Philipsburg Manor in Winter, Sleepy Hollow, New York “When I returned to the drawing-room, I found the company seated around the fire, listening to the parson, who was deeply ensconced in a high-backed oaken chair, the work of some cunning artificer of yore, which had been brought from the library for his particular accommodation. From […]
The Mezzotint
From Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by M. R. James M.R. James had a knack for compressing a chilling tale into a short space. Which is very refreshing, considering some writers, yes, I’m speaking to you Stephen King, has a tendency to stretch out their short stories almost to novel length. Montague Rhodes James was born […]
Gothic Horror Stories: J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
When we think of the Marie Celeste, we might be surprised to know that much of our facts are based upon a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which is heavily fictional. Published anonymously in 1884 by a pre-Sherlock Holmes Doyle, it was thought to be the work of among others, Robert Louis Stevenson […]
On the Brighton Road
Richard Middleton Slowly the sun had climbed up the hard white downs, till it broke with little of the mysterious ritual of dawn upon a sparkling world of snow. There had been a hard frost during the night, and the birds, who hopped about here and there with scant tolerance of life, left no trace […]
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
By Nathaniel Hawthorne The great-great-grandson of the only judge in Salem’s witch trials who never publicly regretted his role, Nathaniel Hawthorne spent much of his life dealing with his family’s past through his writing. Whilst The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables get all the notoriety, perhaps none of his works deal as […]
The Pursuit of Ichabod Crane, from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
Writing in an introduction from a reprinting of the story in 1996, Henry Steiner, Village Historian of Sleepy Hollow states that “At the close of his narrative, Irving anticipates a time when change will have so completely altered Sleepy Hollow that cramped historians will doubt that it once existed at all.” Irving need not have […]
