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Émile Erckmann
See Erckmann-Chatrian
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Hans Heinz Ewers
The Spider
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Anatole France
The Mass of Shadows
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Lettice Galbraith
In the Séance Room
The Blue Room
The Case Of Lady Lukestan
The Trainer’s Ghost
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Richard Le Gallienne
The Haunted Orchard
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Elizabeth Gaskell
The Old Nurse’s Story
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Théophile Gautier
Clarimonde
The Mummy’s Foot
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Yellow Wallpaper
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Bride of Corinth (Poem)
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Victoria Glad
Each Man Kills
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Augustus Hare
The Vampire of Croglin Grange
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William F. Harvey
Across the Moors
August Heat
The Beast with Five Fingers
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Wilhelm Hauff
The Severed Hand
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Robert Stephen Hawker
The Botathen Ghost
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
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William Hope Hodgson
A Tropical Horror
The Gateway of the Monster
The House Among the Laurels
The Mystery of the Derelict
The Thing Invisible
The Voice in the Night
The Whistling Room
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James Hogg
The Mysterious Bride
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Tom Hood
The Shadow of a Shade
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Robert E. Howard
A Song of the Werewolf Folk (Poem)
Arkham (Poem)
Black Canaan
Black Colossus
Dead Man’s Hate (Poem)
Dig Me No Grave
Forbidden Magic (Poem)
In the Forest of Villefère
Moon Mockery (Poem)
People of the Dark
Rattle of Bones
Remembrance
Skull-Face
The Black Hound of Death
The Cairn on the Headland
The Dead Slaver’s Tale (Poem)
The Dream Snake
The Fear That Follows (Poem)
The Fearsome Touch of Death
The Garden of Fear
The Gates of Nineveh (Poem)
The Grisly Horror (aka Moon of Zambebwei)
The Harp of Alfred (Poem)
The Haunter of the Ring
The Hyena
The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune
The Moor Ghost (Poem)
The Phoenix on the Sword
The Ride of Falume (Poem)
The Riders of Babylon (Poem)
The Scarlet Citadel
The Sea Curse
The Song of the Bats (Poem)
The Tavern (Poem)
The Tower of the Elephant
The Valley of the Worm
Up, John Kane! (Poem)
Wolfshead
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Fergus Hume
A Colonial Banshee
A Spirit in My Feet
The Dancer in Red
The Ghost in Brocade
The Ghost’s Touch
The Sand-Walker
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Washington Irving
The Adventure of the German Student
The Adventure of the Mysterious Picture
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
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Joseph Jacobs
Childe Rowland (Folk Tale)
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W. W. Jacobs
In the Library
Jerry Bundler
Over the Side
The Brown Man’s Servant
The Monkey’s Paw
The Toll-House
The Vigil
The Well
Three at Table
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Henry James
The Altar of the Dead
The Friends of the Friends
The Romance of Certain Old Clothes
The Turn of the Screw (Online Book)
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M.R. James
A Neighbour’s Landmark
A School Story
A View from a Hill
A Vignette
A Warning to the Curious
After Dark in the Playing Fields
An Episode of Cathedral History
Casting the Runes
Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book
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
The Phantom ‘Rickshaw
They
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Leopold Kompert
The Silent Woman
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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
Doctor Feversham’s Story
Ghost Stories of Chapelizod (Story Collection)
— The Village Bully
— The Sexton’s Adventure
— The Spectre Lovers
Haunted
Madam Crowl’s Ghost
Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse
Squire Toby’s Will
Stories of Lough Guir (5 collected tales)
—The Magician Earl
—Moll Rial’s Adventure
—The Banshee
—The Governess’s Dream
—The Earl’s Hall
The Child That Went With the Fairies
The Drunkard’s Dream
The Ghost and the Bone-Setter
The Phantom Fourth
The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts
The Spirit’s Whisper
The Vision of Tom Chuff
The White Cat of Drumgunniol
What Was It? — often attributed to J. S. Le Fanu in error. See Fitz James O’Brien
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Eleanor F. Lewis
The Vengeance of a Tree
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Frederick George Loring
The Tomb of Sarah
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H.P. Lovecraft
Azathoth (Fragment)
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Celephais
Cool Air
Dagon
Ex Oblivione
From Beyond
Fungi from Yuggoth (Poem)
Hallowe’en in a Suburb (Poem)
He
Herbert West: Reanimator
Hypnos
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs (aka Under the Pyramids)
In the Vault
Literary Composition (essay)
Nemesis (Poem)
Nyarlathotep
Old Bugs
Pickman’s Model
Polaris
Supernatural Horror in Literature (essay)
The Alchemist
The Ancient Track (Poem)
The Beast in the Cave
The Call of Cthulhu
The Cats (Poem)
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 Outpost (Poem)
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
The Wood (Poem)
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Edward Bulwer Lytton
The Haunted and the Haunters
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Arthur Machen
Out of the Earth
The Bowmen
The Great God Pan
The Inmost Light
The Lost Club
The Shining Pyramid
The White People
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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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Frederick Marryat
The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains
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Brander Matthews
The Rival Ghosts
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Guy de Maupassant
Fear
Ghosts
Mademoiselle Cocotte
On the River
Terror (Poem)
The Apparition
The Devil
The Diary of a Madman
The Flayed Hand
The Grave
The Hand
The Horla
The Terror
The Tomb
Who Knows?
