Long Reads
Stories of 6,000 words or more, about half an hour of reading. Novelettes and long tales for a night when you have time to settle in with the lights low.
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Classic
In a drowsy Dutch valley along the Hudson, a lanky schoolmaster courts a rich farmer's daughter and fears the ghost of a headless Hessian trooper.
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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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The Call of Cthulhu Classic
Sorting his late great-uncle's papers, a man finds a clay sculpture of a winged, tentacled being, and notes about artists who all dreamed of it on the same nights.
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The Willows Classic
Two friends canoeing down the Danube make camp on a tiny island of willows in a vast, flooded marsh, and the willows seem to move.
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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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A Warning to the Curious Classic
A young man on the Suffolk coast has dug up something that local legend says must stay buried, and he is no longer walking alone.
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The Fall of the House of Usher Classic
A man answers an old friend's desperate letter and arrives at a crumbling mansion where the house itself seems to be listening.
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The Yellow Wallpaper Classic
Ordered to rest in a rented country house, a young wife starts to study the patterns in her bedroom's ugly yellow wallpaper.
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The Body Snatcher Classic
In a country inn, the drunken Fettes recognises a famous London doctor, and the sight stirs memories of their student days in Edinburgh.
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The Judge's House Classic
A student seeking total quiet to prepare for his exams rents an empty old house in a market town, despite the landlady's horror.
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Afterward Classic
An American couple buy an old house in Dorset, and they are told that it has a ghost, though you never know it's a ghost until long afterward.
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The Great God Pan Classic
A doctor performs brain surgery on a young woman to open her eyes to the world beyond the veil, and what she sees reverberates through London society for years.
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The Open Door Classic
A colonel's son falls dangerously ill after hearing a voice crying in the ruins beside their rented Scottish house.
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Ligeia Classic
A grieving widower remarries, but his first wife's iron will may not have accepted death.
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Amour Dure Classic
A young Polish historian in a sleepy Italian town becomes infatuated with a Renaissance duchess whose lovers all met violent ends.
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The Whistling Room Classic
Carnacki is called to an Irish castle where one room emits a dreadful whistling, and it seems to be getting angrier.
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The Horla Classic
A man living in a house by the Seine records in his diary a growing sense that something invisible is sharing his home, and drinking his water.
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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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Ancient Sorceries Classic
A shy Englishman steps off a train in a sleepy French hill town and finds that everyone there seems to be waiting for him.
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The Yellow Sign Classic
A painter in New York keeps seeing a pale, puffy-faced churchyard watchman staring at his studio window, and the watchman looks a lot like a corpse.
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Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched Classic
Harriott Leigh's life is shaped by a secret love affair, and her death is only the beginning of the story.
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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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Carmilla Classic
In a lonely Styrian castle, a young woman welcomes a mysterious and beautiful guest whose arrival coincides with a wave of strange deaths.
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Novel of the White Powder Classic
A young woman watches her studious brother take a tonic from the local chemist and change, slowly, into something other.
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The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain Classic
A curious gentleman, his servant and his dog spend a night in a London house that no tenant can endure.
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The Sand-Man Classic
A student is haunted by the memory of the sinister lawyer he believed, as a child, was the Sandman who steals children's eyes.
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The Upper Berth Classic
A seasoned traveller tells how he was assigned stateroom 105 on a transatlantic liner, a cabin whose previous passengers all went overboard.
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A Haunted Island Classic
Left alone for the end of the summer in a cottage on a remote Canadian island, a student starts to feel he is not the last guest after all.
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William Wilson Classic
Since his schooldays, a man has been followed through life by a rival who shares his name, his birthday and his face.
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Kerfol Classic
A man viewing an abandoned manor house in Brittany is greeted by a silent pack of dogs that do not bark or follow him.
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The Beckoning Fair One Classic
A struggling novelist rents rooms in a shabby old house, and his work begins to flow, as he grows jealous of anyone who interrupts him.
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Green Tea Classic
A gentle clergyman confides to a doctor that, for years, he has been followed by a small and patient companion that no one else can see.
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The Repairer of Reputations Classic
In the strange America of 1920, a man recovering from a head injury becomes convinced of his royal destiny after reading a forbidden play.
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Clarimonde Classic
An old priest confesses how, on the day of his ordination, a glance from a beautiful woman led him into a double life.
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The Horror of the Heights Classic
A pilot's bloodstained notebook, found in a Sussex field, records his attempts to fly higher than anyone ever had.
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The Empty House Classic
A man and his formidable aunt spend a night in a house where a terrible crime once happened, armed with a candle and their nerves.
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Luella Miller Classic
The villagers avoid the empty house where Luella Miller once lived, a delicate, helpless beauty whose friends and husbands all wasted away.
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The Vampyre Classic
A young gentleman befriends the cold and fascinating Lord Ruthven, and joins him on a tour of Europe that leaves a trail of ruin.
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Mr. Justice Harbottle Classic
A notoriously cruel hanging judge receives a letter warning him of a trial in which he himself will be the accused.
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The Treasure of Abbot Thomas Classic
A puzzle hidden in a church window promises to lead a determined scholar to a medieval abbot's lost gold.
