As the evenings grow deeper and the branches grow bare, the allure of atmospheric stories that send a chill down your spine grows. Darkness falls early, every shadow morphing into something sinister, and the promise of a story rife with atmosphere, tension, and the truly horrible becomes irresistible.
Since the 18th century, with the publication of the first-ever horror novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, horror has fascinated readers, using literature to explore the dark, the evil, the unbelievable and grotesque with the intent to frighten. The Victorian era, with its surge in spiritualism and interest in the paranormal and occult, saw a rise in these sensational stories. Though some viewed stories intended to frighten as cheap entertainment suitable only for penny dreadfuls, horror became a respected genre in its own right, with classics such as Dracula becoming mainstays that impact modern culture and literature.
From the types of stories we tell to how we tell them, many of our fears are those explored by Victorian authors before us. They’re the blueprint for modern horror. As October approaches and daylight fades quicker each day, there’s no better time to dive into Victorian horror.
Victorian Horror Novels
Carmilla
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest – the beautiful Carmilla. So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion.
But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day… Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.
Uncle Silas
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
One of the most significant and intriguing Gothic novels of the Victorian period and is enjoyed today as a modern psychological thriller. In UNCLE SILAS (1864) Le Fanu brought up to date Mrs Radcliffe’s earlier tales of virtue imprisoned and menaced by unscrupulous schemers. The narrator, Maud Ruthyn, is a 17 year old orphan left in the care of her fearful uncle, Silas. Together with his boorish son and a sinister French governess, Silas plots to kill Maud and claim her fortune. The novel established Le Fanu as a master of horror fiction.
The House by the Churchyard
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
by Jospeh Sheridan le Fanu
No true synopsis seems to exist for this story, however I have gathered that it is a classic tale of a haunted house and two medical students in Dublin who have the misfortune of spending some time there.
The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins
‘In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop… There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white’
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his ‘charming’ friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.
Matthew Sweet’s introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian ‘sensation’ fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins’s biographical and societal influences. Included in this edition are appendices on theatrical adaptations of the novel and its serialisation history.
The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
In “The Turn of the Screw,” one of the most famous ghost stories of all time, a governess becomes obsessed with the belief that malevolent forces are stalking the children in her care. Whether viewed as a subtle, self-conscious exploration of the haunted house of Victorian culture, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease, or simply as “the most hopelessly evil story we have ever read,” The Turn of the Screw is probably the most famous of ghostly tales and certainly the most eerily equivocal.
The Lancashire Witches
by William Harrison Ainsworth
Ainsworth’s last masterpiece, The Lancashire Witches proved a best-seller in its day and influenced many contemporary authors. The Lancashire Witches begins in the 16th century, in Lancashire, England. When a Cistercian monk, Borlace Alvetham, is falsely accused of witchcraft and condemned to death by his rival, Brother Paslew, he sells his soul to Satan and escapes. Years later, granted the powers of a warlock, he returns in the guise of Nicholas Demdike to witness Paslew’s execution for treason. Dying, Paslew curses Demdike’s offspring — who become the titular “Lancashire Witches.” The rest of the book is set in the 17th century. Mother Demdike, a powerful witch, and her clan face rival witches, raise innocent young Alizon Devi as their own, and try to corrupt Alizon despite her innocent ways. Ultimately, the book becomes a struggle between Heaven and Hell, with Alizon’s fate hanging in the balance.
Victorian Horror Stories and Novellas
The Open Door
by Charlotte Riddell
While a door that just won’t stay closed may not seem like the most terrifying of hauntings, being alone in a silent manor for days on end certainly adds to the atmosphere. A request to discover the reason for the obstinate door includes a cash motivation and newly unemployed Theophilus Edlyd readily accepts the challenge.
The Body-Snatcher
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Medical school students Fettes and Macfarlane are charged with the unenviable task of receiving and paying for the institution’s research cadavers. When Fettes recognizes the dead body of a woman he saw alive and well just the day before, he suspects murder. Macfarlane, however, insists that the authorities would never believe they had nothing to do with her death. Reluctantly, Fettes agrees to keep quiet, but soon regrets his decision when another familiar corpse turns up—and takes on a life of its own.
