Public Domain Horror Stories
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.
A
John Aikin
William Harrison Ainsworth
Alexander Afanasyev
J. Y. Akerman
A. J. Alan
Louisa May Alcott
Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy’s Curse
Grant Allen
New Year’s Eve Among the Mummies
William Allingham
The Fairies (Poem)
The Witch-Bride (Poem)
Leonid Andreyev
Anonymous
Mr. Fox (English Folk Tale)
The Fiend (Russian Fairy Tale)
The Twa Corbies (Poem)
The Witch Girl (Russian Fairy Tale)
Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (Online Book)
Edwin Lester Arnold
Gertrude Atherton
B
Gertrude Bacon
Louisa Baldwin
Many Waters Cannot Quench Love
Honoré de Balzac
John Kendrick Bangs
The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
Richard Harris Barham
The Hand of Glory (Poem)
The Spectre of Tappington Abbey
Sabine Baring-Gould
The Book of Were-Wolves (non-fiction)
Robert Barr
The Man Who Was Not on the Passenger List
A. C. Benson
E. F. Benson
How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery
The Confession of Charles Linkworth
R. H. Benson
J. D. Beresford
Flaws in the Time Scheme (Story Series)
Ambrose Bierce
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Staley Fleming’s Hallucination
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
The Night-Doings at “Deadman’s”
The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch
Algernon Blackwood
A Psychical Invasion (Novella / John Silence case #1)
A Victim of Higher Space (Novelette / John Silence case #6)
Ancient Sorceries (Novella / John Silence case #2)
Secret Worship (Novelette/ John Silence case #4)
Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp
Smith: An Episode in a Lodging House
Strange Disappearance of a Baronet
The Camp of the Dog (Novella / John Silence case #5)
The Damned (Novella)
The Nemesis of Fire (Novella / John Silence case #3)
The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York
The Wendigo (Novella)
The Willows (Novella)
Marjorie Bowen
The Extraordinary Adventure of Grace Endicott
The Extraordinary Adventure of Mr. John Proudie
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
D. K. Broster
Rhoda Broughton
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth
Robert Browning
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (Poem)
Gottfried August Bürger
Lenore (Gothic Ballad)
George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)
C
Bernard Capes
Robert W. Chambers
Alexandre Chatrian
Erckmann-Chatrian
Mary Cholmondeley
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Wilkie Collins
Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman
The Haunted Hotel (Online Book)
The Traveler’s Story of a Terribly Strange Bed
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (Mrs Craik)
Ralph Adams Cram
F. Marion Crawford
Bithia Mary Croker
Elizabeth Gilbert Cunningham-Terry
D
Daniel Defoe
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)
Dick Donovan
The Story of Annette: Being the Sequel to “The Woman with the ‘Oily Eyes”
The Woman with the “Oily Eyes”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
Olivia Howard Dunbar
Charles Dickens
The Trial For Murder (aka To be Taken With a Grain of Salt)
Alexander W. Drake
E
Amelia B. Edwards
No. 5 Branchline: The Engineer’s Story
Was it an Illusion? A Parson’s Story
Orville R. Emerson
Émile Erckmann
H. D. Everett
Hans Heinz Ewers
F
Anatole France
G
Lettice Galbraith
Richard Le Gallienne
Elizabeth Gaskell
The Crooked Branch (A.K.A The Ghost in the Garden Room)
Théophile Gautier
R. Murray Gilchrist
Excerpts from Witherton’s Journal: Also a Letter of Crystalla’s
The Manuscript of Francis Shackerley
The Writings of Althea Swarthmoor
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Bride of Corinth (Poem)
Victoria Glad
H
Francis Hard
Francis Hard is a pen name. Go to Farnsworth Wright
Thomas Hardy
A Committee-Man of ‘The Terror’
Augustus Hare
William F. Harvey
Wilhelm Hauff
Robert Stephen Hawker
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Feathertop: A Moralized Legend
Lafcadio Hearn
William Hope Hodgson
From the Tideless Sea (Sargasso Sea Series)
Further News from the Homebird (From the Tideless Sea Part 2) (Sargasso Sea Series)
The Find (A Carnacki Story)
The Finding of the Graiken (Sargasso Sea Series)
The Gateway of the Monster (A Carnacki Story)
The Haunted Jarvee (A Carnacki Story)
The Hog (A Carnacki Story)
The Horse of the Invisible (A Carnacki Story)
The House Among the Laurels (A Carnacki Story)
The House on the Borderland (Online Book)
The Mystery of the Derelict (Sargasso Sea Series)
The Searcher of the End House (A Carnacki Story)
The Thing in the Weeds (Sargasso Sea Series)
The Thing Invisible (A Carnacki Story)
The Whistling Room (A Carnacki Story)
E. T. A. Hoffmann
James Hogg
Tom Hood
Robert E. Howard
A Song of the Werewolf Folk (Poem)
Arkham (Poem)
Dead Man’s Hate (Poem)
Forbidden Magic (Poem)
Moon Mockery (Poem)
