Tales of terror

About the book

These tales repeatedly place extraordinary experiences in the mouths of people who insist that they understand the difference between observation and superstition. The opening narrative presents an elderly doctor's record of a friend's disturbing history; in The Corpse Light, another medical man recalls events that shook his earlier contempt for spiritualism. Other titles promise haunted ruins, buried treasure, fatal spells, and encounters with the dead. Donovan uses the appearance of testimony to make uncertainty part of the entertainment: a confident narrator may describe something that his professional habits cannot explain. The collection ranges across several kinds of supernatural adventure, linking physical danger with the fear that familiar rules of cause and consequence have suddenly ceased to operate.

• Unreliable certainty
• Supernatural fear
• Testimony and belief

Why read it

The medically trained narrators make a useful point of entry into stories that deliberately unsettle rational confidence.

English Chatto & Windus collection of 1899, including The Story of Annette as a sequel