Villette by Charlotte Brontë

Breakfast over, I must again move—in what direction? “Go to Villette,” said an inward voice; prompted doubtless by the recollection of this slight sentence uttered carelessly and at random by Miss Fanshawe, as she bid me good-by: “I wish you would come to Madame Beck’s; she has some marmots whom you might look after; she wants an English gouvernante, or was wanting one two months ago.”

Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf

“’Tis said that at sunset on the last day of every month the mortal, to whom belongs the destiny of the Wehr-Wolf, must exchange his natural form for that of the savage animal; in which horrible shape he must remain until the moment when the morrow’s sun dawns upon the earth.”

The Viy

“There he is!” exclaimed the Viy, pointing an iron finger at him; and all the monsters rushed on him at once.

The White Ship By H. P. Lovecraft

I am Basil Elton, keeper of the North Point light that my father and grandfather kept before me. Far from the shore stands the grey lighthouse, above sunken slimy rocks that are seen when the tide is low, but unseen…

The Whisperer in Darkness By H. P. Lovecraft

I. Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end. To say that a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred—that last straw which sent me racing out of the lonely…
The thing in the moonlight

What the Moon Brings By H. P. Lovecraft

I hate the moon—I am afraid of it—for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous. It was in the spectral summer when the moon shone down on the old garden where…

The Unnamable By H. P. Lovecraft

We were sitting on a dilapidated seventeenth-century tomb in the late afternoon of an autumn day at the old burying-ground in Arkham, and speculating about the unnamable. Looking toward the giant willow in the centre of the cemetery, whose trunk…
Under the Pyramids

Under the Pyramids By H. P. Lovecraft for Harry Houdini

Mystery attracts mystery. Ever since the wide appearance of my name as a performer of unexplained feats, I have encountered strange narratives and events which my calling has led people to link with my interests and activities. Some of these…

The Tree by H. P. Lovecraft

“Fata viam invenient.” On a verdant slope of Mount Maenalus, in Arcadia, there stands an olive grove about the ruins of a villa. Close by is a tomb, once beautiful with the sublimest sculptures, but now fallen into as great…

The Transition of Juan Romero By H. P. Lovecraft

Of the events which took place at the Norton Mine on October 18th and 19th, 1894, I have no desire to speak. A sense of duty to science is all that impels me to recall, in these last years of…
Stone crypt in woods

The Tomb By H. P. Lovecraft

“Sedibus ut saltem placidis in morte quiescam.”—Virgil. In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my…