An infertile couple escape to Italy for a short break but soon understand they are not alone, and that an ancient evil has awoken.

This is a story from the Four Short Stories collection. In these stories, Conan Doyle draws the listener in to experience drama, suspense and, ultimately, the shock of surprise. Here is a unique combination of a famous analytical intellect telling spine-tingling tales against a background of turn-of-the-century England. Nothing is quite as it seems. What is the secret of "Lot No. 249"? What lies in wait for an aviator in the stratosphere? And what lies inside "The Sealed Room"?

"Brother, do not try to follow me once you have read this. No good can come of it..." When Clifford Fox QC receives a desperate letter from his estranged younger brother, Simon, he departs his comfortable Yorkshire home to locate him. The letter outlines the harrowing events that have led Simon to the very edge of sanity.

From the UK best-selling author of Abbot's Keep comes a new dimension in terror. Spanning four decades, the dark history of Church Farm House is explored within four interlinking horror stories. Welcome to the nightmare... Benedict Ashforth is the author of the UK best-selling Kindle ghost story, Abbot's Keep.

This is a story from the The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes II collection.

Three teenagers stumble into a haunted mansion that traps them in a deadly nightmare. In order to escape alive, they must uncover the house's dark secrets of murder and prejudice.

In 1859, the Shawtuck Lunatic Asylum opened in rural Delaware County as the new standard for the treatment of the mentally ill. But now this huge, Gothic structure sits brooding and abandoned, brought down by a long, sordid history of depravity, mistreatment, and murder. It may be rotting up on Shawtuck Mountain, but it's not alone. Oswald "Oz" Patterson is the new sheriff of Delaware County. After a near-death experience as a cop in the South Bronx, he decided to move away from the inner city and live a safer life. Oz will find that he has only traded one nightmare for a worse one.

There is a haunted house up there that squats like a huge wooden toad behind a thick grove of pine trees on the end of a dead end road. Maybe once it was painted, but now it has a gray cadaver-like complexion, and its siding is sagged and splintered as if the devil had been poking at it with his pitchfork. Its windows are streaked and stained, and trying to see through them from the outside is like trying to look a skull in the eye.

Home is where the heart is...or the hatred. You can feel the love and care someone puts into their home just by walking into it. Equally, you can feel the hatred and malice when you step into a home where dark deeds have been done. Alex and his team of so-called paranormal investigators are given the opportunity of a lifetime, when they are able to film inside one of the most haunted, and cursed, locations in their area. The Jackson Mansion.

The dense Michigan forest. Haunting wails. The clip-clop of demon hooves on a bridge to nowhere. It’s more than a tall tale to Brenda Jennings, whose sister disappeared in those woods one fateful night. Three years later, on a solo stakeout in the dark, Brenda goes in after her. She’s desperate for answers, and terrified to find what lies waiting on the other side of that bridge.

On the morning that will mark the end of the world they have known, Molly and Neil Sloan awaken to the drumbeat of rain on their roof. It has haunted their sleep, invaded their dreams, and now they rise to find a luminous silvery downpour drenching their small California mountain town. A strange scent hangs faintly in the air, and the young couple cannot shake the sense of something wrong.

In picturesque Moonlight Cove, California, inexplicable deaths occur, and spine-tingling terror descends to this "edge of paradise". Growing numbers of residents harbor a secret so dark it is sure to cost even more lives.

Thomas Usher has a terrible gift. Following a car crash in which his wife and daughter are killed, he can see the recently departed, and it's not usually a pretty sight. When he is called to investigate the violent death of the daughter of a prominent local gangster, Usher's world is torn apart once more. For the barriers between this world and the next are not as immutable as once he believed.

Olivia Prior has grown up in Merilance School for Girls, and all she has of her past is her mother’s journal—which seems to unravel into madness. Then, a letter invites Olivia to come home to Gallant. Yet when Olivia arrives, no one is expecting her. But Olivia is not about to leave the first place that feels like home; it doesn’t matter if her cousin Matthew is hostile, or if she sees half-formed ghouls haunting the hallways.

In the secluded Dutch territory of Sleepy Hollow, nebbish schoolmaster Ichabod Crane competes with the town hero for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel, the 18-year-old daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer. As Crane leaves a party at the Van Tassel's farm one autumn evening, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, an apparition said to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper snuffed out by a stray cannonball.