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Negotium Perambulans Classic
In a remote Cornish fishing village, a strange church panel shows a creature from a psalm, and the villagers do not treat it as a mere image.
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The Four-Fifteen Express Classic
A traveller on a country train shares a compartment with an old acquaintance, a man who, he later learns, had been missing for months.
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Novel of the Black Seal Classic
A governess tells how she came to work for a brilliant professor whose researches led him into the Welsh hills, and to a black stone seal.
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The Glamour of the Snow Classic
A writer wintering in a Swiss mountain village meets a mysterious young woman on the moonlit ice rink, and she offers to take him skiing.
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The Dunwich Horror Classic
In a decaying hill village of Massachusetts, a strange child grows unnaturally fast, and his family keeps buying more cattle.
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For the Blood Is the Life Classic
On the roof of an old tower in Calabria, a host points out a mound of earth in the moonlight and tells the story of the girl buried there.
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The Tractate Middoth Classic
A young library assistant fetches an obscure Hebrew book for a visitor and meets someone among the stacks who should not be there.
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Wandering Willie's Tale Classic
A blind fiddler tells how his grandfather, wrongly accused of not paying his rent, went to the other world to get a receipt from his dead landlord.
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How Love Came to Professor Guildea Classic
A cold, rational scientist who despises sentiment finds himself the object of an invisible creature's devotion.
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The Jolly Corner Classic
Returning to New York after thirty-three years abroad, a man begins stalking the empty rooms of his childhood home at night, hunting the man he might have been.
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An Episode of Cathedral History Classic
When a Victorian restoration strips a cathedral choir of its old woodwork, the townsfolk start to suffer bad dreams and worse.
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Olalla Classic
A wounded British officer convalesces at the decaying Spanish mansion of an ancient family, and falls for the beautiful, devout daughter.
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The Pit and the Pendulum Classic
Condemned by the Inquisition, a prisoner wakes in absolute darkness and begins to measure the walls of his cell.
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The Listener Classic
A struggling writer finds unusually cheap rooms in London, then begins to sense that someone is always on the other side of the wall.
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Number 13 Classic
A Danish hotel has no room 13, so why can a guest in room 12 hear someone singing next door every night?
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The Eyes Classic
After dinner, an old bachelor tells his young guests about the eyes that appeared at the foot of his bed on two separate occasions.
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Transformation Classic
A reckless young nobleman, disinherited and desperate, meets a hideous dwarf on a storm-battered shore who offers him a strange bargain.
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Madam Crowl's Ghost Classic
An old woman recalls the winter she was a thirteen-year-old servant girl at Applewale House, where an ancient mistress lay dying upstairs.
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The Inmost Light Classic
An amateur detective of London's odder corners glimpses a face at a suburban window that he will never forget.
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The Terror of Blue John Gap Classic
A doctor convalescing on a Derbyshire farm hears rumours of missing sheep and of something in the old Roman mine.
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The Birth-Mark Classic
A brilliant scientist marries a beautiful woman and becomes obsessed with removing the tiny hand-shaped mark on her cheek.
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The Diamond Lens Classic
A young man obsessed with the microscope will stop at nothing to obtain the perfect lens, and through it he sees a world in a drop of water.
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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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Markheim Classic
On Christmas Day, a young man enters an antique shop with a story about buying a gift, and something else in mind.
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The Familiar Classic
A retired sea captain in Dublin begins to receive anonymous warnings, and then to glimpse a small, silent man who keeps his distance.
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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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The White People Classic
A conversation about the nature of true evil leads to a green notebook, the secret diary of a girl who learned strange things from her nurse.
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Casting the Runes Classic
After a scholarly society rejects his paper on alchemy, the vengeful Mr. Karswell finds a quiet way to show his displeasure.
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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 Gateway of the Monster Classic
The occult investigator Carnacki spends a night in a manor-house room where a door slams itself shut and the bedclothes are flung into corners.
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The Wendigo Classic
On a moose-hunting trip deep in the Canadian backwoods, a guide hears something calling his name from the wind above the trees.
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Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street Classic
Two medical students take cheap lodgings in an old Dublin house once owned by a notorious judge, and begin to dream badly.
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Rappaccini's Daughter Classic
A student in Padua looks down from his window into the garden of a famous scientist and falls in love with the beautiful daughter who tends its strange flowers.
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The Victim Classic
A jealous chauffeur nurses a grudge against his kindly employer, who has broken up his engagement.
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Secret Worship Classic
A silk merchant on a business trip makes a sentimental detour to the remote mountain school where he was educated as a boy.
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A Descent into the Maelström Classic
A white-haired fisherman leads a visitor to a Norwegian cliff and tells how a single day in a whirlpool aged him decades.
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The Colour Out of Space Classic
A surveyor west of Arkham hears of the "strange days" that followed when a meteorite fell on a lonely farm in 1882.
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The Man Who Went Too Far Classic
A young man living in a riverside village has devoted himself to communing with nature so completely that birds land on his shoulders.
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The Withered Arm Classic
A dairymaid abandoned by a farmer has a vivid nightmare about his new bride, and soon after the bride's arm begins to wither.