"The Picture in the House"
© 1919
by
H. P. Lovecraft
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The ( Read more... )

"The Horror of the Heights"

(c) 1913

by

Arthur Conan Doyle
The idea that the extraordinary narrative which has been called the Joyce-Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by some unknown person, cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of humour, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter. The most macabre and ( Read more... )

"The Man Who Found Out" is an excellent example of "pure cosmic horror" in that the horror derives totally from knowledge which is (in-story) so terrible that it forever blights the minds of the knowers.  First Professor Ebor and then Dr. Laidlaw learn the contents of the Tablets of the Gods, and even though this information is short enough to be ( Read more... )

"The Man Who Found Out"

(c) 1912

by Algernon Blackwood

1
Professor Mark Ebor, the scientist, led a double life, and the only persons who knew it were his assistant, Dr. Laidlaw, and his publishers. But a double life need not always be a bad one, and, as Dr. Laidlaw and the gratified publishers well knew, the parallel lives of this particular man were ( Read more... )