'I knew the site of the hut and the hill behind it up which I had rushed, and in the flickering glow the eyes of the rats still shone with a sort of phosphorescence.' Beyond the genre-defining influence of Dracula, Bram Stoker was also a master of the short story form. This new collection of the author’s tales represents his diverse interests in the macabre and uncanny, ranging from the hallucinatory and dreamlike in ‘The Shadow Builder’ and ‘In the Valley of the Shadow’ to the more overtly horrifying in the mini- masterpieces of ‘The Judge’s House’ and ‘The Burial of the Rats’. Alongside acknowledged classics of the horror short story canon, this new volume also includes obscurities such as the darkly comic ‘Old Hoggen: A Mystery’ and the morbid fairy tale ‘The Castle of the King’ to reflect the full brilliance of the legendary writer.

H. P. Lovecraft is best known for his tales of cosmic horror, in which unnameable nightmares torment the limits of human consciousness. This mastery of weird and unspeakable terror is underpinned by the writer's sizeable contribution to Gothic fiction. This new collection of Lovecraft's stories is the first to concentrate on his Gothic writing and includes tales from the beginning to the very end of the author's career. The writer's weird vision mixes brilliantly with the trappings of earlier Gothic horror to form innovative mosaics of frightful fiction that will long haunt the reader's subconscious.

The vampire is one of the great enemies of humanity, a nightmarish figure who feeds on the living in order to sustain themselves. Born from ancient folklore, writers in the nineteenth century gave form to the vampire as we know it today. Still haunting our subconscious in the twentieth century, a new wave of writers continued to develop the imagery and traditions of the vampire -- and the vampire continued to evolve. From John Polidori's iconic short story 'The Vampyre' and tales of parasitic female companions to experimental and freshly thrilling takes by Robert Bloch, Angela Carter and Anne Rice, this new collection sets out to present the enrapturing range of the vampire story and our undying fascination with the monster at its heart.

Sheridan Le Fanu was lauded by contemporaries such as M. R. James for his innovations in the ghost story and mystery genres, and his mastery of conjuring atmosphere and driving stories to thrilling narrative crescendos. And yet, aside from some regularly anthologised short stories and novellas, much of the writer's fiction remains unknown despite its quality. Aiming to firmly position Sheridan Le Fanu alongside other canonical horror writers published by the British Library, this anthology focuses on some of his lesser-known stories, exploring eight thoroughly Gothic tales of murderous families, dark castles and ghosts whose business with the living remains unfinished.

From the imaginations of Gothic short-story writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft came one of the most complex of villains - the mad scientist. Promethean Horrors presents some of the greatest mad scientists ever created, as each cautionary tale explores the consequences of pushing nature too far. These savants take many forms: there are malcontents who strive to create poisonous humans; technologists obsessed with genetic splicing; mesmerists interested in the way consciousness operates after death and inventors who believe in a hidden reality. United by an unhealthy obsession with wanting to reach beyond their circumstances, these mad scientists are marked by their magical capacity to alter the present, a gift that always comes at a price. . .

This book presents the first English introduction to the broad history of the Gothic mode in Spain. It focuses on key literary periods, such as Romanticism, the fin-de-siecle, spiritualist writings of the early-twentieth century, and the cinematic and literary booms of the 1970s and 2000s. With illustrative case studies, Aldana Reyes demonstrates how the Gothic mode has been a permanent yet ever-shifting fixture of the literary and cinematic landscape of Spain since the late-eighteenth century. He proposes that writers and filmmakers alike welcomed the Gothic as a liberating and transgressive artistic language.

