Haunted Objects
Things that should have been left where they were found. A whistle, a portrait, a coat, a pipe organ, a crab pot. In these stories the horror arrives in something small enough to pick up, and the mistake is almost always picking it up.
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The Unmarked Stop
Ruth Halvorsen has played the organ at Trinity Lutheran for forty-eight years, mostly for funerals. When the restorer took the console apart, he found one drawknob that had been panelled over in 1958. It has no name engraved on it, and it doesn't make a sound. Not from the organ, anyway.
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“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” Classic
A sceptical young professor on a seaside golfing holiday finds an old bronze whistle in the ruins of a Templar church and decides to blow it.
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Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter Classic
The young apprentice of a Dutch master loves his teacher's niece, until a wealthy and strangely rigid suitor arrives to claim her.
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The Monkey's Paw Classic
A visiting soldier brings the White family a dried monkey's paw from India, a charm that will grant three wishes to anyone foolish enough to use them.
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The Haunted Dolls' House Classic
A collector snaps up a magnificent antique dolls' house, and that night watches a tragedy play out among its tiny rooms.
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A View from a Hill Classic
Borrowing a squire's old pair of field glasses on a country walk, a visitor sees a church tower that is not there.
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Pickman's Model Classic
A man explains to a friend why he refuses to ride the Boston subway, and why he cut ties with a brilliant painter of the macabre.
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The Beast with Five Fingers Classic
A young man inherits an unusual legacy from his blind uncle, a scholar whose hand kept writing after his death.
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The Mezzotint Classic
A university museum curator buys a dull engraving of a country house, then notices it is not quite the same picture every time he looks.
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Inside Pocket
I bought a gray wool overcoat at a consignment shop in Minneapolis for forty dollars. Every morning there is a fresh slip of paper in the inside pocket with an address on it. I have been to six of them.
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The Oval Portrait Classic
A wounded traveller sheltering in an abandoned château is transfixed by a portrait that looks almost too alive.
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The Leather Funnel Classic
A collector of occult objects in Paris invites a friend to sleep in his library beside a strange leather funnel, to see whether he dreams.
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A Tress of Hair Classic
In an asylum cell, a doctor shows a visitor the diary of a patient whose obsession began with a hidden drawer in an antique cabinet.
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The Screaming Skull Classic
A retired sea captain tells a visitor about the skull he keeps in a hatbox in his cupboard, and about why he cannot get rid of it.
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The Mask Classic
A sculptor in Paris discovers a chemical solution that turns living things to marble, and his friends begin to worry about what he plans to do with it.
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A Note Below A
A standard piano has eighty-eight keys, and the lowest is an A. I've tuned pianos for twenty-six years. The old upright in the Halasz house in Dubuque has eighty-nine.
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The Hound Classic
Two jaded young men who rob graves for their private museum take a jade amulet from a corpse in Holland, and something begins to follow them home.
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The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral Classic
An archdeacon's papers, found years after his sudden death, reveal his growing unease about the carved oak stalls in his cathedral.
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The Diary of Mr. Poynter Classic
A bibliophile buys an old diary at auction and takes a fancy to a scrap of patterned fabric pinned inside it.
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Pot Forty-One
On my first season crabbing the Bering Sea, one of our pots came up with a man's wedding ring tangled in the mesh. The man it belonged to was standing next to me on deck, wearing it.