Psychological Horror
Horror where the question is whether the narrator can be trusted. Obsession, guilt, grief and the slow slide of a mind, in stories that leave you unsure what really happened.
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The Other Half
The other half of our duplex has been empty for eleven years. Every night, through the bedroom wall, a couple in there rehearses the conversation my wife and I will have tomorrow.
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Corrections
I keep a grocery list on a notepad stuck to my fridge. Lately someone has been adding to it, in my handwriting. So far, everything they've added, I've needed.
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Retention Schedule
I work at a records storage warehouse outside Kent, Washington. Two hundred thousand banker's boxes, every one barcoded, every one with a destruction date. Last Tuesday I found a box with my name on it in an aisle that isn't on the map. It's scheduled for destruction tomorrow.
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The Tell-Tale Heart Classic
A narrator who insists he is perfectly sane explains, very calmly, why the old man's eye had to go.
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Halves
Someone has been eating exactly half of everything in my apartment. Half a sandwich. Half a glass of milk. Half of one grape, cut so cleanly it looks like it was done with a scalpel. I live alone. I've weighed everything.
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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 Outsider Classic
A lonely being who has lived his whole life in a dark castle beneath a canopy of trees finally climbs toward the light.
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The Room in the Tower Classic
For fifteen years a man has dreamed of the same country house and the same quiet family, and of a room in the tower he must not enter. Then he is invited to stay there.
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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 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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Bed Three
I'm a night technologist in a hospital sleep lab. I watch people sleep on infrared video and read their brainwaves off a screen. The man in Bed Three was dreaming two dreams at once, and one of them was talking to me.
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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 Premature Burial Classic
A man with a medical condition that mimics death becomes consumed by the fear of waking up underground.
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[inaudible]
I transcribe focus-group recordings for a market research firm. The rule is verbatim: you type everything you can hear. In the files from one facility, there's someone talking under the room tone.
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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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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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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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An Inhabitant of Carcosa Classic
A man wakes in an unfamiliar wilderness with no memory of how he arrived, and begins walking toward the city he remembers.
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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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The Minister's Black Veil Classic
One Sunday, the Reverend Hooper appears before his congregation wearing a black veil over his face, and never takes it off.
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Berenice Classic
A brooding scholar becomes fixated on one small detail of his dying cousin's face, and cannot stop thinking about it.
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The Pipe
Behind our elementary school there was a concrete drainage pipe you could crawl through, sixty feet from end to end. Kids who went all the way through came out a little different. Dougie Ferro came out left-handed.
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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 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 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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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Classic
During the Civil War, a Southern planter stands on a railroad bridge with a noose around his neck, waiting for the soldiers to step aside.
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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 Cask of Amontillado Classic
During carnival season, a man nursing a thousand injuries invites a wine-loving friend down to his family vaults for a tasting.
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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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Whorls
In March my phone stopped recognizing my thumb. In April a background check said my fingerprints belonged to a nineteen-year-old who went missing in Idaho in 1987.
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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 Black Cat Classic
On the eve of his execution, a once-gentle man sets down the story of his household pets, and of what drink made him.
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The Death of Halpin Frayser Classic
A man lost in the Napa hills falls asleep under the trees and dreams of a forest of blood, and of a figure coming toward him.
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A Watcher by the Dead Classic
Three doctors make a bet that no one can spend a night locked alone in a room with a corpse without losing his nerve.
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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.