Ilumina Public Library: El Paso County's All-Digital Library

First published in a 1842 edition of Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, The Masque of the Red Death tells the story of Prince Prospero as he tries to avoid a plague by confining himself and his nobles to a masquerade in an abbey. Often considered a gothic allegory, the story reflects on not only life and death but also the illusion of control.

An Air Force Loadmaster is menaced by strange sounds within his cargo; a man is asked to track down a childhood friend... who died years earlier; doomed pioneers forge a path westward as a young mother discovers her true nature; an alcoholic strikes a dangerous bargain with a gregarious stranger; urban explorers delve into a ruined book depository, finding more than they anticipated; residents of a rural Wisconsin town defend against a legendary monster;...

A classic horror tale from the iconic gothic author and the inspiration for the Netflix series from the creator of The Haunting of Hill House.   As The Fall of the House of Usher opens, an unnamed narrator has been summoned by his childhood friend, Roderick Usher, who has succumbed to a mysterious illness and longs for companionship. Upon first glance of the gloomy family mansion, the narrator is plunged into an unnerving depression, a dread...

A collection of spine-chilling tales from a master of horror, Can Such Things Be? is brimming with supernatural occurrences, shifting perspectives, and the psychological twists and turns for which Bierce is famous. Including such offerings as "The Death of Halpin Frayser," "Moxon's Master," and "The Damned Thing," this suspenseful collection is enhanced by a hint of Bierce's life and personality.

The story is narrated by an unnamed seeker of "strange horrors" who is investigating the massacre of a community of some six dozen backwoods degenerates in an obscure region of the Catskills, a massacre which occurred during a particularly violent electrical storm and seems to have been perpetrated by an unidentified clawed beast. The narrator soon discovers that the most sinister legends of the region centre around the abandoned Martense mansion,...

The Willows is a novella by English author Algernon Blackwood, originally published as part of his 1907 collection The Listener and Other Stories. It is one of Blackwood's best known works and has been influential on a number of later writers. Horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird...

First published in a 1843 edition of The Pioneer, The Tell-Tale Heart is one of Poe's best-known stories. In it, an unreliable narrator is increasingly troubled by the clouded eye of the old man he lives with. Similar to The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart focuses on the effects of mental instability, crime, and guilt.

First published in a 1843 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, The Black Cat tells the story of a man and his increasingly antagonistic relationship with his cat. Akin to The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat investigates the psychological effects of guilt as well as the potentially destructive and violent consequences of alcoholism.

In the future, Gunslinger's group of allies continues to grow. With Taylor on the path to becoming a warrior and the speedster Focus joining the crew, Gunslinger starts to reassess his mission.

From Beyond is a short story by science fiction and horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920 and was first published in The Fantasy Fan in June 1934 (Vol. 1, No. 10). The story is told from the first person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person's pineal...