The idea of evil has never been in the shadow of history. Christianity, which became the very foundation of European civilization, placed the opposition of good and evil at the epicenter of the intellectual reflection of European society. It is no secret that the Christian God was thought to be the personification of good, while evil in the European consciousness was embodied in the defective and ghostly nature of the devil and his demons. At the sunset of the Middle Ages, the ever-lasting idea of evil acquired a special sound in public consciousness in connection with the well-known...
The plot of the "Merry Corner" is built around the episode of the return of Spencer Brydon to his home in New York. The hero spent a significant period in Europe - thirty-three years. The intrigue unfolding in the story resembles the one presented in the earlier story of James “The Beast in the Thicket”....
Roderick Asher, the last offspring of an ancient family, invites a friend of his youth to visit him and stay in a family castle on the shores of a gloomy lake. Lady Madilein, Roderick’s sister is seriously and hopelessly ill, her days are numbered and even her friend’s arrival is not able to dispel Asher’s sadness. After the death of Madeline, one of the castle's dungeons is chosen as the place of her temporary burial. For several days, Roderick was in dismay, until a storm broke out at night and a monstrous circumstance emerged - Lady Madilein was buried alive! Having risen from the grave,...
James I published his Demonology, while still a Scottish king, in Edinburgh in 1597. There were two London editions in 1603, later it was translated into Latin, French and Dutch. As Stewart Clark emphasizes, “although the obvious aim of the treatise was simply to refute the two main skeptics, Reginald Scott and Johann Weyer, the treatise was called upon, along with other theological and political works, to demonstrate the intellectual and religious bona fides of James I as ruler.” In this sense, the royal "Demonology" can be read as an intellectual "declaration of an ideal monarchy." Based on...
If you ask a group of Millennials what they remember about the most-banned book series of the ‘90s, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the answers will come fast and panicky, often in incomplete sentences. The intervening decades haven’t dulled the primal shock these collections of urban legends, regional folk tales, and campfire stories have left on their now-adult readers, a feeling that’s equal parts nostalgic and nightmarish. Love for the series has been sustained by a recent re-issuing of the books (one that restored illustrator Stephen Gammell’s horrifying but beloved...
In the book, the reader will meet an unusual anti-hero, Mr. Varney, a vampire who appears before us in the guise of a elegant English gentleman. Armed with a consciousness of his own impunity and omnipotence, he creates terror in a small estate. The object of his heinous attacks is the young and beautiful girl Flora. However, her brothers and groom are defying the monster......
Nervous by Mrs. Hudson's visit, Dr. Watson finds his friend Sherlock Holmes in terrible condition. The great detective contracted a deadly virus and you need to stay away from him. Dr. Watson wants to invite the best virus specialist, but Holmes protests so much that Watson is scared. It was scary to look at Holmes - anyone would be struck by the sight of his thin, emaciated face with a sickly blush. The detective’s thin hands frantically moved along the blanket, the voice of the great Holmes was hoarse and breaking. What kind of affliction struck Holmes, who was dying?...
The name of Bram Stoker needs no introduction - for more than a hundred years, the novel "Dracula" has not left the lists of best-sellers of different countries in the category "mysticism". And only true connoisseurs know that Stocker is also the author of small prose, written in the best traditions of classical English literature of the turn of the century. Bram Stoker in little prose showed himself no less creatively, vividly and mysteriously than in his most famous novel. Who in their right mind decides to take a night walk during Walpurgis Night, when there is a “great Sabbath” on Brocken...
Herbert Wells is a science fiction genius who skillfully combines mysticism and critical realism in his works. This oversight contains an ingenious simplicity idea: the worst of all horrors is fear. The plot is tied up during a short dialogue between a young man who does not believe in bringing a strange house, and its two inhabitants. Wanting to try his luck, he decides to spend the night in the red room......
Prince Prospero with a thousand close associates during an epidemic hides in a closed monastery, leaving his subjects to the mercy of fate. The monastery is secured and isolated to everyone, so they can not be afraid of infection. The masquerade ball arranged by the prince is so magnificent that the Red Death itself comes to participate ......
In the ancient English castle of Canterville lives a real English ghost. It scares the inhabitants of the castle at night - the venerable Otis family. In the arsenal of ghosts, there are petty pranks, and quite terrible horror stories. But no one in the castle for some reason believes in mysterious ghosts ... What a disrespect for traditions! The Canterville Ghost is ready for the most decisive action. But it turned out that angels were also among these unpardonable Americans: a sweet, brave girl who is not without compassion....
Two pleasant days in a boat on the Danube, enjoy its beauty and decide to spend the night on a small island. Gradually they are killed in that they were in ignorance and in a hostile world....
Mr. and Mrs. Allen invite a young, naive, never leaving a village home, Catherine Morland to visit them in Bath. There she is busy with the eccentric general Tinley, his son Henry Tinley, his daughter Elenor Tinley. Catherine is invited to the general’s family estate - Northanger Abbey, where the girl, a lover of Gothic novels, imagines the sinister secrets and horrors surrounding the general’s family. The reality will be much more prosaic....
A medical officer Dr. Watson on his return from Afghanistan is looking for a low cost accommodation. His housemate appears to be a puzzling detective consultant Sherlock Holmes solving sophisticated crimes. When a chain of mysterious murders puzzle metropolitan police an incomparable Holmes gets down to business!...
Heart of Darkness is a story about an English sailor’s journey inland Africa. This is the psychological representation of a struggle between civilization and nature, investigation of obscure human heart that was written by Joseph Conrad after eight years in Congo. The scenario of a famous movie “Apocalypse Now” by Francis Ford Coppola based on the plot of the novella “Heart of Darkness”. The collection includes novellas “Typhoon” and the “Duel” and a novel “Lord Jim” in which delivered magnificence and treachery of the waves, greatness and impotence of human being. Many famous writers as...
