The Frightful Fifty: 50 Dreadful Singles

Horror and suspense are not new topics in classic literature. While many are familiar with titles such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the stories and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, there is a plethora of older and lesser known tales of terror.

These short stories (and some poems) contain all of the elements that are still popular with modern horror and suspense: vampires, ghosts, killers, and the supernatural. While some of the titles give away what each piece of literature is about topically, some aren't as clear. I feel that not knowing what you are about to read will be more of a surprise. This is not unlike watching a film without reading the synopsis.

1. Bram Stoker----A Dream of Red Hands
2. S. Baring-Gould---The Red-Haired Girl: A Wife's Story
3. Mark Twain----A Ghost Story
4. Guy de Maupassant--Ghosts
5. M.R. James----A School Story
6. Shirley Jackson---The Lottery
7. Arthur Conan Doyle---Lot No. 249
8. Jan Neruda----The Vampire
9. Edgar Allan Poe---The Black Cat
10. Algernon Blackwood--The Empty House
11. Louisa Baldwin---How He Left the Hotel
12. Charles Dickens---The Haunted House
13. Rudyard Kipling---At the End of the Passage
14. Elizabeth Gaskell---The Old Nurse's Story
15. Robert Louis Stevenson--The Body Snatcher
16. Jerome K. Jerome---The Man of Science
17. Vincent O'Sullivan---When I Was Dead
18. William Harrison Ainsworth-The Spectre Bride
19. Ambrose Bierce---The Damned Thing
20. John William Polidori--The Vampyre: A Tale
21. Mary Elizabeth Counselman-Witch-Burning
22. E.F. Benson----A Tale of an Empty House
23. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik-The Last House in C. Street
24. Aleksandr Sergeyevich PushkinThe Queen of Spades
25. W.W. Jacobs---The Toll-House
26. Amelia B. Edwards--The Phantom Coach
27. Samuel Taylor Coleridge-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
28. Joyce Carol Oates---Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly
29. Henry James----The Way It Came
30. Victoria Glad----Each Man Kills
31. Vernon Lee----A Wicked Voice
32. Honoré de Balzac---La Grande Breteche
33. Robert W. Chambers--The Messenger
34. Sir Walter Scott---The Tapestried Chamber
35. Théophile Gautier---Clarimonde
36. Lord Lytton----The Haunted and the Haunters
37. F. Marion Crawford--The Upper Berth
38. Sheridan Le Fanu---The Murdered Cousin
39. John Kendrick Bangs--The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
40. Mary Eleanor Wilkins FreemanThe Lost Ghost
41. Gertrude Atherton---The Bell in the Fog
42. Guy de Maupassant--The Horla
43. William F. Harvey---The Beast with Five Fingers
44. Nathaniel Hawthorne--Young Goodman Brown
45. George MacDonald--Uncle Cornelius: His Story
46. M.E. Braddon---The Cold Embrace
47. H.P. Lovecraft---Dagon
48. Edith Wharton---Afterward
49. Peter de Niverville---The Petting Zoo
50. Steve Dustcircle---Girl Bastard