The reputation of early-twentieth century British writer Algernon Blackwood currently resides with his two novellas `The Willows' (1907) and `The Wendigo' (1910), and with good reason. They are perfectly crafted horror tales that convey feelings of mystical otherness; they hint at the possibility that there are forces which lie beyond the confines of our everyday understanding of the world and which may, given the right circumstances, manifest to humans. In `The Willows', `unearthly' creatures are responsible for arousing `some dim ancestral sense of terror more profoundly disturbing than anything' the protagonists have ever known. In `The Wendigo', fear of the titular monster from Native American folklore is used to create a discombobulating atmosphere of dread. In both novellas, as in many other of Blackwood's fictions, wild landscapes (a desolate island, a labyrinthine forest) act as more than enhancing backdrops to the action - they become essential elements to the generation of anxiety and metaphysical awe. Both stories have become staples of the weird literary tradition, of which Blackwood was undoubtedly a modern master. Blackwood's slow and measured prose, deeply psychological and descriptive, grants his fiction an intrinsic cumulative effect. It both builds up to potent climaxes and brilliantly chronicles the aftermath of horrific encounters. His poignant narrative pace, sparse use of action and marked interest in how the mind filters perceptions, rather than on objective physical descriptions, makes Blackwood truly unique. Only a handful of other stories in horror fiction manage to conjure up the type of uncanny ambience found in `The Willows' and `The Wendigo'. This is why they are included in this collection.

Gothic Mash-Ups explores the role of intertextuality in Gothic storytelling through the analysis of texts from diverse periods and media. Drawing on recent scholarship on Gothic remix and adaptation, the contributors examine crossover fictions, multi-source film and comic book adaptations, neo-Victorian pastiches, performance magic, monster mashes, and intertextual Gothic works of various kinds. Their chapters investigate many critical issues related to Gothic mash-up, including authorship, originality, intellectual property, fandom, commercialization, and canonicity. Although varied in approach, the chapters all explore how Gothic storytellers make new stories out of older ones, relying on a mix of appropriation and innovation. Covering many examples of mash-up, from nineteenth-century Gothic novels to twenty-first-century video games and interactive fiction, this collection builds from the premise that the Gothic is a fundamentally hybrid genre.

Arguing for the need to understand Gothic cinema as an aesthetic mode, this book explores its long history, from its transitional origins in phantasmagoria shows and the first 'trick' films to its postmodern fragmentation in the Gothic pastiches of Tim Burton. But what is Gothic cinema? Is the iconography of the Gothic film equivalent to that of the horror genre? Are the literary origins of the Gothic what solidified its aesthetics? And exactly what cultural roles does the Gothic continue to perform for us today? Gothic Cinema covers topics such as the chiaroscuro experiments of early German cinema, the monster cinema of the 1930s, the explained supernatural of the old dark house mystery films of the 1920s and the Female Gothics of the 1940s, the use of vibrant colours in the period Gothics of the late 1950s, the European exploitation booms of the 1960s and 1970s, and the animated films and Gothic superheroes that dominate present times. Throughout, Aldana Reyes makes a strong case for a medium-specific and more intuitive approach to the Gothic on screen that acknowledges its position within wider film industries with their own sets of financial pressures and priorities. This groundbreaking book is the first thorough chronological, transhistorical and transnational study of Gothic cinema, ideal for both new and seasoned scholars, as well as those with a wider interest in the Gothic.

In recent years, the ways in which digital technologies have come to shape our experience of the world has been an immensely popular subject in the horror film genre. Contemporary horror cinema reflects and exploits the anxieties of our age in its increasing use of hand-held techniques and in its motifs of surveillance, found footage (fictional films that appear 'real': comprising discovered video recordings left behind by victims/protagonists) and 'digital haunting' (when ghosts inhabit digital technologies). This book offers an exploration of the digital horror film phenomenon, across different national cultures and historic periods, examining the sub-genres of CCTV horror, technological haunting, snuff films, found footage and torture porn. Digital horror, it demonstrates, is a product of the post 9/11 neo-liberal world view - characterised by security paranoia, constant surveillance and social alienation. Digital horror screens its subjects via the transnational technologies of our age, such as the camcorder and CCTV, and records them in secret footage that may, one day, be found.