A ghostly twist. Three nights of terror at the house called Edbrook. Three nights in which David Ash, there to investigate a haunting, will be victim of horrifying games. Three nights in which he will face the blood-chilling enigma of his own past. Three hideous nights before Edbrook's dreadful secret will be revealed...And the true nightmare will begin.to the surface, tormenting him, refusing to let him rest. The memory of what he once had been.

Mark Gatiss ( Sherlock, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones) reads chilling tales by the unsung master of the classic ghost story: E. F. Benson. There's nothing sinister about a London bus. Nothing supernatural could occur on a busy train platform. There's nothing terrifying about a little caterpillar. And a telephone, what could be scary about that? Don't be frightened of the dark corners of your room. Don't be alarmed by a sudden inexplicable chill.

Steven Jones, an entertainment producer from Chicago, journeys to London in search of new acts. There, he discovers the strange and disturbing wax museum of Rodgers and his inscrutable associate Orabona. Is the mad artist able to conjure up the world's most horrifying waxen effigies through his occult inspirations, or is there a darker secret lurking behind the wax and paint?

Darkness lives within.... Cash strapped, working for agencies and living in shared accommodation, Stephanie Booth feels she can fall no further. So when she takes a new room at the right price, she believes her luck has finally turned. But 82 Edgware Road is not what it appears to be.

Dive into the mysteries of Area X, a remote and lush terrain that has inexplicably sequestered itself from civilization. Twelve expeditions have gone in, and not a single member of any of them has remained unchanged by the experience - for better or worse.

In picturesque Moonlight Cove, California, inexplicable deaths occur, and spine-tingling terror descends to this "edge of paradise". Growing numbers of residents harbor a secret so dark it is sure to cost even more lives.

At the heart of these stories, as with all the best of Lovecraft’s work, is the belief that the Earth was once inhabited by powerful and evil gods, just waiting for the chance to recolonise their planet. Cthulhu is one such god, lurking deep beneath the sea until called into being by cult followers who – like all humans – know not what they do.

My name is Amelia Gray. I'm a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I've always held fast to these rules passed down from my father…until now. Detective John Devlin needs my help to find a killer, but he is haunted by ghosts who shadow his every move. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I've vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the headstone symbols lead me closer to truth and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.

This forest isn't charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina's is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams. Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn't reach the bunker in time.

Enter the world of the Pendleton: The original owner became a recluse - and was rumored to be more than half mad - after his wife and two children were kidnapped in 1896 and never found. The second owner suffered a worse tragedy in 1935, when his house manager murdered him, his family, and the entire live-in staff.... Craftsmen and laborers working on renovations disappear or go mad.... For years, the Pendleton is a happy place, until a bad turn comes again.... Voices in unknown languages are heard in deserted rooms....

The hills of Western Massachusetts contain dark and terrible secrets. Strange families keep to themselves and practice rites of ancient and unspeakable black magic. These dreadful and unholy rituals give birth to a monstrosity beyond imagination, a monstrosity that threatens mankind itself!

John Langan has, in the last few years, established himself as one of the leading voices in contemporary horror literature. Gifted with a supple and mellifluous prose style, an imagination that can conjure up clutching terrors with seeming effortlessness, and a thorough knowledge of the rich heritage of weird fiction, Langan has already garnered his share of accolades. This new collection includes nine of his substantial stories.

Billionaire Saul Abercrombie owns a vast tract of land on the Pembrokeshire coast. By restoring the original forest that covered the area before medieval times, he believes he will rekindle the spirits of ancient folklore. But the re-planting of the forest will revive an altogether darker and more dangerous entity - and young arboreal expert Tom Curtis will find himself engaging in an epic, ancient battle between good and evil. A battle in which there can be only one survivor.

This volume features William F Harvey's original undead hand story "The Beast with Five Fingers" that sparked many movies including Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead". Poe's classic "The Tell Tale Heart" is joined by Lovecraft's creepy tale of alienation "The Outsider", and a chilling Dickens ghost story "The Signalman".

Twentysomething bartender Jason Bishop's world is shattered when his estranged father commits suicide, but the greater shock comes when he learns his father was a secret agent in the employ of the Invisible Hand, an ancient society of spies wielding magic in a centuries-spanning war. Now, the Golden Dawn, the shadowy cabal of witches and warlocks responsible for Daniel Bishop's murder and for the death of Jason's mother years before, have Jason in their sights.