____________________
Prosper Mérimée
The Venus of Ille
____________________
Abraham Merritt
The People of the Pit
____________________
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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Thomas Street Millington
No Living Voice
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Mary Louisa Molesworth
At the Dip of the Road
Lady Farquhar’s Old Lady
Old Gervais
The Man With the Cough
The Shadow in the Moonlight
The Story of the Rippling Train
Unexplained
Witnessed by Two
____________________
Thomas Moore
The Ring (Poem)
____________________
Hector Hugh Munro
Sredni Vashtar
The Cobweb
The Music on the Hill
The Open Window
The Seventh Pullet
___________________
Louisa Murray
Mr Gray’s Strange Story
___________________
Jan Neruda
The Vampire
___________________
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
____________________
Hume Nisbet
The Vampire Maid
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Amyas Northcote
Brickett Bottom
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Fitz James O’Brien
The Bohemian
The Demon of the Gibbet (Poem)
The Lost Room
What Was It?
___________________
Vincent O’Sullivan
The Interval
When I Was Dead
___________________
Heinrich August Ossenfelder
Der Vampir (Early Vampire Poem)
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Charles Perrault
The Popular Story of Blue Beard
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Elia W. Peattie
A Child of the Rain
A Grammatical Ghost
A Spectral Collie
An Astral Onion
From the Loom of the Dead
On the Northern Ice
Story of an Obstinate Corpse
Story of the Vanishing Patient
The House of the Evil Thought
The House That Was Not
The Piano Next Door
The Shape of Fear
Their Dear Little Ghost
____________________
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Kentucky’s Ghost
Since I Died
____________________
Phlegon of Tralless
Philinnion and Machates
____________________
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 Doomed City (Poem – Also Known as The City in the Sea)
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 Sleeper (Poem)
The Tell-Tale Heart
William Wilson
____________________
John William Polidori
The Vampyre
____________________
F. H. Power
The Electric Vampire
____________________
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
The Queen of Spades
____________________
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Ernst Raupach
Wake Not the Dead
____________________
Charlotte Riddell
A Strange Christmas Game
The Last Squire of Ennsimore
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk
The Open Door
Walnut-Tree House
____________________
Saki
Saki is a pen name. Go to the listing for H. H. Munro
____________________
Frederick P. Schrader
Mrs. Davenport’s Ghost
____________________
Sir Walter Scott
The Tapestried Chamber
Wandering Willie’s Tale
___________________
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Frankenstein (Online Book)
The Mortal Immortal
Transformation
____________________
M. P. Shiel
Huguenin’s Wife
The House of Sounds
The Pale Ape
____________________
John Stagg
The Vampyre
___________________
Eric Stenbock (Count Stenbock)
The True Story of a Vampire
____________________
Robert Louis Stevenson
Markheim
The Body Snatcher
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Online Book)
____________________
Bram Stoker
A Dream of Red Hands
A Gipsy Prophecy
Crooken Sands
Dracula (Online Book)
Dracula’s Guest
The Burial of the Rats
The Coming of Abel Behenna
The Crystal Cup
The Judge’s House
The Secret of the Growing Gold
The Squaw
____________________
William Makepeace Thackeray
The Devil’s Wager
The Story of Mary Ancel
____________________
Mark Twain
A Dog’s Tale
A Ghost Story
____________________
At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “U”).
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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 “V”).
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Hugh Walpole
‘Enery
Mrs. Lunt
Seashore Macabre
Tarnhelm, or the Death of My Uncle Robert
The Little Ghost
The Silver Mask
The Snow
The Staircase
The Tarn
The Twisted Inn
____________________
Edith Wharton
Afterward
The House of the Dead Hand
____________________
H. G. Wells
A Moth—Genus Novo
In the Abyss
Pollock and the Porroh Man
The Cone
The Flowering of a Strange Orchid
The Plattner Story
The Red Room
____________________
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Online Book)
____________________
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
A Far-Away Melody
A Gentle Ghost
A Symphony in Lavender
Luella Miller
The Hall Bedroom
The Little Maid at the Door
The Lost Ghost
The Shadows on the Wall
The Southwest Chamber
The Twelfth Guest
The Vacant Lot
The Wind in the Rose-Bush
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Mrs. Henry Wood
David Garth’s Ghost
David Garth’s Night-Watch
Reality or Delusion
The Ghost
The Punishment of Gina Montani
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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 “X”).
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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 “Y”).
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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 “Z”).
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