Arguing for the need to understand Gothic cinema as an aesthetic mode, this book explores its long history, from its transitional origins in phantasmagoria shows and the first 'trick' films to its postmodern fragmentation in the Gothic pastiches of Tim Burton. But what is Gothic cinema? Is the iconography of the Gothic film equivalent to that of the horror genre? Are the literary origins of the Gothic what solidified its aesthetics? And exactly what cultural roles does the Gothic continue to perform for us today? Gothic Cinema covers topics such as the chiaroscuro experiments of early German cinema, the monster cinema of the 1930s, the explained supernatural of the old dark house mystery films of the 1920s and the Female Gothics of the 1940s, the use of vibrant colours in the period Gothics of the late 1950s, the European exploitation booms of the 1960s and 1970s, and the animated films and Gothic superheroes that dominate present times. Throughout, Aldana Reyes makes a strong case for a medium-specific and more intuitive approach to the Gothic on screen that acknowledges its position within wider film industries with their own sets of financial pressures and priorities. This groundbreaking book is the first thorough chronological, transhistorical and transnational study of Gothic cinema, ideal for both new and seasoned scholars, as well as those with a wider interest in the Gothic.

This book brings together various theoretical approaches to Horror that have received consistent academic attention since the 1990s - abjection, disgust, cognition, phenomenology, pain studies - to make a significant contribution to the study of fictional moving images of mutilation and the ways in which human bodies are affected by those on the screen on three levels: representationally, emotionally and somatically. Aldana Reyes reads Horror viewership as eminently carnal, and seeks to articulate the need for an alternative model that understands the experience of feeling under corporeal threat as the genre's main descriptor. Using recent, post-millennial examples throughout, the book also offers case studies of key films such as Hostel, [REC], Martyrs or Ginger Snaps, and considers contemporary Horror strands such as found footage or 3D Horror.

A transnational and transmedia companion to the post-millennial Gothic Key Features Covers key areas and themes of the post-millennial Gothic as well as developments in the field and revisions of the Gothic tradition Consitutes the first thematic compendium to this area with a transmedia (literature, film and television) and transnational approach Covers a plurality of texts, from novels such as Stephenie Meyer's Twilight (2005), Helen Oyeyemi's White Is for Witching (2009), Justin Cronin's The Passage (2010) and M.R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts (2014), to films such as Kairo (2001), Juan of the Dead (2012) and The Darkside (2013), to series such as Dante's Cove (2005-7), Hemlock Grove (2013-15), Penny Dreadful (2014-16) Black Mirror (2011-) and even the Slenderman mythos. This resource in contemporary Gothic literature, film and television takes a thematic approach, providing insights into the many forms the Gothic has taken in the twenty-first century. The 20 newly commissioned chapters cover emerging and expanding research areas, such as digital technologies, queer identity, the New Weird and postfeminism. They also discuss contemporary Gothic monsters - including zombies, vampires and werewolves - and highlight Ethnogothic forms such as Asian and Black Diasporic Gothic.

A transnational and transmedia companion to the post-millennial Gothic Key Features Covers key areas and themes of the post-millennial Gothic as well as developments in the field and revisions of the Gothic tradition Consitutes the first thematic compendium to this area with a transmedia (literature, film and television) and transnational approach Covers a plurality of texts, from novels such as Stephenie Meyer's Twilight (2005), Helen Oyeyemi's White Is for Witching (2009), Justin Cronin's The Passage (2010) and M.R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts (2014), to films such as Kairo (2001), Juan of the Dead (2012) and The Darkside (2013), to series such as Dante's Cove (2005-7), Hemlock Grove (2013-15), Penny Dreadful (2014-16) Black Mirror (2011-) and even the Slenderman mythos. This resource in contemporary Gothic literature, film and television takes a thematic approach, providing insights into the many forms the Gothic has taken in the twenty-first century. The 20 newly commissioned chapters cover emerging and expanding research areas, such as digital technologies, queer identity, the New Weird and postfeminism. They also discuss contemporary Gothic monsters - including zombies, vampires and werewolves - and highlight Ethnogothic forms such as Asian and Black Diasporic Gothic.

A splash of something huge resounds through the sea-fog. In the stillness of a dark room, some unspeakable evil is making its approach. This new selection offers the most chilling and unsettling of Hodgson's short fiction, from encounters with abominations at sea to fireside tales of otherworldly forces from his inventive `occult detective' character Carnacki, the ghost finder. A master of conjuring atmosphere, when the horror inevitably arrives it is delivered with breathtaking pace and the author's unique evocation of overwhelming panic.