The Frightful Fifty, Part One: 25 Dreadful Singles

Horror and suspense are not new topics in classic literature. While many are familiar with titles such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the stories and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, there is a plethora of older and lesser known tales of terror. These short stories (and some poems) contain all of the elements that are still popular with modern horror and suspense: vampires, ghosts, killers, and the supernatural. While some of the titles give away what each piece of literature is about topically, some aren't as clear. I feel that not knowing what you are about to read will be more of a surprise. This is not unlike watching a film without reading the synopsis. Bram Stoker - A Dream of Red Hands S. Baring-Gould - The Red-Haired Girl: A Wife's Story Mark Twain - A Ghost Story Guy de Maupassant - Ghosts M.R. James - A School Story Shirley Jackson - The Lottery Arthur Conan Doyle - Lot No. 249 Jan Neruda - The Vampire Edgar Allan Poe - The Black Cat Algernon Blackwood - The Empty House Louisa Baldwin - How He Left the Hotel Charles Dickens - The Haunted House Rudyard Kipling - At the End of the Passage Elizabeth Gaskell - The Old Nurse's Story Robert Louis Stevenson - The Body Snatcher Jerome K. Jerome - The Man of Science Vincent O'Sullivan - When I Was Dead William Harrison Ainsworth - The Spectre Bride Ambrose Bierce - The Damned Thing John William Polidori - The Vampyre: A Tale Mary Elizabeth Counselman - Witch-Burning E.F. Benson - A Tale of an Empty House Dinah Maria Mulock Craik - The Last House in C. Street Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin - The Queen of Spades W.W. Jacobs - The Toll-House View Less