Book excerpt: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form… As may naturally be expected of a form so closely connected with primal emotion, the horror-tale is as old as human thought and speech themselves. H. P. Lovecraft Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Prevalent elements include ghosts, demons, vampires, werewolves, ghouls, the Devil, witches, monsters, dystopian and apocalyptic worlds, serial killers, cannibalism, psychopaths, cults, dark magic, Satanism, the macabre, gore, and torture. Edgar Allan Poe The Murders in the Rue Morgue The Gold Bug The Black Cat The Pit and the Pendulum The Tell-Tale Heart The Fall of the House of Usher The Masque of the Red Death The Cask of Amontillado The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar Hop-Frog The Raven Bram Stoker Dracula Mary Shelley Frankenstein Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Carmilla Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde H.P. Lovecraft The Alchemist At the Mountains of Madness Azathoth The Beast in the Cave Beyond the Wall of Sleep The Book The Call of Cthulhu The Case of Charles Dexter Ward The Cats of Ulthar The Colour out Of Space Dagon The Descendant The Doom that Came to Sarnath The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Dunwich Horror The Evil Clergyman Ex Oblivione Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family The Festival From Beyond The Haunter of the Dark He Herbert West-Reanimator The History of The Necronomicon The Horror at Red Hook The Hound Hypnos Ibid In the Vault the Little Glass Bottle Memory The Moon-Bog The Music of Erich Zann The Nameless City Nyarlathotep Old Bugs The Other Gods The Outsider Pickman's Model The Picture in the House Polaris The Quest of Iranon The Rats in the Walls A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson The Secret Cave or John Lees Adventure The Shadow Out Of Time The Shadow Over Innsmouth The Shunned House The Silver Key The Statement of Randolph Carter The Strange High House in the Mist The Street The Temple The Terrible Old Man The Tomb The Transition of Juan Romero The Tree Under the Pyramids The Very Old Folk What the Moon Brings The Whisperer in Darkness The White Ship Supernatural Horror in Literature Algernon Blackwood The Willows Francis Marion Crawford The Doll's Ghost Robert W. Chambers The King in Yellow M.R. James Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book Lost Hearts The Mezzotint The Ash-Tree Number 13 Count Magnus The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas A School Story The Rose Garden The Stalls Of Barchester Cathedral The Diary Of Mr. Poynter An Episode Of Cathedral History The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance An Evening's Entertainment A Warning To The Curious A Neighbour's Landmark The Uncommon Prayer-Book The Haunted Dolls' House Wailing Well There Was A Man Dwelt By A Churchyard Rats After Dark In The Playing Fields The Experiment The Malice Of Inanimate Objects A Vignette