Book download page: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40510
Read online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40510/pg40510-images.html
Six wonderfully sinister stories collected in this 1894 volume by Irish horror writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
They are all pretty unpleasant, in the best possible way. A young woman is married off to a mysterious stranger who seems to have something in common with the dead. An Irish nobleman may have purchased his good fortune at a terrible price. A newlywed discovers that her husband's fine ancestral home has secrets that could get her killed.
There's also a particularly nasty little tale involving a dream that refuses to remain a dream.
Le Fanu was writing this stuff decades before Dracula, and he had a real knack for the sort of horror that starts with one peculiar incident and grows steadily worse. His characters tend to be respectable people who suddenly discover that the world isn't nearly as sensible or safe as they've always believed.
The collection contains six stories:
"The Watcher"
"Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess"
"Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter"
"The Fortunes of Sir Robert Ardagh"
"The Dream"
"A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family"
The book also includes 21 illustrations by Le Fanu's son, Brinsley Sheridan Le Fanu.
If you like the older Weird Tales stories, particularly the ones involving supernatural persecution, ghastly family secrets, and mysterious visitors with questionable connections to the living, you'll find plenty to enjoy here.
