Spider Horror

E.F. Benson (1867-1940) is probably best known today for his sparkling, comic "Lucia" novels. In his own day it was his ghost stories which were his most popular works. At the Farmhouse exemplifies Benson's fine literary style and his ability to create the most frightening of supernatural and macabre tales.

M. R. James (1862-1936) was provost of King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College. He was a highly regarded scholar and academic in his time but today is remembered for his ghost stories, which are considered among the finest in the genre. Here is one of them: "A Warning to the Curious".

Ambrose Bierce's collection of short stories of the supernatural and macabre Can Such Things Be? was first published in 1893 and republished in a revised edition in 1910. One of its most notable inclusions is "The Death of Halpin Frayser" a gothic tale of the murder of the fated hero by the reanimated corpse of his beloved mother.