Tarantella (Poem)
The Dead Slaver’s Tale (Poem)
The Fear That Follows (Poem)
The Gates of Nineveh (Poem)
The Grisly Horror (aka Moon of Zambebwei)
The Harp of Alfred (Poem)
The Moor Ghost (Poem)
The Ride of Falume (Poem)
The Riders of Babylon (Poem)
The Song of the Bats (Poem)
The Tavern (Poem)
The Tempter (Poem)
The Witch from Hell’s Kitchen (aka The House of Arabu)
Up, John Kane! (Poem)
Fergus Hume
I
Bryan Irvine
Washington Irving
The Adventure of the German Student
J
Joseph Jacobs
Childe Rowland (Folk Tale)
Mr. Fox (Folk Tale)
The Strange Visitor (poem)
W. W. Jacobs
Henry James
The Romance of Certain Old Clothes
The Turn of the Screw (Online Book)
M.R. James
After Dark in the Playing Fields
An Episode of Cathedral History
Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance
‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’
Some Remarks on Ghost Stories (Essay)
The Experiment – A New Years’ Eve Ghost Story
The Malice of Inanimate Objects
The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral
The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance
There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard
Malcolm Jameson
Jerome K. Jerome
K
Joseph Rudyard Kipling
Leopold Kompert
L
Perceval Landon
Andrew Lang
John Lang
Vernon Lee
J.S. Le Fanu
An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
Ghost Stories of Chapelizod (Story Collection)
Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse
Stories of Lough Guir (5 collected tales)
The Child That Went With the Fairies
The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts
What Was It? — often attributed to J. S. Le Fanu in error. See Fitz James O’Brien
Jonas Lie
Eleanor F. Lewis
Frederick George Loring
H.P. Lovecraft
Azathoth (Fragment)
Fungi from Yuggoth (Poem)
Hallowe’en in a Suburb (Poem)
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs (aka Under the Pyramids)
Literary Composition (essay)
Nemesis (Poem)
Supernatural Horror in Literature (essay)
The Ancient Track (Poem)
The Cats (Poem)
The Descendant (Fragment)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (novella)
The Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
The Outpost (Poem)
The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Strange High House in the Mist
The Wood (Poem)
Edward Bulwer Lytton
M
Arthur Machen
George MacDonald
Fiona Macleod
Francis Oscar Mann
Frederick Marryat
The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains
Brander Matthews
Huan Mee
Elinor Mordaunt
Guy de Maupassant
Terror (Poem)
Prosper Mérimée
Abraham Merritt
Richard Middleton
Thomas Street Millington
Mary Louisa Molesworth
The Story of the Rippling Train
Thomas Moore
The Ring (Poem)
Rosa Mulholland
The Haunted Organist of Hurly Burly
Ethel Watts Mumford
How Beelzebub Came to the Convent
Hector Hugh Munro
Louisa Murray
N
Jan Neruda
E. Nesbit
The Mystery of the Semi-Detached
Hume Nisbet
Amyas Northcote
O
Fitz James O’Brien
The Demon of the Gibbet (Poem)
Margaret Oliphant
Charles Ollier
The Haunted Manor House of Paddington
Vincent O’Sullivan
Heinrich August Ossenfelder
Der Vampir (Early Vampire Poem)
P
Barry Pain
Charles Perrault
The Popular Story of Blue Beard
Elia W. Peattie
Story of the Vanishing Patient
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Phlegon of Tralless
Edgar Allan Poe
Silence – a Fable (Siope – a Fable)
The Assignation (The Visionary)
The Doomed City (Poem – Also Known as The City in the Sea)
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Raven (Poem)
The Sleeper (Poem)
John William Polidori
F. H. Power
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
Q
Arthur Quiller-Couch
R
Ernst Raupach
Charlotte Riddell
The Old House in Vauxhall Walk
Tod Robbins
S
Saki
Saki is a pen name. Go to the listing for H. H. Munro
Frederick P. Schrader
Sir Walter Scott
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Frankenstein (Online Book)
M. P. Shiel
Adam Hull Shirk
Lewis Spence
John Stagg
Eric Stenbock (Count Stenbock)
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Online Book)
Bram Stoker
Dracula (Online Book)
T
Merlin Moore Taylor
William Makepeace Thackeray
Mark Twain
U
At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “U”).
V
At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “V”).
W
Hugh Walpole
Tarnhelm, or the Death of My Uncle Robert
Mary Webb
H. G. Wells
The Flowering of a Strange Orchid
Edith Wharton
Edward Lucas White
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Online Book)
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
Mrs. Henry Wood
The Punishment of Gina Montani
Farnsworth Wright
The Dark Pool (Poem)
The Death Angel (Poem)
X
At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “X”).
Y
At the moment, the site does not have any public domain horror stories in this category (author’s surname begins with “Y”).
Z
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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