Lost Hearts
by M.R. James
The tale tells the story of Stephen Elliott, a young orphan boy, who is sent to stay with his much older cousin, Mr Abney, at a remote country mansion. His cousin is a reclusive alchemist obsessed with making himself immortal. Stephen is repeatedly troubled by visions of a young gypsy girl and a traveling Italian boy with their hearts missing.
Note about M.R. James: Most of his ghost stories were written in the Victorian era, though only published in the Edwardian era.
Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories
by M.R. James
Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories contains the entire first two volumes of James’s ghost stories, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. These volumes are both the culmination of the nineteenth-century ghost story tradition and the inspiration for much of the best twentieth-century work in this genre. Included in this collection are such landmark tales as “Count Magnus,” set in the wilds of Sweden; “Number 13,” a distinctive tale about a haunted hotel room; “Casting the Runes,” a richly complex tale of sorcery that served as the basis for the classic horror film Curse of the Demon; and “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,” one of the most frightening tales in literature. The appendix includes several rare texts, including “A Night in King’s College Chapel,” James’s first known ghost story.
The Old Nurse’s Story
by Elizabeth Gaskell
Even in the stillness of that dead-cold weather, I had heard no sound of little battering hands upon the window-glass…
A phantom child roams the Northumberland moors, while a host of fairytale characters gone to seed gather in the dark, dark woods in these two surprising tales of the uncanny from the great Victorian novelist.
The Trial for Murder
by Charles Dickens
A Trial For Murder is a short story, in which a victim’s ghost takes a seat in the jury at the trial of his killer.
The Signal-Man
by Charles Dickens
Overtaken by insomnia, a gentleman wanders through a damp winter countryside – until he discovers the black mouth of a railway tunnel. To his amazement, deep in the gorge before the tunnel, he sees an ancient signal-man. Although at first unresponsive to his calls, the signal-man eventually invites him down to a lonely shack. It’s there, over the course of two sleepless nights, that we learn the signal-man’s horrifying secret: a shrouded figure haunts him, foretelling a catastrophe soon to befall that very stretch of the tracks. Has the signal-man lost his mind in the solitary dark of his profession? Or does he see the phantom of his own grizzly fate? First published in 1866 for a special Christmas issue of All the Year Round, Charles Dickens’ “The Signal-Man” has since fallen into obscurity. This beautiful reissue, designed and illustrated by the inimitable Seth, breathes new life into a work many consider one of the best Christmas ghost stories ever written.
The Story of Clifford House
by Anonymous
A classic Victorian haunted-house story. Thirty years before, the man who was both proprietor and tenant of Clifford House died, leaving his two daughters all he possessed. He had been a bad man, led a bad wild life, and died in a fit brought on by drunkenness; and these two daughters, grown to womanhood, inherited with his ill-gotten gold his evil nature. They were only half-sisters, and were believed to have been illegitimate also. The elder, a tall, masculine, strongly built woman, with masses of coarse fair hair, and bright, glittering blue eyes; and the younger, a plump, dark-haired rather pretty girl, but as treacherous, vain, and bold, as her elder sister was fierce, passionate, and cruel. They lived in this house, with only their servants, for several years after their father’s death, a life of quarrelling and bickering, jealousy and heart-burnings, on various accounts.
The Great God Pan
by Arthur Machen
When Mr. Clarke agrees to visit his friend Dr. Raymond, he is dubious about the proceedings he is to witness. In pursuit of what Raymond calls “transcendental science,” the doctor intends to make a small incision in a woman’s brain, allowing her to see past the world of the senses to a reality beyond imagining—a realm where, Raymond says, one can see the great god Pan. Though the experiment is an apparent failure, it will not be Clarke’s last brush with the sinister beyond.
Years later, Clarke hears of a woman named Helen Vaughan, who is said to be at the root of many mysterious and tragic events. From London to the Americas and back, a string of suicides and disappearances lay in the wake of this evil seductress, whom Clarke believes is not entirely of this world.
Which of these classic horror tales will you be picking up this autumn?
